Episodes are not necessarily listed in the order in which they were filmed or exhibited, but rather (in some cases) in the order the scripts were commissioned.
The so-called “True Beginning” of the series, referring to the advent of Sharon Gless playing the role of Christine Cagney.
At a glance:
INTERNAL AFFAIRS | ONE OF OUR OWN | BEAUTY BURGLARS | MR. LONELYHEARTS | HIGH STEEL | WITNESS TO AN INCIDENT | HOTLINE | CONDUCT UNBECOMING | I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS | RECREATIONAL USE | THE GRANDEST JEWEL THIEF OF THEM ALL | HOPES AND DREAMS | AFFIRMATIVE ACTION | OPEN AND SHUT CASE | JANE DOE #37 | BURN OUT | CHOP SHOP | DATE RAPE | LET THEM EAT PRETZELS | THE GANG’S ALL THERE | THE INFORMANT | A CRY FOR HELP
Synopses:
INTERNAL AFFAIRS
Director: Alexander Singer
Teleplay by Aubrey Soloman & Steven Greenberg
Story by Joanne Pagliaro
The Internal Affairs Department suspects there is a leak in the 14th Precinct; Cagney and Lacey have been assigned to find out who it is. The suspicion causes stress on the whole department and places Isbecki in danger while he is on an undercover hijacking assignment.
Subplot: Cagney finds out that thirty-odd years ago her father was “on the take,” and it becomes a major stumbling block in their relationship.
ONE OF OUR OWN
Director: Reza Badiyi
Written by: Robert Crais & April Smith
An officer is shot in a restaurant and it turns out to be a “wrong shoot.” The hired gun was supposed to kill the accountant, who was doing books for a crook who is now under investigation by the FBI. The accountant had no idea he was working for crooks.
He hides out, but the assassin kidnaps his wife. She leads him to her husband, and Cagney and Lacey arrive in time to prevent a killing and arrest the gun-man.
Subplot: The guys try to keep Cagney off the intramural baseball team. They want it all guys until they find out they can’t play unless the team is coed.
BEAUTY BURGLARS
Director: Ray Danton
Teleplay by April Smith & Robert Crais
Story by Patt Shea and Harriet Weiss
Some guys posing as uniformed police invade very posh beauty shops, lock the doors, and rob the patrons. They are finally caught because one of the stolen items shows up at a jewelers and is purchased by the husband of the woman from whom it was stolen.
Subplot: Lacey’s best friend is getting married and Lacey, matron of honor, can’t afford the dress the friend wants her to wear. Harvey becomes insecure, thinking Lacey wants to have that kind of money, too.
MR. LONELYHEARTS
NOTE: features an all-too-brief appearance by Tony Award winning actress, Judith Ivey
Director: James Sheldon
Written by: Jeffrey Lane
Cagney and Lacey investigate a marriage scam. A man poses as a preacher and marries his wife off to lonely men they find in the personal columns of magazines.
The wife then says she’s got a serious illness, and the husband sends money to keep her in the hospital and pay her bills while she’s in New York getting treatments. One husband comes to New York to find her and that’s how the truth comes out.
Subplot: Cagney meets a guy after she’s decided to try celibacy for a while. They’re very attached to each other, but she won’t let him near, saying they should get to know each other first. She finally relents.
HIGH STEEL
Director: Reza Badiyi
Written by: Rogers Turrentine
When Cagney and Lacey investigate an apparent accident on a construction site, they uncover the builder’s scheme to use defective material.
Subplot: Harvey Lacey has to face his inability to handle heights in order to save Lacey from a high fall.
WITNESS TO AN INCIDENT
Director: Alexander Singer
Teleplay by Paul L. Erhmann and April Smith and Robert Crais & Jeffrey Lane and Frank Abatemarco
A Neighborhood Watch guy gets killed chasing a perp who robbed a neighborhood pharmacy. Did the cop (who was also chasing) kill him with a “throw—down” or was there another gun on the scene?
The Cop is suspended pending investigation, because he claimed he shot in self-defense. Cagney saw the gun and confirms the uniformed cops story; Lacey didn’t see the gun and cannot confirm the rush to an “official version.”
They can’t agree on a story. Turns out the guy did have a gun, which was against the Neighborhood Watch rules. His partner on the watch had secreted it before the cop got to the body.
