Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show can be purchased on Prime!

This week, Crockett and Tubbs discover a judge may be taking bribes.

Episode 2.19 “The Fix”

(Dir by Dick Miller, originally aired on March 7th, 1986)

Roger Ferguson (Bill Russell) is a powerful man in Miami.  A former basketball player turned lawyer, Ferguson could have been elected mayor but instead, he chose to take an appointment to the bench.  In his art deco courtroom, Judge Ferguson hands down sentences and sets bail.  In fact, sometimes, he sets bail at a surprisingly low amount.  After a drug lord is released on a $5,000 bond and immediately catches a plane for Colombia, Crockett and Tubbs come to suspect that the Judge might be taking bribes.

And he is!  Judge Ferguson has a gambling problem and a corrupt lawyer named Benedict (Harvey Fierstein, clean-shaved but recognizable from the minute he starts to speak) is taking advantage of that fact.  In fact, Ferguson is so in debt that he’s had to borrow from a notorious loan shark named Pagone (Michael Richards — yes, the future Kramer from Seinfeld).  Pagone is now demanding that the judge convince his son, a basketball player named Matt (Bernard King), to throw his next game.

There were some good things about this episode.  It was directed by Dick Miller and yes, that is the same Dick Miller who, as a character actor, appeared in countless Roger Corman films.  As a director, Miller had a good sense of style.  The opening sequence, where the Vice Squad arrests a drug lord at an aviary, is genuinely exciting and well-done.  There was also some moments of genuine humor, largely supplied by the contrast between Crockett’s intensity and Tubbs’s laid-back cool.

The problem is with the casting, some of which is not entirely the show’s fault.  In 1986, no one knew that casting Harvey Fierstein and Michael Richards as ruthless villains would come across as being unintentionally humorous in 2024.  Richards does not give a bad performance as Pagone but, whenever he threatens the judge, he sounds just like Kramer demanding the day off for Festivus.  As for Bill Russell and Bernard King, I looked them up on Wikipedia after watching the show and I was not surprised to discover that they were both actual basketball players.  Both of them gave earnest performances but it was easy to see that neither one of them was a natural or a trained actor.  It wasn’t quite as bad as when actual basketball players used to show up on Hang Time but still, they definitely seemed to be struggling to keep up with the veteran actors in the cast.

This is yet another episode that ends with Crockett staring in horror as someone is shot on a yacht.  (In this case, it’s Judge Ferguson committing suicide after killing Pagone.)  Seriously, what was the yacht budget for this show?