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!
Ray Luca is back!
Episode 2.5 “Shockwaves”
(Dir by Bill Duke, originally aired on November 3rd, 1987)
With Ray Luca apparently dead, Las Vegas appears to have settled down. Max and Steve Kordo are running what’s left of Luca’s criminal empire. David Abrams is happily playing his saxophone. Ray’s ex-wife has a new blonde stud in her bed. Torello and Danny are spending their days drinking at their favorite club. The only problem is that Luca isn’t dead. As we’ve seen over the past few episodes, he and Pauli somehow survived getting caught in the middle of an atomic bomb test. After spending a few months in Mexico, Ray decides to come back to Vegas.
And because Ray and Pauli did some work for the government while they were hiding out, they’re now considered to be assets. Torello and David Abrams are informed that Ray has immunity for his previous crimes and that the Crime Task Force is to stay away from him. When Torello and his men fail to do this, they’re slapped with a restraining order. David resigns in anger.
As for the rest of Vegas, they each react in their own way to Luca’s return. Luca’s wife kicks her current boytoy out of the house and welcomes back Ray. Manny orders Max to set aside his anger and to work with Luca because Luca brings in a lot of money. Steve Kordo pretends to be happy about Luca’s return and then promptly calls Kansas City and requests that a “hitter” be sent to Vegas.
And David—well, David goes nuts (again) and breaks into Luca’s house with the intent of killing him. Fortunately, Torello and his men show up in time to grab David. David gets off one shot but takes out a lamp instead of Luca. Luca smugly thanks Torello for saving his life. Torello replies that he only did it to protect Abrams.
This was a busy episode but it was a necessary one. The heart of this series has always been Luca and Torello’s private war, so Luca was going to have to return to Vegas at some point. There are only so many episodes the show can do about Torello dealing with random villains-of-the-week. Luca has returned and, in this episode, Tony Denison did a great job of playing Luca as someone who knows that he’s untouchable and is pretty smug about it.
While it may deny reality to suggest that Luca and Pauli could survive an atomic blast, it’s not too far-fetched that they would become government assets. This show is set in the early 60s, at roughly the same time that the CIA was teaming up with the Mafia to try to take out Fidel Castro. If they had succeeded, the world would have been spared a lot of misery. But, at the same time, the world wouldn’t have gotten Brian De Palma’s version of Scarface.
You have to take the good with the bad.
