Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 5.9 “Fruit of the Poisoned Tree”

Posted on January 5, 2026 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!

Retro television reviews returns with Miami Vice!

Episode 5.9 “Fruit of the Poisoned Tree”

(Dir by Michelle Manning, originally aired on February 3rd, 1989)

Crockett and Tubbs are trying to take down a drug dealer named Enriquez (Jeffrey Meek) but every time that they think they’ve got the guy, his shady lawyer, Sam Boyle (Stephen McHattie), is able to use a technicality to get the case tossed. Even sending Gina in undercover backfires as Gina’s cover gets blown and a bomb meant for her kills an innocent 13 year-old instead.

Crockett thinks that Sam and his associate, Lisa Madsen (Amanda Plummer), have evidence that could put Enriquez away. Crockett puts pressure on Lisa to become a confidential informant but Lisa is devoted to Sam. Lisa’s father was a crusading anti-drug prosecutor who was stabbed to death and Sam has promised that he will do everything within his power to prove that her father was actually assassinated by a drug cartel.

Of course, there’s some things that Lisa doesn’t know. Sam is heavily involved in the drug trade himself and he’s currently in debt to gangster Frank Romano (Tony Sirico, bringing some nicely realistic menace to his role). Sam plots to double cross Enriquez to get the drugs necessary to pay off Frank. Plus, it also turns out that Sam is the one who had Lisa’s father killed.

When Lisa (and hey, that’s my name!) finds out the truth, she uses her legal training to seek her own revenge. Enriquez has been arrested due to evidence that Lisa gave Crockett. But when Lisa reveals herself to have been Crockett’s informant, the case is tossed because Lisa violated attorney/client privilege. This frees up Enriquez to kill Sam right before Sam gets onto a private plane that would have taken him to freedom. The episode ends with Enriquez getting arrested yet again and Lisa staring down at Sam’s dead body.

This was a pretty good episode, especially considering that it aired during the final season. It feels like a throwback to the first two seasons, where the morality was always ambiguous and pretty much no one got a happy ending. Lisa may have gotten revenge for the killing of her father but she did it by arranging the murder of a man who she had spent years worshipping. The Vice Squad takes down a drug dealer but not before an innocent boy is murdered. The only reason that they’re going to a conviction this time is because they actually witnesses Enriquez killing Sam Boyle. Otherwise, the case probably would have gotten thrown out again.

Miami Vice was always at its strongest when it examined futility of the war on drugs. There’s a lot of money to found in the drug trade and there’s always someone willing to step up and replace anyone who the Vice Squad actually manages to take down. This episode may end with Enriquez defeated but there’s no doubt that someone else will step into his shoes.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th 1.23 “Badge of Honor”

Posted on March 29, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Friday the 13th: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

This week …. OH MY GOD, IT’S JOHN STOCKWELL!

Episode 1.23 “Badge of Honor”

(Dir by Michelle Manning, originally aired on July 5th, 1988)

Victor Haas (David Proval) is a club owner and also the head of Canada’s most violent ring of counterfeiters. Detective Russ Sharko (Val Avery) is obsessed with taking Victor down. Victor attempts to dissuade Sharko by using a car bomb to take out Sharko’s wife. That just makes Sharko more determined. However, when Sharko’s obsession leads to a bust-gone-wrong and a dead cop, Sharko is kicked off the force. Sharko now has to take Victor and his man down on his own. Fortunately, he happens to own an antique sheriff’s badge. When he pins the badge on someone, that person suffers a violent death.

This sounds like a job for Micki and Ryan. (Jack, again, is out of town.) However, Micki and Ryan are distracted by the arrival of Tim (played by one of my favorite 80s leading men, the superhot John Stockwell). Tim is Micki’s ex-boyfriend and soon, he and Micki are picking up where they left off. (When the season began, Micki was engaged so I guess Tim must have been the boyfriend before the fiancé.) Ryan gets jealous because — surprise! — he’s kind of in love with Micki. Of course, just a few episodes ago, Ryan was in love with a preacher’s daughter. And then, after that, he was in love with Catherine, who was murdered by an evil journalist. Ryan seems to fall in love easily so….

Actually, wait a minute. RYAN AND MICKI ARE COUSINS! WHAT ARE YOU DOING, RYAN!? Of course, they’re not first cousins but still …. it just doesn’t seem right!

