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, Miami Vice takes an unwelcome detour.

Episode 4.2 “Amen …. Send Money”

(Dir by James Quinn, originally aired on October 2nd, 1987)

This was pretty dumb.

Tubbs, working undercover, busts Leona Proverb (Anita Morris), who just happens to be the wife of Billy Bob Proverb (Brian Dennehy).  Billy Bob is a television preacher who continually asks his followers to send him cash so he can live the lifestyle that he says God wants him to live.  On paper, this sounds like a great role for Brian Dennehy but this episode’s script lets him (and, for that matter, everyone else in the cast) down.  Somehow, the fact that the guy is named Billy Bob Proverb is the least heavy-handed aspect of this episode.

Faye Nell (Jo Anderson), who is one of Billy Bob’s followers, calls Tubbs to the studio and says she has information on what the Proverbs are doing.  As soon as Tubbs shows up, Faye tosses herself on him, rips her dress, and starts to yell, “Rape!”  Tubbs finds himself being investigated by Internal Affairs while Faye claims that God told her to call Tubbs down to the studio and she even passes a lie detector test.

“I’m being set up by a preacher!” an angered Tubbs says but it turns out that Billy Bob Proverb is not the one behind all of Tubbs’s problems.  In fact, Billy Bob is actually sincere, in his own strange way.  Instead, the villain turns out to be another television preacher, Mason Mather (James Tolkan).  Mather has the ability to make himself go into a coma, which makes it difficult to arrest him.

Before I started watching this season, I read online that season 4 featured some of Miami Vice‘s worst episodes.  Amen …. Send Money feels almost like a parody of Miami Vice.  The episode itself is meant to be largely comedic and perhaps if this episode had centered on Switek and Zito instead of Crockett and Tubbs, it would have worked.  Unfortunately, the show killed off Zito last season so instead, it’s Crockett and Tubbs making odd jokes and rolling their eyes in shock.  The thing is, Miami Vice has — up until this episode — been a show about ruthless dealers and the futility of the War on the Drugs.  The thing that set Miami Vice apart from other 80s cop shows was that it was thematically dark, the endings were frequently unhappy, and Crockett and Tubbs were always the epitome of cool, no matter what happened.  This episode features cartoonish villains and a silly plot and both Crockett and Tubbs come across as being a little …. well, dorky.

(On the plus side, the show does continue its tradition of featuring future stars by giving Ben Stiller a small role as a con artist.)

Oh well.  Not every episode can be a great one.  Hopefully, next week will be an improvement.