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, things get weird.

Episode 2.8 “Tale of the Goat”

(Dir by Michael O’Herlihy, originally aired on November 15th, 1985)

It’s hard to know where to begin with this one.

Legba (Clarence Williams III) is a drug lord that Sonny has been trying to take down for three years.  While hiding out in Haiti, Legba reportedly dies.  When his body is flown back to Miami, Crockett and Tubbs are waiting in the airport so that Crockett can snap a picture of Legba in his casket.  Legba does indeed appear to be dead.  But, at his voodoo-themed funeral, a man on a motorcycle riddles the casket with bullets.  When Crockett and Tubbs (who were staking out the ceremony) open up the casket, they discover only a dead goat.

“Zombie!” a priest exclaims.

Legba has come back, though not as a member of the undead.  Instead, while in Haiti, he ingested a toxin that put him in a 48-hour coma.  Unlike a lot of people who take the toxin, Legba survives.  However, when he is revived, he has suffered brain damage and is now walking and talking slowly.  That doesn’t stop Legba from getting his old gang back together (including a dwarf who carries a pickaxe) and going after everyone who he feels has betrayed him.  This includes his former lieutenant (Mykelti Williamson) and an obnoxious money launderer (Ray Sharkey) who owns a used car lot.

Tubbs doesn’t believe in voodoo, despite Crockett warning him of the dangers.  Tubbs is more interested in Marie (Denise Thompson), Legba’s ex-girlfriend.  Looking to keep Marie safe from Legba, Tubbs attempts to infiltrate a voodoo ceremony.  You might think this would give Tubbs the perfect excuse to trot out the fake Caribbean accent that he occasionally used during the first season but instead, Tubbs is captured before he can even utter a word.  He’s injected with the toxin and spends 48 hours in a coma, haunted by visions of Legba staring at him!

Eventually, Tubbs does come out of his coma and, amazingly, it takes him about five minutes to fully recover.  The episode ends with another raid on a yacht.  This time, Tubbs manages to kill the villain, shooting him in the back!  In Tubbs’s defense, he was still having visions and he thought Legba was facing him.  Legba dies and Marie is found in a coma but alive.

This was a weird episode, one that had enough plot for a two-parter.  As it is, the story felt rather rushed.  No sooner had Mykleti Williamson and Ray Sharkey made their appearances as criminals then Legba was doing away with them.  No sooner had Marie stepped onto Crockett’s boat then she was being kidnapped by Legba’s men.  No sooner had Tubbs decided to infiltrate Legba’s cult then he was getting injected with the voodoo toxin.  And no sooner had Tubbs woken up from his coma then he was preparing to raid the yacht.  Add to that, Clarence Williams III gave a performance that was without a hint of subtlety, speaking in accent that was impossible to describe.  This wasn’t really a good episode but it was so weird that it was undeniably entertaining.

Next week, Dean Stockwell appears as an old friend of Castillo’s!  Hopefully, he won’t be a voodoo priest.