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 are not looking for bull semen.

Episode 4.13 “Vote of Confidence”

(Dir by Randy Roberts, originally aired on February 12th, 1988)

After spending last week trying to retrieve a cannister of bull semen, this episode finds Crockett, Tubbs, and Switek actually doing Vice work for once.  At the start of this episode, they stop a train that doubles as a rolling bordello.  They arrest a man named Tom Pierce (Larry Pine), a congressman who just happens to be running for governor!

(Tubbs thinks that Pierce has some good ideas.  Crockett doesn’t believe in voting.  Try to get away with that on a television show in today’s hyperpartisan climate.)

Tubbs and Crockett are frustrated when the district attorney declines to prosecute Pierce.  The D.A. says that they can’t prove that Pierce was actually on the train to hook up with a prostitute.  He could have just been passing out campaign literature.  Crockett and Tubbs are outraged, wondering why the prostitutes should be arrested but not the people who keep them in business.  Crockett and Tubbs see it as another example of the rich and powerful being let off the hook and they’re probably right about that.

Still, Pierce’s campaign is rocked by the news of his arrest and, when he withdraws from the election, Internal Affairs investigates to make sure that Crockett and Tubbs didn’t set him up.  While Crockett and Tubbs are definitely innocent, they still suspect that someone may have indeed set Pierce up.  When Pierce disappears, they wonder if maybe he’s been abducted or murdered.  Their investigation leads them to a notorious political prankster (Barry Lynch) and a shady press operative (Jonathan Hadary).

This episode was apparently based on the same scandal that, decades later, would inspire The Front Runner.  It was an improvement on last week’s but then again, anything would have been an improvement on last week’s episode.  Just the fact that Crockett and Tubbs were actually doing police work as opposed to stifling laughs every time someone mentioned “bull semen” guaranteed that this episode would shine compared to last week’s episode.  On the plus side, this episode features a return of the cynical Crockett and Tubbs that we all know and love.  On the negative side, the story itself is so bland that it fades from the memory as soon as the episode ends.  This episode was competently done but bland.  That’s the problem with episodes that are meant to be “ripped from the headlines.”  Headlines eventually fade.