Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 2.14 “Yankee Dollar”

Posted on May 13, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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, Sonny’s latest girlfriend gets involved in the drug trade.

Episode 2.14 “Yankee Dollar”

(Dir by Aaron Lipstadt, originally aired on January 17th, 1986)

It’s another night in Miami. Sonny Crockett is looking forward to driving out to the airport and picking up his latest girlfriend, a flight attendant named Sarah (Audrey Matson). For two years, Sarah has been working the Miami to Bogota to Paris and back route. She doesn’t make a lot of money but, as is typical for this show, she lives in a small but very nicely furnished house.

Unfortunately, Sarah dies shortly after Sonny picks her up. She goes into cardiac arrest, the result of a balloon of cocaine bursting inside of her. It turns out that Sarah was working as a drug mule, all so she could make a quick five grand and buy a used BMW.

Seriously, what are the chances that Sonny Crockett’s girlfriend would turn out to be a drug smuggler? Maybe she thought she was dating Sonny Burnett. Or maybe, like so many others on this show, she allowed her desire for the finer things in life — like a BMW — to lead her astray. This is one of the major themes of Miami Vice. In a society where conspicuous consumption rules, people will do anything to appear richer than they actually are.

When Sonny and Rico arrest Sarah’s brother, Tim (Clayton Rohner), they discover that he works for a wealthy businessman named Charlie Glide (Ned Eisenberg). Everyone knows that Charlie Glide (a great name, by the way) is involved in the drug trade but no one has ever been able to pin anything on him. In the past, Charlie avoided cocaine but he’s now looking to branch out. Sonny and Rico go undercover to try to bring Charlie down.

Of course, it doesn’t work. Charlie is smart enough to figure out that Sonny and Rico are trying to set him up. Even after Crockett and Tubbs drag him down to the police station and Charlie makes a deal for immunity in return for setting up two other drug dealers (Anne Carlisle and Pepe Serna), he still tries to double cross the cops. And even though the double cross doesn’t quite work, Charlie remains smug in his knowledge that he has immunity.

Except, of course, he doesn’t have immunity from all crimes. Earlier in the episode, Charlie’s executive assistant, Max Rogo (Austin Pendleton), used Charlie’s gun to execute Tim. Even though Crockett and Tubbs know that Max is the one who pulled the trigger and that Max is the one who decided to kill Tim, they still arrest Charlie for the murder. (Max was apparently killed in an earlier shootout so it’s not like he’s around to tell the truth.) “You changed the rules!” Charlie shouts as he’s dragged away.

This episode is Miami Vice at its most cynical. Crockett and Tubbs can’t get Charlie for the crime he committed so, instead, they set him up for a crime he didn’t commit. They did change the rules in that they decided they no longer have to follow them. The episode is full of characters so desperate for money that they’ll do just about anything, even smuggling a lethal drug in their body. Crockett can only watch helplessly as Sarah dies and, even as Charlie is taken away, there’s never any doubt that he’ll be replaced by someone else, the drug trade will continue, and more people will die just because they wanted to be able to afford a few extra things. Crockett and Tubbs are fighting a war that can never be won. Whatever victories they get ultimately feel hollow. Arresting Charlie won’t bring Sarah back and it won’t stop more innocent people from dying. Ned Eisenberg was wonderfully smug as Charlie Glide and Austin Pendleton was appropriately creepy as the always-smiling Max Rogo. This was a good episode, one that challenged the traditional cop show narrative. How long can one fight a losing war?

Shattered Politics #57: Canadian Bacon (dir by Michael Moore)

Posted on February 1, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I have mixed feelings about the 1995 films Canadian Bacon.

On the one hand, Canadian Bacon is the only non-documentary to have been directed by Michael Moore. And I’m just going to admit right now that I don’t care much for Michael Moore. I think he’s fake. I think he’s the epitome of the type of limousine liberal who exclusively preaches to the converted and who, when all is said and done, does more harm to his causes than good. Just because he doesn’t shave, dresses like a slob, and apparently has never been to a gym, that doesn’t change the fact that he’s worth $50 million dollars. Just because he may claim to be for the workers, that doesn’t keep him from notoriously overworking and underpaying his own employees. Just because he may make films critical of capitalism, that certainly hasn’t stopped him from investing millions in the very same companies that he claims to oppose. And, quite frankly, it’s hard for me to take seriously a man who rails against income inequality when that man happens to own 9 mansions, none of which are exactly housing the homeless right now.

On the other hand, I love Canada! Canada has produced some of my favorite actors. It’s the country that created Degrassi. It’s the home of Lindsay Dianne and the Becoming A Bolder Being blog! Seriously, how can you not love Canada?

In fact, if a war ever broke out between American and Canada, I’m not sure who I’d support. Then again, hopefully Texas will have seceded from the U.S.A. before that happens. I’m keeping fingers crossed about that. Hopefully, once we have seceded, our first action will be to declare war on Vermont. (Not the rest of America, though. Just Vermont.)

The plot of Canadian Bacon is that the President of the United States (Alan Alda) is suffering from low approval ratings so he decides that America needs to find a new country to be enemies with. Mind you, the President doesn’t necessarily want to go to war. Instead, he just wants to have an enemy that he can always be on the verge of going to war with. After a riot breaks out at a hockey game, the President’s advisors realize that Canada would be the perfect enemy!

(And, while this is played for laughs, there actually is a historical precedent here. The War of 1812 was basically a result of America’s desire to conquer Canada.)

Anyway, American airwaves are soon full of anti-Canada propaganda and, since Michael Moore thinks everyone in America is an idiot except for him, gun-toting rednecks are soon preparing to do whatever it takes to defend America. A patriotic sheriff named Boomer (John Candy) decides to invade Canada on his own. Needless to say, things get even more complicated from there and soon a crazy weapons manufacturer (G.D. Spradlin) is plotting to launch a missile attack on Russia and … oh, who cares?

