Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 3.9 “Baby Blues”

Posted on November 25, 2024 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!

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.

Next week’s episode features Bill Paxton and Wesley Snipes! I’m looking forward to it!

Review: True Blood 6.2 “The Sun” (dir by Daniel Attias)

Posted on June 23, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

After last week’s anemic season premiere, I have to admit that I was a bit worried about the direction of season 6 of True Blood. I watched that episode and I thought to myself, “I don’t want to have to spend an entire season with Bill acting weird, Eric not having sex with Sookie, and Jason chasing around Rutger Hauer.”

What a difference a week can make!

Tonight’s episode was a return to form for True Blood. Tonight’s episode reminded me of what made me fall in love with this show in the first place. In short, tonight’s episode was True Blood the way I wanted it to be.

It helps that this episode featured a lot of Eric acting like Eric. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

First off, tonight’s biggest revelation was that, despite what he said last week, Rutger Hauer is not Warlow. Instead, he’s Sookie and Jason’s faerie grandfather and he’s specifically come to help Sookie defeat Warlow.

And I have to say that this is brilliant casting. We, as viewers, have been so conditioned to automatically view Rutger Hauer as a villain that it’s actually surprisingly refreshing to see him playing a good guy and Hauer seems to be having a lot of fun with the role.

Anyway, Grandpa explains to Sookie and Jason that Warlow is obsessed with the Stackhouse family, specifically because the Stackhouses are actual royalty (making Sookie into a literal faerie princess). However, Grandpa explains, Sookie can defeat Warlow by harnessing all of her light and literally going supernova. The only side effect is that Sookie can only do this once and she’ll no longer be a faerie after doing so. Sookie, who spent most of last season trying to deplete all of her power, immediately starts practicing harnessing her light.

And that’s probably a good idea because Warlow is already in Bon Temps.

Speaking of Sookie, before she meets her grandfather, she meets another faerie. This one is named Ben (Rob Kazinsky) and when Sookie comes across him, he’s lying on the ground after being attacked by vampires. Sookie nurses him back to health and it becomes obvious that the two of them are attracted to each other. I have to admit that I groaned a little when Ben showed up. It’s not that Rob Kazinsky isn’t cute, because he is. And it’s not that he and Anna Paquin don’t have a lot of chemistry because they do. However, Ben is not Eric. For that matter, he’s not even Bill.

Speaking of Bill, he began tonight by going into a catatonic state and he remained that way for most of the episode, despite the best efforts of Jessica to wake him up. At one point, Jessica even brought in a hilariously trashy prostitute named Veronica so that Bill could feed. Even in his catatonic state, Bill still ended up graphically drawing out every drop of blood from her body.

While catatonic, Bill has a vision where he stands in the middle of sun-drenched field and talks to Lillith. Lillith explains that Bill’s purpose is to save all the vampires from destruction. The scenes between Bill and Lillith were perfectly filmed and acted, with an obvious emphasis being put on the fact that the bright sun was effecting Bill and Lillith not at all. When Bill finally does wake up, he tells Jessica that he can now see the future.

And what is that future?

Every vampire in Bon Temps being herded into a stark, white room where, once the roof opens up, they are all burned to death by the sun.

Meanwhile, Eric has also taken it upon himself to try to prevent the future that Bill has seen. Eric sneaks into the Governor’s mansion, confronts the governor, and attempts to hypnotize him. The Governor (and have I mentioned how much I love Arliss Howard’s villainous performance) responds by laughing. It turns out that the Governor is wearing special contact lenses that make it impossible for him to be hypnotized.

After managing to escape the Governor’s armed guards, Eric tracks down the Governor’s daughter, Wilma. In a nicely gothic touch, Wilma looks out her bedroom window and sees Eric floating outside her window. Eric asks for permission to enter and she gives it.

And seriously, who wouldn’t?

