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Connie McDowell is a fictional character in the television series NYPD Blue.[1] She was played by Charlotte Ross from Season 8 to 11.[1] Ross had previously guest starred on the show as another character in two episodes of Season 5.[2]
McDowell was born in 1968 and was from upstate New York, where her father had been the chief of police for the city of Saratoga Springs.[3] She began her detective career as a "floater" working temporary assignments in whichever precinct was shorthanded until receiving permanent assignment to the 15th Precinct.[3]
Soon after her arrival, Lieutenant Arthur Fancy was promoted to captain, and McDowell did not hit it off with his intended replacement, Susan Dalto.[4] Upon asking if it was too late for her transfer out of the 15th Precinct, Fancy counseled her to stay, so that she did not develop a reputation as someone who could not get along with her superiors.[4] Fancy ultimately solved the problem by engineering Dalto's transfer out; her replacement was Lieutenant Tony Rodriguez, with whom McDowell got along well.[5] McDowell partnered first with Diane Russell, and later with Rita Ortiz.[6]
McDowell dealt with some dysfunction in her family; she had a baby when she was 16, and her parents insisted she give the girl up for adoption.[3] In late 2001 she contacted her daughter, by then a 16-year-old known as Jennifer Beck, by arranging a fake arrest for smoking marijuana; the attempted reunion was unsuccessful.[3] McDowell was told by her doctors that she could not become pregnant again; still desiring to be a parent, she began to help Andy Sipowicz by babysitting his son Theo.[3] McDowell also had a sister, Michelle, who was in an abusive relationship; after several unsuccessful efforts by McDowell and her co-workers to stop the abuse, Michelle's husband Frank killed her.[3] McDowell ended up as the adoptive parent of her sister's child, after successfully fighting Frank's parents for custody.[3]
After McDowell became the adoptive mother of her niece, her relationship with Andy continued to blossom; soon afterwards, McDowell became pregnant, despite her previous medical prognosis.[3] Despite their age difference, they decided to marry, and she gave birth to a son, Matthew.[3] After giving birth, McDowell left work to stay at home and raise the three children in the blended family she and Sipowicz had created.[3] (In reality, McDowell's pregnancy and departure from the show coincided with Ross's real life pregnancy.[7]) She is referred to several times during the rest of the series, usually as Sipowicz is talking to her on the phone while he is at work.[3] When it was confirmed that Season 12 would be the series' last, the show's producers and Dennis Franz both reached out to Charlotte Ross to make a few return appearances as Connie. She politely declined.
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