UNTIL IT HURTS

It must hurt plenty, too, since the postmortem on the New York Knicks' star center Archibald Tyrone (``Big Chill'') Thorpe indicates that he was not only caught in the shotgun blast that flattened 20 other teammates and opponents and hangers-on milling around the floor during practice at Madison Square Garden, but that then he was also fatally stabbed. It hurts NTB news director Abby Abagnarro almost as badly that he and his crew, on the scene for an interview with the Iceman, got the whole incident on videotape except for the actual murder, during which time they were hugging the floor as closely as anybody. Why and how did two people ever team up to shoot and stab the Big Chill, and how did the murder weapon disappear from under the nose of Capt. Dennis Fillingeri's finest? Abby's ex, Morning Watch producer Ike Taggart, would love the answers to these questions even more than she'd love to win the latest dance contest she's entering with Abby. But it's hard to keep your mind on the steps when the shooter and the stabber are both at large, taking shots at Abby every time he ventures out onto the city streets, while the blade is keeping just as busy. As high-spirited as Abby and Ike's first two cases (Until the End of Time, 1995, etc.), but not as carefully controlled, from the opening fusillade of ``metal scraps of death'' to the climactic updating of a famous clichÇ of the genre.