I got so caught up with the vampires tonight that I nearly forgot that some pretty important things happened to Sam as well. I always feel bad for Sam because he literally cannot catch a break and tonight was not any different. First off, he found himself being harassed by Nicole, a political activist from L.A. who wants Sam to come out publicly as a shape shifter. (I have to admit that I have a sinking feeling that, with Luna dead, Nicole is going to become Sam’s new love interest. I’m not looking forward to this development because Nicole is kind of self-righteous and annoying.) Then, Sam ended up getting beaten up by Alcide, who has taken it upon himself to make sure that Emma is raised among the werewolves.

Seriously — bad Alcide!

I loved tonight’s episode. If last week’s premiere felt like True Blood fan fiction, The Sun felt like true True Blood. Hopefully, the rest of Season 6 will follow its example.

Random Thoughts and Observations:

Unofficial Scene Count: 53
That precredits sequence with Warlow appearing on the bridge was pretty effective, I thought.
Rutger Hauer deserves an Emmy for his delivery of the line “I am your fucking faerie grandfather.”
Alexander Skargard is so hot and sexy! Oh. My. God.
The sudden appearance of Patrick’s wife reminded me of how much I disliked last season’s Iraqi smoke monster subplot.
I’m sure that the writers of True Blood meant for the Governor to come across as some sort of right-wing boogeyman but, to be honest, he reminds me more of our current President.
I love the way Jason got so excited when he said, “That makes me a faerie prince!”
It’s interesting to note that both True Blood and the Walking Dead feature a villain called “The Governor.”
“They attacked the Chuck E. Cheese yesterday.”
“You’re not going to read me my rights?” “You don’t have no rights, vampire.” “Well, that’s not nice.”
The performers on True Blood never get enough credit. Tonight’s standout was Deborah Ann Woll. Jessica’s episode ending prayer is definitely the highlight of the season so far.

Review: True Blood S5E6 — “Hopeless”

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(SPOILERS BELOW)

I have to admit that Hopeless is not only the title of the latest episode of True Blood but it’s also the way I felt after watching the first 30 minutes. After last week’s exciting Michael Lehman-directed episode, Hopeless seemed to be moving a bit too slowly for its own good. However, once the show’s second half kicked in, I’m happy to say that the episode picked up the pace and it all ended with one of those wonderful (if, in this case, somewhat predictable) cliffhangers that we’ve all come to expect from True Blood.

At the end of last week’s episode, both Sam and Luna had been gunned down by a bunch of masked rednecks in a pickup truck and Emma had turned into an adorable wolf puppy and gone running into the woods. At the time, I predicted that Sam would live but Luna appeared to be dead. Well, tonight, I discovered that looks can be deceiving because Luna apparently isn’t dead. Now, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t want Luna to be dead but, at the same time, considering just how dead Luna looked at the end of last week, it was still somewhat shocking to see her being not only wheeled into the hospital but being totally conscious as well.

Anyway, with Luna recovering in the hospital and Emma having safely made it to her grandmother’s place, Sam volunteers to help Andy track down the masked men who shot them. Andy, at first, is reluctant to accept the help but Sam eventually convinces him and that’s probably a good thing because, as we all know, Andy is kind of a dumbass.

Sam and Andy’s investigation leads them to the same gun shop where, a few episodes earlier, Sookie had gone to purchase some tools to use to try to control the newly vampiric Tara. The same clerk that waited on Sookie is there to talk to Andy and, much like his last appearance, the actor playing the clerk goes totally over-the-top with his performance. Fortunately, he tries to pull a gun on Andy which gives Sam an excuse to shoot him with a crossbow and kill him off before we have to spend any more time listening to him.

As for the masked rednecks themselves, they don’t show up until the very end of the show, at which point they kill a vampire who happens to be draining Hoyt dry. Not realizing that Hoyt was a very willing victim, the rednecks proceed to “rescue” him by tossing him into their van. It was, at this point, that I noticed that one of the rednecks was wearing a Barack Obama mask.

Tonight’s other big plot dealt with — of course — the vampires.