When Canadian Bacon tries to satirize politics and blind patriotism, it falls flat. Michael Moore has somehow earned a reputation for being a satirist but, if you actually look at his work, it quickly becomes apparent that he really doesn’t have much of a sense of humor. The humor in his documentaries is pretty much based on Moore saying, “Look how stupid everyone is except for me!” Since the people who watch Michael Moore documentaries are usually people who already agree with Michael Moore, they naturally find that to be hilarious because they already think anyone who disagrees with them is a joke. However, that doesn’t mean that Moore himself is a comic genius. He’s just a guy telling a joke to an audience that already knows the punchline.

Canadian Bacon is long on righteous indignation but it’s short on anything that would make you want to spend 90 minutes listening to the same point being made over and over again. Moore did make one good decision, in that he selected Rip Torn to play a crazed general. Rip Torn can deliver militaristic insults with the best of them.

The few times that Canadian Bacon actually works is when it gently (as opposed to indignantly) satirizes Canada’s reputation for being the most polite (and most hockey-obsessed) place on Earth. Dan Aykroyd has a great cameo as a Canadian police officer who pulls over Boomer’s truck and politely reprimands him for not including French translations for all of the anti-Canadian graffiti on the side of the vehicle.

Canadian Bacon could have used more scenes like that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5l0PD80u9k

Love you, Canada!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IyxGO4v0yA

The 2010 Oscars: Best Documentary: The Toadsuckers Are Narrowing It Down

Posted on November 18, 2010 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Here’s some more news from the toadsuckers and dumbfugs who make up the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. These are the people who give out the Academy Awards and who continue to insist that Crash, Titanic, Gladiator, Braveheart, Gandhi, The Sound of Music, Rocky, American Beauty, The Greatest Show on Earth, and How Green Was My Valley were all great films. Yes, those people.

Anyway, along with giving out Oscars for best picture, best director, and all the other awards that the general public actually cares about, the Academy also gives out an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. Occasionally, this category does get some notice. For instance, there’s always the chance that Michael Moore will win another Oscar and start foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog again and Al Gore might give another award-winning power point presentation in the near future. But for the most part, most people just see Best Documentary as just another roadblock on the journey between Best Supporting Actress and Best Picture.

Which is a shame because Best Documentary is usually a pretty fun category to try to predict. Since hardly anyone has seen (or heard) of the majority of the nominees, you can simply pick one at random, say something vaguely serious-sounding about it, and people will assume that you’re far smarter than you ever possibly could be. For me, the best thing about the documentary category is that, since you’ll probably never actually see most of the films nominated, your final opinion on the winner is often based on the acceptance speech. If the documentarian gives a funny or sentimental speech then suddenly you realize that Gabby: The Girl Who Could Have Been is the greatest freaking documentary ever made. And if his speech is strident or angry or boring then you’ll spend the next week wondering how the Academy could ever honor a piece of trash like Pelosi: Amazon From The Bay.

Anyway, the Documentary Branch of the Academy announced the 15 finalists for the Oscar for Best Feature-Length Documentary of 2010. From these 15, the final five nominees will be determined.

Here’s the list:

“Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer,” Alex Gibney, director (ES Productions LLC)
“Enemies of the People,” Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath, directors (Old Street Films)
“Exit through the Gift Shop,” Banksy, director (Paranoid Pictures)
“Gasland,” Josh Fox, director (Gasland Productions, LLC)
“Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould,” Michele Hozer and Peter Raymont, directors (White Pine Pictures)
“Inside Job,” Charles Ferguson, director (Representational Pictures)
“The Lottery,” Madeleine Sackler, director (Great Curve Films)
“Precious Life,” Shlomi Eldar, director (Origami Productions)
“Quest for Honor,” Mary Ann Smothers Bruni, director (Smothers Bruni Productions)
“Restrepo,” Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger, directors (Outpost Films)
“This Way of Life,” Thomas Burstyn, director (Cloud South Films)
“The Tillman Story,” Amir Bar-Lev, director (Passion Pictures/Axis Films)
“Waiting for ‘Superman’”, Davis Guggenheim, director (Electric Kinney Films)
“Waste Land,” Lucy Walker, director (Almega Projects)
“William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe,” Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler, directors (Disturbing the Universe LLC)

If Exit Through the Gift Shop (which is currently my choice for the best film of 2010) had failed to appear on this list, I would have thrown a fit. Luckily, there it is. Will it make the final five? It better.

As for the other finalists, I’ve only seen Restrepo and Waiting for Superman and they’re both deserving of at least a nomination. However, I’m hoping that the film about William Kunstler gets a nomination just because I’m hoping that whoever presents the award this year will mispronounce Kunstler and get the Academy broadcast fined by the FCA.

It’s also interesting to note that I’ve probably gone to more documentaries this year than any other. And yet, I’ve only seen 3 of the 15 finalists. Certainly, I guess I could go see Inside Job this weekend but do I really need a documentary to tell me that the economy is fucked up? Seriously. The trailer — featuring Matt Damon interrogating a bunch of Wall Street types — just comes across as being incredibly smug. Client 9 should be opening up down here in Dallas pretty soon as well and I’ll probably see it but I’m not going to cry if I miss the opportunity to spend two hours with Eliot Spitzer.

To me, the best documentaries of 2010 include — along with Restrepo, Waiting for Superman, and Exit Through The Gift Shop (the best film of 2010, did I mention that?) — Winnebago Man, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, The Best Worst Movie, and (arguably) Catfish.

The toadsuckers disagree.