Tag Archives: William O’Leary

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 5.4 “Bad Timing”

Posted on 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, Crockett tries to find himself.

Episode 5.4 “Bad Timing”

(Dir by Virgil W. Vogel, originally aired on December 2nd, 1988)

With the case against him still unresolved, Crockett goes on vacation.  He doesn’t tell anyone where he’s going, which is a bit unfortunate as he ends up being taken hostage in the Bayous by a group of cartoonishly evil escaped convicts.  (Pruitt Taylor Vince plays one of the hostage-takers but is fairly forgettable.  A young Melissa Leo appears as a fellow hostage and shows none of the grit that made her so memorable as Sgt. Kay Howard on Homicide.)  Somehow, Tubbs still shows up at the last moment and, looking resplendent in a white suit, he shoots the final convict before the latter shoots Crockett.  Crockett doesn’t even ask Tubbs how he knew where Crockett was.  (If Tubbs had been following Crockett the entire time, why would he have allowed Crockett to have been taken hostage to begin with?)  This episode might as well have been called Dues Ex Tubbs.

Watching this episode, it occurred to me that, as a character, Crockett really doesn’t have anywhere left to go.  By having him turn into Burnett and become one of Miami’s most powerful drug dealers, the show pretty much pushed the character as far as possible.  It’s impossible for Crockett to come back from that and it’s equally impossible to watch an episode like this one and not wonder why Crockett wasn’t in prison.  He’s suspected of committing four murders.  He was witnessed shooting a cop.  He attempted to kill his own partner, twice.  The episode begins with several high-ranking cops saying that they don’t buy Crockett’s excuse that he had amnesia.  And yet, Crockett is allowed to leave Miami while the department tries to figure out what to do with him.

Really, the whole idea that Crockett — a minor celebrity due to his college football career — could maintain his Burnett cover for five seasons was already pretty hard to believe.  Crockett and Tubbs’s cover got blown in nearly every episode during the first three seasons.  Having Sonny “Burnett” marry a world-famous singer without anyone noting that Burnett looked just like Crockett was probably this show’s true shark jumping moment.  Once that happened, it became increasingly difficult to take Miami Vice seriously.  The whole arc of Sonny thinking he was Burnett was fun to watch and Don Johnson gave a good performance as a conflicted bad guy but it’s also left the show with nowhere to go.  With this episode, Crockett has been reduced to being taken hostage by a group of backwoods yokels and waiting for Tubbs to materialize from out of nowhere.

In short, it’s time for Sonny to move on.  And seeing as how this is the final season …. well, we’ll see what happens!

Hot Shots! (1991, directed by Jim Abrahams)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

There are a lot of reasons why it’s hard to take Top Gun seriously but, for me, the biggest problem is that I’ve seen Hot Shots!  Directed by Jim Abrahams, Hot Shots! does for Top Gun what Airplane! did for disaster movies.

Charlie Sheen plays Topper Harley, the hot shot Navy Pilot who is haunted by the death of his father.  (“I’ve even got my father’s eyes,” Topper says before revealing that he carries them around in a cigarette case.)  Topper has left the Navy and is living in a teepee with the Old One.  Command Block (Kevin Dunn) asks Topper to return to the Navy to take part in Operation Sleepy Weasel.  Topper puts on a leather jacket and hops on a motorcycle.  The Old One tells Topper to pick up some batteries for his walkman.

Cary Elwes plays Kent Gregory, who says that Topper is not safe in the air.  Valeria Golino plays Ramada, the psyciatrist who helps Topper deal with his father issues.  Jon Cryer is Washout, who has wall-eyed vision.  Kristy Swanson is Bo, the only female pilot.  William O’Leary is the pilot who has the perfect life and wife but who everyone calls “Dead Meat.”  And finally Lloyd Bridges is Admiral Tug Benson, who has never successfully landed a plane and who has suffered and recovered from almost every war wound imaginable.  Tug is clueless but he loves America and his admiral’s hat.

Hot Shots! is one of the better parody films to come out in the wake of Airplane!  Charlie Sheen’s limitations as a dramatic actor actually made him a good comedic actor and Cary Elwes does a decent Val Kilmer imitation.  Some of the jokes have definitely aged better than others.  In 1991, Valeria Golino singing on a piano automatically brought to mind Michelle Pfieffer in The Fabolous Baker Boys but does anyone remember that film (or that scene) in 2025?  (The 9 1/2 Weeks scene is even more of a distant memory to most but Valeria Golino is so appealing in those scenes that most viewers — well, most male viewers — won’t mind.  In this case, the parody is far more successful than the original.)  Hot Shots! is at its best when imitating Top Gun‘s kinetic, music video-inspired style.  The mix of quick-cut editing and ludicrous dialogue is hard to resist.  After watching Charlie Sheen dance on his motorcycle and Cary Elwes explain what a chafing dish is for, it’s hard to take Top Gun seriously ever again.

I Watched Bull Durham (1988, dir. by Ron Shelton)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

In Bull Durham, Kevin Costner plays Crash Davis, a veteran catcher in the minor leagues who is brought onto the Durham Bulls so that he can teach a rookie pitcher, Ebby LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), how to play the game and also get him ready for his inevitable move to the major leagues.  Also helping to get the dim-witted but sincere Ebby ready is Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon), who worships at the Church of Baseball and who has an affair with a different player every season.  The film follows the Bulls through their season, as both Crash and Annie mentor Ebby while also falling in love with each other.  Ebby even gets a nickname, Nuke.

Considering how much I love baseball, it might surprise you to learn that, up until recently, I had never seen Bull Durham.  I had read that it was one of the best baseball movies ever made but I never actually watched it.  I’m glad that I finally did watch it because it is a really good baseball movie.  It’s a movie that loves the game and I wasn’t surprised that the director was a former minor league player because Bull Durham is full of the type of details that you would only get from someone who had actually been there.  I especially liked the scene where it was revealed what the players and the coaches are actually talking about when they all gather on the pitcher’s mound.  It turns out that they’re not always talking about how to strike out the pitcher.

The love triangle part of the film didn’t work as well as for me.  I could relate to Annie’s love for baseball but her character still didn’t quite ring true for me and her narration was overdone.  Both Annie and Nuke seemed cartoonish whenever they got together.  Kevin Costner, though, was great as Crash Davis.  He was believable as an athlete and a mentor.  My favorite Costner moment was when a batboy told him to “Get a hit, Crash,” and he replied, “Shut up.”  It rang true.

I don’t agree with those who say Bull Durham is the best baseball movie.  I think Eight Men Out is better.  But I still enjoyed Bull Durham.  It’s a movie that loves the game almost as much as I do.