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 is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, we learn the cost of working Vice.

Episode 2.4 “Out Where The Buses Don’t Run”

(Dir by Jim Johnston, originally aired on October 18th, 1985)

This is it.  This is the episode that is regularly cited as being one of the best, if not the best, episodes that Miami Vice ever aired.  Out Where The Buses Don’t Run takes a look at the psychological costs of spending one’s life obsessing on crime and justice.  What starts out as a comedy turns into the bleakest episode of the show so far.

Things get off to a great start, with Crockett and Tubbs pursuing a drug dealer on the beach.  While The Who’s Baba O’Riley plays on the soundtrack, the dealer roller skates down a sidewalk and a preacher (played by Little Richard) sends his young congregation out to collect money.  As Crockett and Tubbs wait for their chance to arrest the dealer, someone watches them from a nearby window and takes pictures.  Crockett asks Tubbs if he ever gets the feeling that he’s being watched.

The man taking the pictures turns out to be Hank Weldon (Bruce McGill), a former Vice cop who quit the force six years prior when a case that he had spent three years making fell apart and a drug lord was set free on a technicality.  The drug lord vanished after the case against him was thrown out and it’s assumed that he was murdered by his associates.  Hank, however, insists that the drug lord is still alive and he’s returned to Miami.  He wants Crockett and Tubbs to help him finally catch the criminal that evaded him all those years before.

A quick check with Weldon’s former partner, Marty Lang (David Strathairn), reveals that Weldon left the force after he had a nervous breakdown and he’s spent the past few years in a mental facility.  The loud and flamboyant Weldon is obviously still unstable but Crockett and Tubbs cannot shake the feeling that he might know what he’s talking about.

And, as is revealed at this end of this episode, they’re right …. kind of.  Weldon does know where the missing drug lord is.  The drug lord is walled up in an abandoned building.  He’s been there since 1979.  At the end of episode, with Tubbs, Crockett, Castillo, and Lang watching, Weldon tears down the wall and reveals the decayed skeleton of the drug lord.  Weldon announces that he murdered him and walled him up.  Lang then reveals that he helped.

“He was my partner,” Lang says, “Understand?”

Crockett understands and the audience understands as well.  When Weldon’s obsession drove him crazy, Lang was the only one to whom he could turn.  And Lang, being his partner, was the only one who understood how he felt.  Lang may have been a cop but his number one loyalty was to his partner, just as Crockett’s number one loyalty will always be to Tubbs.

As played by Bruce McGill, Hank Weldon goes from being a cheerful eccentric to a bitter and paranoid lunatic to, finally, a man who can no longer stand to hide what he’s done.  It’s an excellent performance that keeps the audience guessing.  He may be a murderer and he’s obviously still unstable but your heart can’t help but break for him.  The combination of Jim Johnston’s moody direction, a perfect collection of songs on the soundtrack, and the performances of Bruce McGill and David Strathairn really do come together to make this an excellent episode.  In the end, it’s hard not to feel that Crockett and Tubbs are both one step away from becoming Weldon and Lang themselves.