Subplot: The tension between Cagney and Lacey over Lacey not trusting Cagney’s story and going with her own.
HOTLINE
Director: Leo Penn
Written by: Frank Abatemarco
Cagney and Lacey investigate a rash of stranglings of women. They learn that the women all worked for an erotic hotline to make money on the side and that the murderer is a wanted felon who is the hotline’s messenger. Cagney and Lacey nab him just as he’s about to murder his fifth victim.
Subplot: Samuels gets into hot water with Deputy Inspector Marquette when he gives a live mini—cam report on what he says is a series of related slayings contradicting his superior’s theory of the stranglings of the hotline workers.
CONDUCT UNBECOMING
Director: Alexander Singer
Written by: Rogers Turrentine
Cagney, Lacey, and Anti-Crime Officer Stephens try to break an illegal handgun operation. Stephens has information that leads them to a potential collar. But when it turns out that Stephens posed for photos in a porno publication for gay men, he is suspended from the force.
Nevertheless, Cagney and Lacey insist he is vested in the case and successfully make the collar with him.
Subplot: The 14th Precinct wins $1,000 in the lottery, but lose it all when they “go for broke,” hoping for the million dollar win.
I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
Director: Burt Brinkerhoff
Written by: Robert Crais
It’s Christmas Eve, and everyone at the Precinct wants to leave early because each one has “special plans.” However, when the “Santa Claus” who has unsuccessfully conned Samuels out of five dollars and been arrested escapes from the holding tank, everyone pitches in to recapture him.
Subplot: Petrie’s baby is overdue, and when complications arise, he asks Cagney and Lacey to drive his wife to the hospital.
After Santa is recaptured, Cagney and Lacey work out a scheme to get him released (so as not to do paperwork or court appearances on Christmas) and get him some money to boot. Petrie has a baby girl, Lauren, and Claudia, his wife, is fine.
RECREATIONAL USE
Director: Alexander Singer
Written by: April Smith
Cagney and Lacey, along with another detective, Cagney love-interest Dory McKenna,are investigating the deaths of some senior citizens. Turns out the buildings are all owned by the same guy, who is sabotaging his own property to try to get the old tenants out so he can raise the rents or raze the buildings.
Subplot: Dory McKenna is a heavy cocaine user.
THE GRANDEST JEWEL THIEF OF THEM ALL
NOTE: If you don’t blink, you can catch Oscar Winner (King of Scotland) actor Forest Whitaker
Director: Victor Lobl
Written by: Michael Piller
Albert Grand, never convicted of all the hotel safe robberies the police are sure he committed, is now seventy years old, released from jail, and back into his old habits.
Cagney and Lacey are on his trail, having met him in a case of a father kidnapping his own kid. They realize who he is and go after him, but he eludes them again.
Subplot: Cagney’s fascinated by the guy and charmed by him. She wants to get him; he’s challenged her.
HOPES AND DREAMS
Director: Peter Levin
Written by: Frank Abatemarco
Cagney and Lacey bust a gang of thieves who rob the homes of people while they are at the funeral of a loved one. They take everything, dump the furniture, and hock the jewels. They pose as a relative of the mourner, show a key in order to gain entry.
Subplot: One victim is a paraplegic young girl whose bike has been stolen. The bike is her inspiration to try to recover, and she wants that very one back.
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
Director: Peter Levin
Written by: Jeffrey Lane
A woman is found burned in an abandoned building. Turns out she was murdered so the killer could steal her baby and sell it to another woman.
Subplot: The squad has a new female detective. Cagney and Lacey must train her. She screws up royally. Cagney and Lacey deal with their own jealousies in their reactions to her.
OPEN AND SHUT CASE
NOTE: features Tony Award winning actress, Jonelle Allen
Director: Nicholas Sgarro
Written by: Terry Louise Fisher & Steve Brown
Lt. Samuels hands Cagney and Lacey are handed a seemingly “open and shut” case: a matter of a man being murdered in front of dozens of witnesses. But the more they probe, they realize that because of the long-standing feud between Turks and Armenians, their suspect is being railroaded.
Subplot: A woman who was a rape victim is being asked to once again go into court to testify against the men who assaulted her. The endless court process has ruined her life and she appeals to Cagney and Lacey to help her get out of it.
