Shock doesn’t even begin to express how I feel in finding out that Steven Bochco, the creator of such amazing television shows as HILL STREET BLUES, NYPD Blue and many others has died at the age of 74. Bochco was a force in my early appreciation of what television could be. Having watched HILL STREET BLUES in the 80s for my love of Jon as Chief Fletcher P. Daniels, there was never a moment where Bochco didn’t bring his A-Game in terms of the excellence of what Edward R. Murrow termed “just lights and tubes in a box”. Given the spate of really bad network viewing today, Bochco was indeed a standard of what that viewing art could be. I don’t believe we’ll ever have his like again. When you look at the likes of Aaron Spelling and his campy soaps in DYNASTY where Jon played Dirk E. Maurier, I believe Bochco was not only ahead of his time, but in viewing HILL STREET BLUES today, it’s as prescient today as it was back then. Bochco never shied away from the uncomfortable moment. He imbued it with all the glaring light he could to put us in the shoes of not only those uniformed men and women of The Hill Street Station, but also in the shoes of the downtrodden, the gang member, the lonely, the sick, the weak. He also shined as giant a light on police corruption and never let us forget just because you wore blue, didn’t always mean you were good. It’s as if he had a crystal ball to know that what he depicted on HILL STREET BLUES in the 80s, would be just as valid a case today. Thank you Mr. Bochco for your brilliance and for giving me my conscience.