Anthony Barrile | Through the Shattered Lens

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, the Vice Squad learns that a man has to know his limitations.

Episode 5.15 “Over The Line”

(Dir by Russ Mayberry, originally aired on April 28th, 1989)

“All of our heroes are dead.”

That line was delivered in 1973’s Magnum Force, by a motorcycle cop-turned-vigilante who justified his murderous actions by claiming that he was a part of the first generation without heroes. That line could have just as easily been delivered by the cops in this episode of Miami Vice.

Crockett and Tubbs are recruited by Walter Stevens (Thomas Arana), a cop-turned-vigilante who explains to them that, once they join his organization, they can never leave. Of course, Crockett and Tubbs are only pretending to be vigilantes so that they can take down both the drug dealers and Walter’s organization. They do this despite the fact that, in many ways, Crockett agrees with Walter. But when Walter’s methods lead to three good cops getting killed, Crockett realizes that Walter has to be stopped. Even worse, he discovers that Walter is funding his operation by selling the cocaine that he confiscates from the dealers.

When Crockett pulls his gun on Walter and tells him to surrender, Walter appears to be doing so. Walter warns Crockett that there’s a lot more to the organization than Crockett realizes. Suddenly, a police captain named Robert Highsmith (Robert Fields) pops up and shoots Walter. Crockett says that Walter was surrendering. Highsmith insists that he saved Crockett’s life.

With the drug dealers and the bad cops taken down, Highsmith takes all the credit. Highsmith is not only a police captain but he’s also a candidate for Dade County Supervisor. At a televised “meet-the-candidate” forum, Highsmith brags about how he personally is helping to clean up the city. Crockett watches and says, “Whatever it takes, right?”

Agck!

Seriously, this episode is cynical even by the standards of Miami Vice. Legitimate cops like Crockett and Tubbs can’t do their job because of budget cuts. The vigilante cops are taking down the drug dealers but they’re also stealing and selling cocaine so they’re not actually doing anything to stop the flow of drugs into Miami. Walter becomes the first Miami Vice bad guy to both show remorse and to willingly surrender but he’s still gunned down by Captain Highsmith who, at the end of the episode, appears poised to be elected to political office. Miami Vice was often critical of the War on Drugs. This episode showed why the war couldn’t be won, despite the best efforts of soldiers like Crockett, Tubbs, and Castillo. Men like Highsmith had to appear to be winning the war so that they could accumulate more power but if they actually did win the war, they would no longer be given carte blanche to do whatever they wanted.

This was a dark but effective episode. Crockett’s hair has never been longer and he’s never appeared more defeated.

Made in 1985 for CBS, Ace Hits The Big Time is a seriously strange little film.

It tells the story of Horace Hobart (Rob Stone, a likable actor), a 16 year-old kid from New Jersey who has just transferred to a new high school in New York. He’s paranoid about going to his new school because it’s supposedly populated by gang members. The school is so notorious for gang activity that the members of the gang even make an appearance on the front page of the paper of record, The New York Freaking Times! Looking at the newspaper makes Horace Hobart so paranoid that he has musical fantasies in which the members of a gang known as the Purple Falcons surround him, start singing, and then beat him up while doing an interpretive dance.

Horace does eventually find the courage to go to his new high school but he insists on calling himself “Ace,” he wears a jacket with a fearsome dragon embroidered on the back of it, and he wears an eye patch because he’s got …. ewwww …. pink eye. (Remember when Bob Costas got pink eye at the Olympics and traumatized thousands of viewers by insisting on going on the air every night and talking about snowboarding while struggling to keep his eye from popping out of its socket? Those were crazy times!) Ace looks so tough that the real Purple Falcons mistake him for being an associate of a notorious New Jersey gang (no, not the Sopranos) and they recruit him to be a member of their gang. Ace is so convincing as a tough guy that a film crew decides to use him and his friends as extras in a movie! (Interestingly, the director is really involved in picking and working with the extras. There’ll be no second unit crap for Ace and the Purple Falcons!) Unfortunately, another gang insists on trying to make the Purple Falcons look bad. Fortunately, Ace is able to defuse the tension by baking a cake. What?

This is like the dorkiest version of West Side Story ever made and I can’t really figure out what the message is supposed to be. On the one hand, Ace is totally paranoid about any sort of gang violence and goes out of his way to try to prevent a gang war. On the other hand, even before Ace shows up and starts quoting John Lennon, neither one of the show’s gangs are particularly violent or even intimidating. The Purple Falcons are pretty much impossible to take seriously because they’re called “the Purple Falcons.” (They all wear purple, as well. I guess some other gang had already claimed all the cool falcon colors.) They really don’t do any sort of “gang” stuff. Instead, they eat a lot of pizza and appear in a movie. That sounds like a pretty good deal, actually. With its mix of dorky humor, random dance numbers, and “tough” gang talk, this is one of those old time capsules that simply has to be seen to be believed.

And here it is!