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, Tubbs’s cover is blown …. again.

Episode 3.8 “Better Living Through Chemistry”

(Dir by Leon Ichaso, originally aired on November 14th, 1986)

While working undercover as Ricardo Cooper (and yes, I’m pretty sure I heard the fake Caribbean accent at the start of this episode), Tubbs is stunned to discover that his former partner from New York, Clarence Batisse (Victor Love), is now working as a DJ at a club owned by a local drug lord.

Tubbs is even more shocked when Clarence announces to the entire club that “Ricardo Cooper” is actually an undercover cop.

Somehow, and it’s not really made clear how, Tubbs is able to escape the club without getting shot.  Sonny also somehow manages to convince the drug dealers that he didn’t know that Tubbs was actually a cop.  So, Sonny “Burnett” continues to play his part in the undercover operation while Tubbs tries to figure out why Clarence blew his cover.

Clarence is bitter.  His career with the NYPD came crashing down when he shot a bookie during a raid.  Clarence claimed the bookie had a gun but the gun was never found.  Tubbs didn’t see the gun and refused to lie for his partner.  However, when Tubbs realizes that Clarence has been reduce to working for a drug lord, he sets about to try to clear Clarence’s name.

Meanwhile, informant Izzy (Martin Ferrero) has been hired to babysit the drug lord’s chemist, nerdy Henry Luna (Nelson Villamor).  Luna has developed cocaine that is so pure that most people can’t even survive doing one hit.  The Vice squad know that, if the cocaine hits the streets, it will lead to a gang war.  But then Luna does a hit of his own cocaine and falls over dead.

Tubbs does manage to clear Clarence’s name but it doesn’t matter.  Clarence has gone so far over to the dark side that he sets up Tubbs and Crockett to be attacked in a surprise raid.  Tubbs and Crockett kill the bad guys and, at the end of the episode, Tubbs takes Clarence into custody.  A good cop has gone very bad….

This was a weird episode.  It was technically a Tubbs episode but it seemed like the majority of the running time was taken up with Izzy babysitting the chemist.  Izzy is one of those supporting characters who works best in small amounts.  Building almost an entire episode around him just serves to highlight that there’s really not much depth to Izzy as a character.  He’s cowardly and he talks a lot.  It’s funny until it isn’t, which is another way of saying that it gets old after ten minutes.  The comedy of Izzy and the Chermist didn’t really fit in with the scenes of Tubbs trying to clear his former partner’s name.  The tone of the episode was all over the place, making this a rare Miami Vice episode that didn’t seem to know what it wanted to be.

On the plus side, the drug lord owned a club that was full of motorcycles and where Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer was the most popular song.  There was one very exciting shoot-out at the club.  That was a good thing.  Otherwise, this was Miami Vice at its least effective.