Anyway, at first, it seems like Ryan might be correct to be suspicious of Tim because Tim approaches Victor and offers to help him with his counterfeiting ring. But then we learn that Tim is with the FBI! Why is the FBI working in Canada? I guess maybe the show’s producers were still trying to convince viewers that Friday the 13th took place in America, despite the fact that all of the directors and most of the actors were Canadian and the show itself was clearly filmed in wintry Canada. (This episode is a bit of an oddity in that all three of the main guest stars — David Proval, John Stockwell, and Val Avery — were born in the Lower 48.) The important thing is that Tim’s a good guy but — uh oh! — Tim also gets shot and dies at the end of the episode. Micki is a little bit sad but Ryan is kind of relieved because it means he’ll have a chance to hook up with his cousin….

SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE HELL!?

This episode got a little bogged down with all of the counterfeiting stuff. It felt more like an episode of Miami Vice than Friday the 13th. The badge was also a bit of a boring antique because it didn’t really do anything other than kill people. Other antiques changed the personality of the people who owned them and demanded a quid pro quo for their powers. This antique is far more simple and kind of dull.

Oh well. It’s a less-than-memorable episode but John Stockwell was hot and I’m a bit disappointed that he apparently won’t be making a return appearance.

Next week, we meet Ryan’s father and discover that he’s not a good man at all!

Horror on TV: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.23 “Badge of Honor” (dir by Michelle Manning)

Posted on October 15, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s episode of Friday the 13th, Val Avery plays an angry cop who uses an antique sheriff’s badge to get revenge on the mobster who put his wife in a coma. The mobster is played by David Proval, who later played RIchie Aprile during the second season of The Sopranos. (You might remember Janice shooting him in the chest.)

This episode was directed by Michelle Mannings who, while working as an executive at Paramount, produced both Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club!

This episode originally aired on July 9th, 1988.

https://youtu.be/nfXWM2JWtOw

A Movie A Day #191: Blue City (1986, directed by Michelle Manning)

Posted on July 18, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Billy Turner (Judd Nelson) has always been the bad boy but now he just wants to return to his Florida hometown and reconnect with his estranged father. As soon as he rolls into town, Billy gets into a bar brawl and is arrested. The chief of police (Paul Winfield) informs Billy that his father has been murdered and that his stepmother has since married the local gangster, Perry Kerch (Scott Wilson). Everyone knows that Perry murdered Billy’s father but no one can prove it. He is told to get out-of-town but Billy’s not going out like that. Instead, he gets together with his childhood friends, gimpy legged Joey (David Caruso) and Annie (Ally Sheedy), and seeks his revenge.

No, it’s not a picture of Judd Nelson hanging out with the a member of the Heaven’s Gate cult. It’s the DVD cover for Blue City.

An infamous flop, Blue City was meant to show that the members of the infamous Brat Pack could play serious, adult roles. Unfortunately, Blue City was released right at a time when everyone was starting to get sick of the Brat Pack. (Even John Hughes had moved on, casting Matthew Broderick as Ferris Bueller, instead of Anthony Michael Hall.) After countless magazine covers and the monster success of The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire, a backlash was brewing and Blue City walked (or, in Joey’s case, limped) straight into it.

It also did not help the film’s prospects that it matched up the least interesting Brat Packer, Judd Nelson, with the member of the Brat Pack most likely to take herself too seriously, Ally Sheedy. Playing roles that would have been played by Alan Ladd an Veronica Lake in the 40s, both Nelson and Sheedy are miscast and, strangely considering this was their third film together, have no chemistry. Nelson, in particular, gives one of the most annoying performances in film history. He never stops smirking, even when there is no reason for Billy Turner to be smirking. With his wide-eyed stare and his attempts to speak like a tough guy, Nelson comes across like John Bender auditioning for West Side Story. The scene where he manages to floor Tiny Lister with one punch is simply beyond belief.

When Judd Nelson can beat you up, there is only one thing left to do:

Thanks, Duke.

On a more positive note, David Caruso, long before he could usher in the Who by simply putting on his sunglasses, is better cast as Joey but there is nothing surprising about what eventually happens to him. The best performance is from Scott Wilson, showing why he used to always play villains before reinventing himself as Herschel on The Walking Dead. Wilson was so good that I realized, halfway through Blue City, that I actually would not have minded if he succeeded in killing Billy.

The most disappointing thing about Blue City is that it is a Florida noir from the 80s that somehow does not feature even a cameo appearance by Burt Reynolds. Couldn’t Judd have taken just a few seconds during the filming of Shattered: If Your Kid’s On Drugs to convince Burt to drop by Blue City?