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 Crime Story, which ran on NBC from 1986 to 1988. The entire show can be found on Tubi!
This week, a member of the Taskforce has an issue.
Episode 2.3 “Always A Blonde”
(Dir by Robert Dalva, originally aired on October 20th, 1987)
Since they apparently have nothing better to do, Torello and the members of the Task Force are trying to bust the Vegas marijuana syndicate. This episode opened with Torello and the boys at a jazz club and, at first, I was worried that Abrams would show up with his saxophone and start playing like he used to do during the first season. (Those scenes were always a bit cringey.)
Instead, the attempted jazz-club sting falls apart because the youngest member of the Task Force, Joey (Billy Campbell), leaves his post when he spots his high-school girlfriend, Doreen (Britta Phillips), walking along the Vegas Strip. It turns out that Doreen is now a prostitute who is working for a notoriously sadistic pimp named Ray Keech (Tony Maggio).
Last week, the Task Force put their actual job on hold so that they could help out Torello’s ex-wife. This week, they do it to help out Joey. When Ray discovers that Doreen is planning on leaving him, he murders her. This leads to a chase through Vegas and a well-shot scene where Joey beats up Ray with the city’s neon glowing behind them.
One thing that I’ve noticed about Crime Story is that, other than Torello and Abrams, the other members of the Task Force often come across as ciphers. We really don’t know much about them, beyond the fact that Joey is young, Danny is Torello’s best friend, Walter is old, and Nate once had a gambling problem. We don’t know much about their families, other than the fact that all of them were able to move from Chicago to Las Vegas without it being too much of an issue. We do know that they’re all loyal to Torello, sometimes to an almost cult-like degree. With this episode, we learn a little about Joey, but it’s still not really enough to make this rather predictable story compelling. If anything, this episode made Joey look totally unprofessional and erratic. Should he even be on the Task Force if he can’t even take part in a simple stakeout?
The absence of Luca and Pauli continues to be felt. Is it really Crime Story if half of the story is missing?
