Bill Raymond | 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!

I don’t even know how to describe this episode.

Episode 4.4 “The Big Thaw”

(Dir by Richard Compton, originally aired on October 23rd, 1987)

The Vice Squad raids a decrepit building, expecting to find drugs. Instead, they find a container that holds the frozen body of a dead reggae singer. Robillard Nevin died after eating a poisoned fish but his body was frozen so it could be thawed out once a cure had been found. Several different groups of people — including Nevin’s widow and, for some reason, Izzy — all want the body.

Wait …. what?

This is a Miami Vice episode? Miami Vice, as you may remember, is supposed to be a stylish and cynical show about two detective fighting a losing war against the Miami drug underworld. Miami Vice is the show that often ends with Crockett and Tubbs looking on in anger as they realize that all of their efforts have been for nothing. This is the show that often ends with a sympathetic character either getting shot or shooting someone else. This is the show in which there are no happy endings and every episode — at least in the past — seemed to conclude at the cost of Sonny Crockett’s soul ….

Well, you get my point.

What the Hell is this?

The fourth season of Miami Vice is off to an uneven start. That’s not a surprise. After four seasons, not every episode is going to be a winner. It happens to the best of shows. But, seriously, how did we go from Crockett and Tubbs driving in the middle of the night while Phil Collins sings In The Air Tonight to Crockett and Tubbs trying to protect a cryogenically frozen corpse? I guess the show was trying to keep things fresh by trying something new but this episode was just too ridiculous to work. Not even Tubbs bringing out his fake Caribbean accent could save this episode.

By the way, cryogenics and all that …. it doesn’t work! It’s waste of money! But, hey, whatever. Do what you want. It’s your life.

This week’s episode took me by surprise!

Episode 3.11 “Forgive Us Our Debts”

(Dir by Jan Eliasberg, originally aired on December 12th, 1986)

Frank Hackman (Guy Boyd) has a date with Florida’s electric chair. Even though he claims that he’s innocent of killing one of Sonny Crockett’s former partners, Hackman says that he’s guilty of killing others and, having become a Christian while on Death Row, he is prepared to pay the ultimate price. He even suggests that his execution should be televised.

At first, Sonny is all for Hackman being executed. But then, a priest calls the Vice Squad and tells them that one of his parishioners confessed to having evidence that could prove that Hackman was actually in Vegas when the murder occurred. Sonny and the Squad track down Gus Albierro (Val Bisoglio), an auto mechanic who is dying of cancer and who says that he’s telling the truth to clear his conscience. Not long after Gus talks to Crockett, Gus is executed in his garage.

Convinced that Hackman is innocent, Sonny and Tubbs have one day to find the other person who was with Gus and Hackman in Vegas. That man turns out to be in the witness protection agency and, at first, he refuses to talk. Then Crockett takes him outside and beats him up.

Long story short: After having had his head shaved for his date with the electric chair, Hackman’s life is saved and he leaves prison a free man….

Now, up until this point, I felt that this episode was just another rather heavy-handed diatribe against the death penalty. Miami Vice, as a show, always leaned towards the Left and this episode features two smarmy Florida politicians who are eager to prove how tough they are on crime. I thought the whole episode was a bit too obvious in its storytelling and I thought my review would focus on the hypocrisy of Miami Vice criticizing the death penalty when almost every episode has ended with the bad guys being taken down in a hail of bullets.

(On a personal note, I’m against the death penalty because I think there is too much of a risk of an innocent person being executed. But, still, I’m not a fan of heavy-handed storytelling, regardless of whether I agree with the larger point or not.)

But this episode had one final twist waiting up its sleeve. Hackman steps out of prison and sees Sonny waiting for him. Sonny is feeling pretty proud of himself. He saved an innocent man, right? Wrong! Hackman proceeds to tell Sonny that he actually did kill Sonny’s former partner and that Gus lied in return for Hackman’s friends sending money to his family. That guy in witness protection who, at first, refused to testify? He was working with Hackman, too.

“I won’t need this anymore,” Hackman says, yanking off the cross that was hanging out around his neck.

And that’s how the episode ends! The bad guys triumph and it’s pretty much all Sonny’s fault! This was the most cynical episode of Miami Vice yet. The ending totally took me by surprise and it made me realize that, rather than being a heavy-handed and polemical, this episode was actually extremely clever and perfectly put together. Just as Hackman fooled Sonny, Miami Vice fooled the viewer (in this case, me). This turned out to be an excellent episode and certainly the best of season 3 so far.

Because of the holidays, this is my last Miami Vice review of 2024. My reviews of Miami Vice will resume on January 6th, 2025!