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!

Things get weird this week.

Episode 2.13 “Definitely Miami”

(Dir by Rob Cohen, originally aired on January 10th, 1986)

This week’s episode of Miami Vice is all about heat.

Seriously, it literally starts with a shot of a solar flares erupting off the surface of the sun.  The camera then pulls away, letting us see what the sun looks like a cloudless blue sky.  Finally, we find ourselves in Miami, where the sky is clear and a heat wave is raging.  The camera focuses on the beads of sweat forming on skin.  Every pastel shirt is stained with sweat and everyone is wearing sunglasses.  When a drug dealer drives out to a quarry to meet connection, the heat seems to radiate out of the screen.  When he’s shot and killed by Charlie Basset (Ted Nugent — yes, the musician and gun enthusiast), the dust that rises up looks like smoke rising from a burning planet.

Sonny and Rico are working undercover as Burnett and Cooper, hanging out at a hotel pool and complaining about the heat.  Their target is Sergio Clemente (Roger Pretto) but Sonny is actually more interested in Callie (Arielle Dombasle), a beautiful blonde who he spots laying by the pool.  Callie sees Sonny watching her and brings him a drink.  Sonny introduces himself as Sonny Burnett.

Clemente is willing to turn himself in but only if he can see his sister, Maria (Kamala Lopez), and know that she’s still alive.  Maria testified against her brother at a trial and is currently in the witness protecting program.  Joe Dalva (Albert Hall), an arrogant Department of Justice official, is willing to bring Maria to Clemente, despite the fact that Maria indicates that Clemente used to sexually abuse her.  Castillo thinks that it’s a terrible idea and tries to use a decoy.  In the end, the government orders Castillo to do what Dalva wants.  Castillo stands in a corner and stares down at the ground, which viewers of the show know is something Castillo does whenever he knows just how badly things are going to turn out.  When the meeting finally happens, Tubbs, Castillo, and Davla can only watch as Maria pulls a knife and stabs her brother to death.

Sonny is not there to see Clemente die.  Callie has told him that her husband is physically abusive and she wants Sonny — as Burnett — to meet him in a quarry, make a drug deal with him, and then kill him.  Sonny suspects that he’s being set up and he’s right.  Callie’s husband is Charlie and he only hits her when she tells him to.  Callie seduces drug dealers and then Charlie kills them.  Sonny, however, is smart enough to bring Zito with him to the quarry.  During a shoot out, Charlie ends up dead.  While the police dig up the quarry and find body after body, Sonny goes to the beach so that he can arrest Callie.  When Sonny approaches Callie, she’s making a sand castle that looks exactly like the quarry.  At first, Callie thinks that Sonny is Charlie but then she forces herself to smile when she sees that Charlie is dead.  She assumes Sonny will be her new partner.  Instead, Sonny calls in a police helicopter and Callie is taken into custody by two cops.  Callie flirts with one of the cops while she’s being led to the helicopter.

And the sun continues to burn in the sky….

This was an odd episode, one that put far more emphasis on vivid and sometimes surreal imagery than it did on telling a coherent story.  That’s not a complaint, of course.  This episode had a dream-like intensity to it that I really appreciated.  It was weird but entertaining, with the grinning Ted Nugent popping up like a gleefully evil goblin.  Sonny is targeted because Callie thinks that he’s a drug dealer when he’s actually a cop.  The idea of Sonny being able to maintain his undercover identity despite having personally arrested or killed a countless number of Miami drug dealers has always been one of the stranger elements of Miami Vice.  This episode, though, it makes a strange sense that Sonny could be mistaken for a drug dealer despite always acting like a cop.  That’s definitely Miami.