Gy Mirano | 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!

This week, the Miracle Man arrives in Miami!

Episode 5.19 “Miracle Man”

(Dir by Alan Myerson, originally aired on June 21st, 1989)

Who is the Miracle Man?

The Miracle Man (played by Jose Perez) is an overweight, middle-aged man who sometimes wears an eye mask and a t-shirt with a big M on it. He rallies the good people of Miami to take back their neighborhoods from the drug dealers. He thwarts drug deals, even the ones that are actually a part of an undercover operation. He’s something of a pest. The cops wants to stop him. The criminals want to kill him. A news reporter (Zach Grenier) wants to make him a star.

In real life, he’s actually Gregory Esteban and he is Izzy’s cousin. A former junkie, he blames himself for the overdose death of his daughter and he’s now determined to launch a one-man war against crime. He’s also bipolar and running low on his meds, which makes him unpredictable. Switek and Tubbs eventually catch the Miracle Man but he still manages to escape from the safehouse. His actions lead to the death of this week’s drug dealers but they also lead to him getting killed as well. That’s not really a surprise. Guest stars almost always died on Miami Vice.

This episode didn’t work for me. The Miracle Man character was too over-the-top to be taken seriously and, as a result, his story and his death didn’t have the emotional impact that it should have. As well, the villains were forgettable and generic. Considering how surreal Miami Vice could be, one would be justified in expecting this episode to be much more stylized than it was. Unfortunately, it was just dull. The Miracle Man could not save it.

Don Johnson is only in this episode for the first two minutes. Edward James Olmos isn’t in it at all. (Crockett and Castillo are described as being absent to prepare for a trial.) The whole episode feels like filler. I can kind of understand why it wasn’t aired during season 5’s original run.

Sorry, Miracle Man.

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!