JANE DOE #37
NOTE:features Multiple Emmy Award winning actress (Everybody Loves Raymond), Doris Roberts
Director: Stan Lathan
Written by: Peter Lefcourt
A bag lady is murdered and everyone assumes that the murder has no significance. But Cagney is determined to find out who killed the woman and, more importantly, who the woman is. She doesn’t think anyone should be buried with a number instead of a name.
Subplot: Cagney wishes everyone would forget about her upcoming birthday.
BURN OUT
NOTE: Emmy winner for Tyne Daly, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.
Director: Don Weis
Written by: Del Reisman and Chelsea Nickerson
Lacey is having a very difficult time juggling all her duties: mother, cop, wife. She knows she can hold it all together for just two more days until her much needed vacation, but when Samuels takes her vacation away to put her on yet another case, she falls apart.
She walks away from everything … job and family … as she rides the train to the end of the line, all but disappearing for a couple of days, and ultimately sort out her feelinqs at a not so lonely beach.
Subplot: Cagney goes undercover as a nun at a hospital to find out who’s been smuggling drugs.
CHOP SHOP
Director: Bill Duke
Written by: Kevin Sullivan
Isbecki is working undercover on a stolen cars-for-parts operation. A tactical error on Cagney’s part puts him in danger of being killed. Trying to find him, Petrie is involved in a shooting of a youth. As the squad works overtime to find Isbecki, Petrie also tries to sort out his confused feelings about the shooting, and about his attitude in general toward the people who live in the ghetto.
DATE RAPE
Director: John Patterson
Written by: Terry Louise Fisher
Story by: Terry Louise Fisher & Steve Brown
Cagney and Lacey take on the case of a woman who was raped by a man she picked up in a bar. The men in the squad room think the case is a subject of some humor; it is more likely a case of a one—night stand who never called back.
Cagney, in her continuing effort to be thought of as one of the guys, begins to take on their attitude. She quickly changes her mind, however, when the woman is brutally beaten and raped again by the same man.
Subplot: As a gag, the guys fix Samuels up on a blind date with a prostitute. He has no idea what her occupation is and begins to fall in love with her.
LET THEM EAT PRETZELS
Director: Harry Harris
Written by Peter Lefcourt
A wealthy, playboy Arab is involved in a hit-and-run accident which puts garment-industry-worker Sol Klein in the hospital. Cagney and Lacey are assigned the duty of arresting the Arab, Moqtadi,but Moqtadi claims extra-territorial sovereignty and won’t come out of the Mission of Zamir. Cagney and Lacey find a clever way to trick Moqtadi into paying Klein’s hospital bills —— and more.
Subplot: Harvey’s mother, Muriel, has come to stay with the Laceys. She feels she no longer has a purpose in life and turns to Mary Beth for advice.
THE GANG’S ALL THERE
Director: Christian I. Nyby, II
Written by: Lee Sheldon
Petrie has won a commendation and the members of the 14th go out to celebrate. While they are there, the bar is robbed. Everybody but Isbecki (who’s out on a case) has their guns, their shields, their possessions, taken. They are humiliated and become the laughing stock of the police force. The men and women of the 14th put all their energies into finding the armed robbers.
Subplot: A young child has disappeared and Cagney and Lacey trace him to his grandparents, who have designs on kidnapping him to see that he has a “decent upbringing.”
THE INFORMANT
Director: Michael Vejar
Written by: Larry Konner and Ronnie Wenker-Konner
Cagney and Lacey are having a difficult time cracking a PCP ring. They decide to use an informant, even though they both have qualms about that. Their informant burns them, leaving a high school kid in the hospital. They decide not to use the informant any more, but he ends up selling information to someone else, getting out of jail once again.
Subplot: Harvey Jr. interviews everyone at the Fourteenth for a report he’s doing for school.
A CRY FOR HELP
Director: Barbara Peters
Written by: Terry Louise Fisher and Chris Abbott
Cagney and Lacey are working with two detectives in the Fraud Squad to solve a real estate bunko case. One of the two men, an old classmate of Lacey’s is beating his wife.
Subplot: Cagney is dating an incredibly romantic man who, under a pseudonym, writes “bodice rippers.” Cagney convinces Lacey to read one of his books for her since she can’t get through it.
All Episodes - Bibles Episode Guide - Characters Season 1 (1982) Season 3 (Spring 1984) Season 4 (1984-5)Season 5 (1985-6) Season 6 (1986-7) Season 7 (1987-8) The Menopause Years (1994-5)