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 bleak.

Episode 2.9 “Bought For Paid For”

(Dir by John Nicolella, originally aired on November 29th, 1985)

This is a dark episode.

It opens with Gina’s friend, a Haitian immigrant named Odette (Lynn Whitfield), being attacked and raped in Gina’s apartment.  The rapist is easily identified as Nico Arroyo (Joaquim de Almeida), the sociopathic son of a Bolivian general (Tomas Milian) who has been exiled to Miami after a failed coup attempt.  Odette used to work as a maid in the general’s Art Deco mansion and Nico is obsessed with her.

Gina is able to convince Odette to testify against Nico but then the general brings Odette’s mother to America and offers her a good deal of money in return for Odette agreeing to testify that the encounter with Nico was consensual.  Because her family is poor and desperately needs the money, Odette agrees.  With the charges dropped,  Nico goes to Odette’s home and kills her.

Gina goes to the general’s mansion and confronts Nico, knowing that it will lead to him trying to attack her in her apartment.  When Nico shows up, he’s carrying a switchblade but he drops it as soon as he sees that Gina has a gun.  Gina shoots him dead.

Watching this show, one gets the feeling that being a supporting player on Miami Vice could be a thankless task.  Switek, Zito, Trudy, and Gina are in every episode but they rarely get to do much.  This week Gina gets to have a moment and Saundra Santiago makes the most of it.  This episode exists in the shadow of the first season’s Give A Little, Take A Little, in which Gina was raped by Burt Young and, at the end of the episode, shot him dead as well.  At one point, when Sonny is arguing that Gina needs to accept that Odette is not going to press charges against Nico, Gina says that he knows why she can’t do that.  Later, after Odette dies, Gina fears that, because of her own experience, she may have pushed Odette too hard.  In the end, Gina shoots and kills an unarmed man, just as she did in Give A Little, Take A Little.  It’s a ruthless move but both of the men were scum who totally deserved it.  It’s hard not to appreciate the idea of Gina serving as Miami’s version of Ms. 45.

As I said at the start of this review, this is a dark episode.  Nico’s father committed war crimes in Bolivia but now he’s remade himself as a respectable member of Miami society.  Nico and his father live in a fabulous mansion and Nico spends his day lounging by the pool.  Meanwhile, Odette struggles day-to-day and is essentially sold out by her own mother.  (One of the things that gives Nico away as the rapist is the fact that Sonny recognizes the smell of his extremely expensive — and apparently rather pungent — cologne on Odette’s clothes.)  Nico feels that he can do whatever he wants to Odette because he’s rich and  she’s “bought and paid for.”  The system fails and Gina is forced to put her life at risk to get some sort of justice for Odette.  This is Miami Vice at its bleakest.  The world under all of the glitz and glamour is a dark one.

There is one funny moment though.  Gina and Sonny go out to a club with Tubbs and Odette.  Sonny watches Tubbs dance with Odette and he starts laughing.  And he simply can’t stop.  It feels like such a spontaneous moment that I have to wonder if it was scripted or if Don Johnson really did think Philip Michael Thomas was just a terrible dancer.

Next week, a figure from Crockett’s past resurfaces in Miami.  Maybe Castillo can give him so advice on how to deal with that.