W. Paul Bodie | Through the Shattered Lens

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!

There’s another serial killer haunting the streets of Miami. We all know what that means. It’s time to put either Trudy or Gina in harm’s way again.

Episode 5.7 “Asian Cut”

(Dir by James Contner, originally aired on January 13th, 1989)

Someone is murdering prostitutes and carving symbols into their skin. The seemingly friendly Prof. Halliwell (David Schramm) confirms that the symbols are Asian in origin. Crockett and Castillo suspect that the murderer might be a knife-obsessed Japanese gangster named Tegoro (Cary-Hiroyui Tagawa) but it turns out that they’re wrong. Gina and Trudy work undercover as escort and Trudy meets Carlos (Alfredo Alvarez Calderon), a man with a kink for being beaten. Carlos wants to introduce Trudy to a friend of his, someone who is something of an expert on torture and who learned the majority of his techniques while he was serving in the CIA during the Vietnam War….

Yep, the murderer is Prof. Halliwell!

This episode was thoroughly unpleasant. That’s not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to episodes about serial killers and David Schramm did a good job of switching from being goofy to deadly. However, in this case, it was hard not to think about the fact that, in five seasons, Gina and Trudy haven’t really gotten to do much other than pretend to be escorts and get threatened by serial killers. For once, Gina was the one providing support while Trudy was the one put in jeopardy but it still otherwise felt very, very familiar. Even the twist that the killer was a former CIA agent who specialized in torturing enemy combatants felt just a bit too predictable. (On Miami Vice, anyone who is former CIA and not named Castillo always turns out to be a murderer.) The torture scenes were so drawn out that they ultimately felt a bit gratuitous.

This episode ultimately just felt icky,

This week, it’s a rare Tubbs episode!

Episode 3.4 “Walk-Alone”

(Dir by David Jackson, originally aired October 17th, 1986)

As Switek puts it, Tubbs has been walking on air for two weeks. He’s got a new girlfriend, a waitress at a hot Miami restaurant. Unfortunately, a shoot-out at that restaurant leaves her dead. Though Crockett thinks that Tubbs is still too close to the case to be trusted to investigate, Tubbs insists on being involved and Castillo agrees. (Castillo, at times, just seem to automatically do the opposite of whatever Crockett suggests.)

The shoot-out happened as a result of a drug deal that went down in the state prison. Using the name Cubero, Tubbs goes undercover as a recently transferred prisoner. He enters the prison as his usual cool and collected self. He’s promptly beaten up by the Aryan Nations. Fortunately, since this is a television show and not The Shawshank Redemption, beating him up is the only thing the Aryans do to Tubbs.

Tubbs is being targeted by all the prisoners, from the Aryans to the Muslims. But when words get out that he’s a big-time drug dealer, Commander Fox (Keven Conway) makes a deal with him. If Tubbs keeps Fox and his men supplied with drugs, Tubbs (or Cubero) will be kept safe.

Unfortunately, when Switek, Zito, and Trudy go the prison to see Tubbs, a prisoner recognizes them. Tubbs’s cover is blown. Crockett wants to go into the prison to save him but Castillo points out that everyone in the prison knows that Crockett is a cop. (Tubbs has been Crockett’s partner for three years now so why did Castillo assume no one in the prison would be able to make him?) Castillo goes into the prison to save Tubbs from both the guards and the prisoners. The episode ends with Castillo gunning down a few guards and saving Tubbs’s life. Way to go, Castillo! The main lesson here seems to be that Castillo would rather risk of his own life than depend on Crockett for anything.

This was …. well, this episode was okay. The plot was nothing special. For all the talk about how Florida’s state prison was the most dangerous place in the world, it actually came across as being a rather mild place. Tubbs got beaten up and he got threatened but he didn’t get shanked and or any of the other things that one tends to associate with prison. The prison guards were not the most intimidating or interesting villains to appear on Miami Vice, even though one of them is played by a young Laurence Fishburne.

(This episode all features a youngish Ron Perlman, playing a good guy who I kept expecting to turn out to be a bad guy because he was being played by Ron Perlman.)

In the end, this episode was a bit forgettable, though it did allow the often-underused Philip Michael Thomas a chance to have the spotlight for once. He does a good job, even if he doesn’t get to bust out his fake Caribbean accent.