At the end of last week’s episode, Bill, Eric, Alcide, and Sookie had finally found Russell and were preparing to take him in when Alcide was attacked by a werewolf. At the start of tonight’s episode, Alcide managed to rather easily defeat the two wolves and for that, I say “Yay!” because it gave the show an excuse to show us Alcide all shirtless and tough-looking. The Authority showed up at this point and took Russell into custody. Before Eric and Bill were returned to Authority HQ, they were ordered to erase the memories of Sookie and Alcide. While Eric erased Alcide’s memory (and took the time to tell him that he would, from now on, find Sookie physically repulsive), I got the feeling that Bill kinda faked it with Sookie.

(Regardless of whether Bill faked it or not, it took Sookie all of a few hours to not only fully remember everything about Russell and the Asylum but also to restore Alcide’s memory as well.)

Back at Authority HQ, Bill and Eric are hailed as heroes by Roman and the other members of the Commission. While Eric, being Eric, makes little effort to hide his contempt for the whole situation, Bill swears his loyalty to “mainstreaming” and, to be honest, goes a bit overboard while doing so.

Roman announces that he’s going to execute Russell that night and then grants Eric permission to speak with Nora. When Eric goes down to see Nora in her prison cell, Nora reacts to the news of Russell’s impending execution with a joyous smile. It soon becomes apparent why because, right as Roman attempts to administer the true death, Russell suddenly breaks free of his bonds and grabs him. Salome’s little smile as Russell moves in to kill Roman should erase any doubt as to who originally set Russell free.

At first, I assumed that show ended with Russell killing Roman but, as my BFF Evelyn pointed out to me a few minutes ago, we never actually saw Roman die. We saw some blood splattering on Russell and we saw Roman’s face twisting in apparent agony but we didn’t actually see him die. Hopefully, Roman will survive this attack because, seriously, Chris Meloni’s performance has simply been too good and too strong for him to be so easily dispatched.

As for the rest of what happened on tonight episode, Pam broke up Jessica’s fight with Tara and Hoyt was all excited because he thought that meant that Jessica actually did love him. When Jessica let him know that wasn’t the case, Hoyt replied by going out and finding that previously mentioned vampire to suck his blood.

(Seriously, girls, haven’t we all had a Hoyt in our life at some point?)

Meanwhile, Terry returned to Bon Temps and told Arlene that he couldn’t be near her because he’s got that fire spirit chasing after him.

Alcide decided that he wanted to be packmaster, after all.

And, finally, Jason told Sookie about the faerie nightclub and that their parents were killed by a vampire. Afterward, they went to the club themselves and it was there that Hadley not only confirmed Jason’s story but also explained that the vampire killed their parents specifically because it was attracted to the smell of Sookie’s blood.

Needless to say, Sookie didn’t take that news well.

A Few Random Thoughts and Observations:

Tonight’s unofficial scene count: 38.
Tonight’s episode moved a little bit too slowly for me. As usual, the action picked up during the final 15 minutes and the show ended with a pretty exciting cliffhanger.
Dale Dickey has been one of my favorite character actresses ever since I first saw Winter’s Bone and I’m always happy to see her bring her own distinct brand of Southern gothic to True Blood.
I was going to comment on the fact that Sam seemed to recover from being shot pretty quickly but maybe that has something to do with him being a shifter. That’s my usual excuse whenever something happens on True Blood that doesn’t ring true to me: “Well, they’re all supernatural.”
I’m usually not a huge fan of werewolf politics but I did enjoy it when Alcide and the packmaster had their little redneck confrontation. As always happens whenever I see rough but confident men trying to intimidate each other, my inner country girl squealed a little.
I also have to admit that I laughed out loud at the sight of Roman in his blue polo shirt. There’s just something oddly appropriate about a self-important bully like Roman wearing a polo shirt that is just a tad too small.
I hope that someday some guy says to me, “You’re way too pretty to not be stupid,” just so I can reply, “What’s your excuse?”