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, it’s Reb Brown vs Don Johnson!

Episode 3.22 “Viking Bikers From Hell”

(Dir by James Quinn, originally aired on April 3rd, 1987)

Biker Reb Gustafson (Reb Brown) has been released in prison, just in time to seek vengeance for the death of his mentor, The Wire.  The Wire was killed in a drug deal gone bad so Reb decides to just track down every dealer that The Wire did business with during the final two weeks of his life and kill every one of them.  Working with Lascoe (John Matuszak) and Toad (Sonny Landham), Reb cuts a trail of terror through Miami’s underground.  Soon, there’s only one name left on the list …. SONNY BURNETT!

At this point, of course, everyone in Miami should know that Sonny Burnett is actually Sonny Crockett.  I’ve lost track of how many time Crockett and Tubbs have gotten their undercover identities blown.  Usually, the people who figure out that Sonny and Rico are undercover end up dying almost immediately afterwards.  But a few of their enemies have survived and it’s odd that they never seem to bother to tell anyone, “Hey, those guys are actually cops.”

This episode of Miami Vice is violent that it verges on self-parody.  (I guess that’s to be expected as the script was written by the great John Milius,  Milius was credited as “Walter Kurtz.”)  Reb Brown is an amusing actor.  He never showed much emotion but he always looked believable whenever he was relentlessly tracking down someone that he wanted to kill.  Brown is both this episode’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness.  As played Brown, Reb Gustasfson barely flinches when he gets shot.  He’s a relentless killing machine, the terminator on a motorcycle.  That does certainly make him an intimidating figure.  At the same time, this episode also features Reb Brown doing his signature yelling and, for me, it was hard to watch this episode without thinking about all the close-up, high-pitched screaming that he did in Space Mutiny.

Tubbs ends up in the hospital in this one.  An attack by Reb and his biker pals leaves Tubbs with a concussion.  Crockett visits the hospital and there’s a scene where he attempts to have a conversation with a heavily drugged Tubbs.  Tubbs’s comments make about as much sense as the last words of Dutch Schultz but it’s still kind of nice to see that Crockett actually does care about his partner.  The two of them haven’t always seemed particularly happy with having to work together over the course of the third season.

Biker fans will also be happy to note that Kim Coates has a small role in this one.  Crockett and Tubbs beat him up in a biker bar while demanding information about Reb.  The odd thing here is that Crockett and Tubbs go into the biker bar and make no attempt to hide the fact that they’re actually cops.  And all of the bikers in the bar seem to already know that they’re cops.  Seriously, were Crockett and Tubbs the two worst undercover cops in history?

This was an enjoyably over-the-top episode.  It was a bit silly but, when it comes to Reb Brown, would you want it any other way?