Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 5.7 “Asian Cut”

Posted on November 24, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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!

There’s another serial killer haunting the streets of Miami. We all know what that means. It’s time to put either Trudy or Gina in harm’s way again.

Episode 5.7 “Asian Cut”

(Dir by James Contner, originally aired on January 13th, 1989)

Someone is murdering prostitutes and carving symbols into their skin. The seemingly friendly Prof. Halliwell (David Schramm) confirms that the symbols are Asian in origin. Crockett and Castillo suspect that the murderer might be a knife-obsessed Japanese gangster named Tegoro (Cary-Hiroyui Tagawa) but it turns out that they’re wrong. Gina and Trudy work undercover as escort and Trudy meets Carlos (Alfredo Alvarez Calderon), a man with a kink for being beaten. Carlos wants to introduce Trudy to a friend of his, someone who is something of an expert on torture and who learned the majority of his techniques while he was serving in the CIA during the Vietnam War….

Yep, the murderer is Prof. Halliwell!

This episode was thoroughly unpleasant. That’s not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to episodes about serial killers and David Schramm did a good job of switching from being goofy to deadly. However, in this case, it was hard not to think about the fact that, in five seasons, Gina and Trudy haven’t really gotten to do much other than pretend to be escorts and get threatened by serial killers. For once, Gina was the one providing support while Trudy was the one put in jeopardy but it still otherwise felt very, very familiar. Even the twist that the killer was a former CIA agent who specialized in torturing enemy combatants felt just a bit too predictable. (On Miami Vice, anyone who is former CIA and not named Castillo always turns out to be a murderer.) The torture scenes were so drawn out that they ultimately felt a bit gratuitous.

This episode ultimately just felt icky,

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 4.21 “Deliver Us From Evil”

Posted on September 22, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Caitlin makes a fateful return to Miami, an old enemy emerges from the shadows, and Crockett crosses a line that he never thought he would cross. Will he ever be able to come back?

Episode 4.21 “Deliver Us From Evil”

(Dir by George Mendeluk, originally aired on April 29th, 1989)

At the end of this week’s episode, Crockett executes a man in cold blood!

Whoa!

Now, I should note that the guy that Crockett killed was really, really bad. Frank Hackman (Guy Boyd) was a hitman who was previously on Death Row for killing one of Crockett’s former partners. Hackman, who was pretending to be born again and seeking redemption, tricked Crockett into “proving” his innocence and getting his conviction overturned. Only as Frank left the prison did he smirk at Crockett and reveal that all of the “new” evidence was faked. It was one of Miami Vice’s darkest episodes.

Frank went back to his old ways, committing crimes and killing families. Crockett made it his mission to take down Frank but, during a shootout with Frank’s gang, Frank’s wife was caught in the crossfire. Crockett blamed himself, even though the bullet that killed her came from Frank’s gun. Frank also blamed Crockett and, while Crockett was struggling with whether or not he wanted to remain a member of the Vice Squd, Frank plotted his revenge.

Caitlin Davies, Crockett’s wife, returned from her European tour. Unfortunately, her homecoming concert was abruptly ended when she was shot by a sniper. She died in Crockett’s arms, bringing to an end a marriage that never really made much sense to begin with.

Crockett spent a few days drinking on his boat and then rejoined the Vice Squad, determined to track down Frank. Castillo did that thing where he narrowed his eyes and looked vaguely concerned but he still allowed Crockett to work the case. After Crockett and Tubbs learned that Frank was living on a nearby island, Crockett confronted him alone.

“You wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man,” Frank said, smiling while lounging by the pool.

BANG!

Frank was wrong.

It was a powerful moment but one that was diminished by one final shot that showed Frank had been holding a gun in his hand when he was shot. From what I’ve been able to uncover online, this was apparently added at the insistence of the network, who did not want Crockett to become a cold-blooded killer. I doubt that would be an issue for the networks today.

Season 4 has been pretty uneven but this was a powerful episode. As it ended, it definitely seemed as if Crockett had crossed a line and that he would never again be the same. Who knows what that might mean for next week’s season finale?

We’ll find out!

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 3.9 “Baby Blues”

Posted on November 25, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, the Vice Squad investigates a baby broker!

Episode 3.9 “Baby Blues”

(Dir by Danial Attias, originally aired on November 21st, 1986)

In honor Miami Vice‘s violent nature (and in recognition of the fact that it’s the holidays and I’ve got a lot of things that I need to do), I’m going to review this week’s episode bullet-point style!

The episode starts in Colombia. Babies are being kidnapped from local villages. In some cases, they’re literally snatched from the arms of their mothers. The babies are taken to Miami where a sleazy lawyer named Howard Famiglia (Tommy Koenig) essentially sells them to wealthy families.
Maria Escobar (Patrice Martinez) illegally crosses the border to search for her son in Miami. She nearly dies in the attempt. When she and a planeload of babies are discovered on a Miami runway, law enforcement gets involved.
Castillo doesn’t think that the case is one that Vice should be investigating. Gina and Trudy set him straight.
It doesn’t take long for the Vice Squad to discover that Famiglia is a baby broker. One of his customers is played by a young Stanley Tucci. The customer is willing to testify against Famiglia.
Famiglia sends his henchmen out to intimidate and kill all of the witnesses.
Famiglia also kills his main hitman and then booby traps his apartment. When Crockett and Tubbs jump out of the exploding apartment, it looked like Tubbs leg caught on fire. “Wow,” I said, “that really looked real!”
It turns that it was real. Philip Michael Thomas’s stunt double was severely burned as a result.
Eventually, the Vice Squad is able to trick Famiglia into believing that Maria is being kept at a local hospital. Famiglia sets up a meeting for women looking to adopt. While the women watch an educational film, Famiglia crawls through a ventilation shaft and tries to enter Maria’s room.
SURPRISE! That’s not Maria in that hospital bed …. it’s Gina! The Vice Squad shoots Famglia dead, leaving his corpse awkwardly hanging out of the hospital room wall. For some reason, that sight really disturbed me.
Maria is reunited with her son but, upon realizing that he now has a life and a family in America, she decides to let him stay with his new parents. She is then deported back to Colombia, where she will probably be killed by the same people who stole her baby in the first place.
Overall, this episode suffered because the villain was miscast. Looking at the imdb, the majority of Tommy Koenig’s credits appear to have been comedic. He’s an actor who looks like he should be on a sketch comedy show and not a gritty crime drama. Even when Famiglia is crawling through an air duct with a gun, he just looks goofy. Plus, considering that he had a people working for him who were willing to murder, would Famiglia really have gone to the hospital himself?
Stanley Tucci and Tommy Koenig should have switched roles.
This episode gave Trudy, Gina, Switek, and Zito more to do than usual. That was good. This show often underused its supporting cast.
Miami Vice was often a cop show with a political subtext. In this case (and I’m just pointing it out, I’m not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing), the subtext was that America’s immigration system sucked, as Maria only had a limited amount of time to find her son before being deported. But then she decided to leave him in America rather than take him back to Colombia. Miami Vice was not just political. It was also usually kind of depressing.