Edgar Allan Poe IV | 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!

Retro television reviews returns with Miami Vice!

Episode 5.9 “Fruit of the Poisoned Tree”

(Dir by Michelle Manning, originally aired on February 3rd, 1989)

Crockett and Tubbs are trying to take down a drug dealer named Enriquez (Jeffrey Meek) but every time that they think they’ve got the guy, his shady lawyer, Sam Boyle (Stephen McHattie), is able to use a technicality to get the case tossed. Even sending Gina in undercover backfires as Gina’s cover gets blown and a bomb meant for her kills an innocent 13 year-old instead.

Crockett thinks that Sam and his associate, Lisa Madsen (Amanda Plummer), have evidence that could put Enriquez away. Crockett puts pressure on Lisa to become a confidential informant but Lisa is devoted to Sam. Lisa’s father was a crusading anti-drug prosecutor who was stabbed to death and Sam has promised that he will do everything within his power to prove that her father was actually assassinated by a drug cartel.

Of course, there’s some things that Lisa doesn’t know. Sam is heavily involved in the drug trade himself and he’s currently in debt to gangster Frank Romano (Tony Sirico, bringing some nicely realistic menace to his role). Sam plots to double cross Enriquez to get the drugs necessary to pay off Frank. Plus, it also turns out that Sam is the one who had Lisa’s father killed.

When Lisa (and hey, that’s my name!) finds out the truth, she uses her legal training to seek her own revenge. Enriquez has been arrested due to evidence that Lisa gave Crockett. But when Lisa reveals herself to have been Crockett’s informant, the case is tossed because Lisa violated attorney/client privilege. This frees up Enriquez to kill Sam right before Sam gets onto a private plane that would have taken him to freedom. The episode ends with Enriquez getting arrested yet again and Lisa staring down at Sam’s dead body.

This was a pretty good episode, especially considering that it aired during the final season. It feels like a throwback to the first two seasons, where the morality was always ambiguous and pretty much no one got a happy ending. Lisa may have gotten revenge for the killing of her father but she did it by arranging the murder of a man who she had spent years worshipping. The Vice Squad takes down a drug dealer but not before an innocent boy is murdered. The only reason that they’re going to a conviction this time is because they actually witnesses Enriquez killing Sam Boyle. Otherwise, the case probably would have gotten thrown out again.

Miami Vice was always at its strongest when it examined futility of the war on drugs. There’s a lot of money to found in the drug trade and there’s always someone willing to step up and replace anyone who the Vice Squad actually manages to take down. This episode may end with Enriquez defeated but there’s no doubt that someone else will step into his shoes.

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing Homicide: Life On The Street, which aired from 1993 to 1999, on NBC! It can be viewed on Peacock.

This week, secrets are uncovered and trust is betrayed.

Episode 3.11 “Cradle to Grave”

(Dir by Myles Connell, originally aired on January 13th, 1995)

Police Commissioner James Harris (Al Freeman, Jr.) gives Pembleton a special assignment. A congressman (Dick Stillwell) claims to have been temporarily abducted by a man in a van but he also says that he doesn’t want to press charges. Both Harris and Pembleton suspect that the Congressman is lying and that he filed a false police report, which is itself a crime. Pembleton’s investigation leads to the discovery that the abduction story was actually the congressman’s attempt to cover-up a quarrel between him and his lover (Christopher Glenn Wilson). Pembleton goes to the congressman and offers to drop the investigation into the abduction so that the congressman’s personal life will not be exposed. The congressman agrees.

Unfortunately, news of the false police report still gets out and Pembleton is sold out by Harris, who claims that he never gave Pembleton permission to drop the investigation, even though Harris made it clear that he wanted the problem to go away. Outraged over being sold out by his boss and also by Giardello’s refusal to back him up (Giardello is upset that Pembleton lied to him about the investigation), Pembleton turns in his badge and quits the force.

Meanwhile, Lewis and Much investigate the murder of a biker. What they discover is that the biker sacrificed his own life after it was discovered that his wife was an FBI informant. In order to keep the gang from going after his daughter, the victim agreed to be killed in retribution.

And finally, Felton and Howard try to investigate a murder but …. where’s the body!? It turns out that the body is on the move. First, it’s accidentally sent to the hospital before Felton and Howard can get a look at it. Then, it’s returned to the crime scene while Felton and Howard are heading to the morgue. Apparently, this was based on a true story and I can believe it. There’s no incompetence like bureaucratic incompetence.

This was not a bad episode. Andre Braugher did a great job of capturing Pembleton’s pain at being betrayed by his mentor, Commission Harris. Even the biker stuff was well-handled, with Timothy Wheeler giving a strong performance as the club’s “warlord.” The biker stuff had an interesting subplot, with one of the bikers revealing himself to be an undercover FBI agent trying to make a RICO case. As with the case involving the congressman, it helped to create a definite atmosphere of mistrust that ran through the entire episode. Whether it was the FBI or the congressman or just the EMTs, no one could be trusted and no one knew what they were doing.

It’s a good episode. I hope Pembleton reconsiders quitting. The city needs him.