YES here I am with MORE about that noir procedural\/Reagan tribute fanvid, that glorious neon wheel of cheese, Miami Vice<\/em>. Season two ahoy!<\/p>\n # The back end of this season slows down considerably, and you even get the occasional bad episode (\u201cFrench Twist,\u201d \u201cFree Verse\u201d). On the other hand, you get a lot of fun episodes and one genuinely magnificent one (\u201cBushido,\u201d see below).<\/p>\n For the season finale they give Tubbs a family, which obviously goes horribly for everyone involved, but it\u2019s not written or paced with the kind of tension it needs. We do get to see the usually steely, ironic Tubbs deeply and genuinely shaken. And Philip Michael Thomas plays with a baby, in case you\u2019re having trouble tracking your cycle.<\/p>\n # GUEST STARS. Eartha Kitt as a Santeria professor\/priestess; Ted Nugent as half of a magnificently-tressed noir killer couple; Phil Collins, Harvey Fierstein.<\/p>\n Literally, Miles Davis.<\/p>\n The credits for \u201cBack in the World\u201d go, \u201cdirected by DON JOHNSON\u201d and then \u201cguest stars G. GORDON LIDDY and IMAN.\u201d That\u2019s a post-Vietnam disillusionment tale about a right-wing drug smuggler who shipped bad heroin out of \u2018Nam inside the corpses of American soldiers. Our heroes visit a tumbledown VA hostel, where Crockett crocketts, \u201cThese guys have been misrepresented, exploited and forgotten to the max.\u201d G. Gordon Liddy plays the militarist, Kissinger-loving villain, because irony will kill you every time.<\/p>\n Scuba-Diving Cop #1, surfacing: \u201cI don\u2019t know how fish stand this.\u201d<\/p>\n S-DC#2: \u201cThat\u2019s why they call them \u2018fish.'\u201d<\/p>\n # Newspaper headline notes that a druglord, just like Freddy Krueger!, was \u201cFREED ON FLUKE.\u201d When was the last time you saw a Hollywood villain freed on a technicality? The \u201980s must\u2019ve been a golden era of due process\u2026.<\/p>\n Oh speaking of this series and its conscience<\/a>, the Liddy episode is impressively double-minded but as the season wears on the moral doubling fades. We still do get Crazy Cops who are meant to be funhouse mirrors for Crockett (Tubbs is more sane for whatever reason) but they turn out to be driven over the edge by the pressures of the job. That\u2019s an explanation which is plausible but also depicts the cop as a sacrifice on the altar of order. The earlier parallels between Crockett and druglords or cracked cops (e.g. \u201cOut Where the Buses Don\u2019t Run\u201d) suggested something more like, cop as secret agent of disorder. That\u2019s harsher and sadder psychologically, as well as more acute politically (cf Hans Fallada on order as chaos<\/a>).<\/p>\n # There\u2019s a voodoo arcade murder. And a devote of Legba who is actually quite scary. \u201cYour world\u2026 is as fragile\u2026 as an image made of glass.\u201d Lots of religion in this season, coded about the way you would expect from a series with a cast far more diverse than (I\u2019m guessing) its writers\u2019 room: Catholicism as moral spur for her sleazy or suspect adherents; a Buddhist<\/a> temple as enigmatic setting for reflection by a man who\u2019s about to accept the violent thing he\u2019ll have to do; voodoo (\/Vodoun but I think you\u2019ll see why I didn\u2019t say that) as evil witchcraft; Santeria as exotic, morally-dubious but perhaps alluring witchcraft.<\/p>\n Oh and you know how I was harping on how we see people of lots of races in every single role except one: the basically decent person who enters the criminal world by getting in over his head? That role of the decent criminal is always played by a white person. Until \u201cThe Fix,\u201d where we get a corrupt black judge with a gambling problem. And in this episode Crockett lays it all out for you, exactly why it\u2019s so important that this<\/em> is the one role Miami Vice<\/em> reserves for the white folk: Crockett does everything in his power to rescue the judge from his bad decisions, he calls in personal favors, he puts himself on the line not for any abstract principle of justice but because he likes and feels for this judge on a personal level. He tells the judge\/the viewers, \u201cWhat you\u2019ve been doing is wrong. But that doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re bad.\u201d And: \u201c\u2026I\u2019ve seen a lot of people in trouble. Most of \u2018em deserve it. But some of them can get back on their feet with [a little help].\u201d<\/p>\n This is the situation in which you desperately need a cop to see you as a human being. After this episode it goes back to being a white role.<\/p>\n # \u201cBushido,\u201d okay. Directed by Edward James Olmos! And it\u2019s so taut<\/em>, so suspenseful and grim and stylized. An amazing opening including Trudy as a roller-skating possibly-hooker and a cop with a snorkel rising up from beneath the sand. We get more of Castillo\u2019s ridiculous CIA ninja background. There\u2019s a horror-film chase through an empty house. Castillo hangs from the ceiling<\/em>. Gorgeous moment where the other characters filter in from the edges of the frame to stand beside him as he stands, completely still, clad as always in black and white. A black-and-white man in a neon\/pastel world.<\/p>\n The way Philip Michael Thomas says, \u201cYou think he had somethin\u2019 to do with\u2013cooling the bust?\u201d This ridiculous line yet it comes off his lips so chilly. The CIA front that\u2019s like if 1960s Batman<\/em> had porno shops. (BORED HOUSEWIVES WELCOME.)<\/p>\n # The freeze-frame endings. These episodes all stop right before you think they\u2019ll stop: They give you just enough to know what\u2019s about to happen, then freeze.<\/p>\n # \u201cI should tell you, I have a nasty habit.\u201d \u201cOh Phil, it\u2019s the \u201980s. Everybody<\/em> does drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSouth Florida! Cash capital of the free world.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t take off your clothes.\u201d \u201cBut it\u2019s faster than paying bail.\u201d<\/p>\n # I note that Crockett\u2019s therapist is a target range and his date to a wedding is Tubbs<\/em>.<\/p>\n # Crockett saw a guy shoot his former partner in the face, then \u201ctuned him up a little.\u201d Guy \u201cgot him a mistrial on some shaky due-process rap.\u201d Making every case personal is what you do if you want to a) write compelling television drama or b) excuse police brutality. In the \u201980s you never had to choose!<\/p>\n # \u201cLittle Miss Dangerous,\u201d an impressively sleazoid noir episode in an impressively sleazoid noir show. Gorgeous neon on the rainlit streets. For once Crockett\u2019s the good cop and Tubbs is the one who gets in way too deep with dangerous women. The scene where the boyfriend is on stage at the sex show, handcuffed to the bed, knowing the cops are in the audience watching him, is genuinely sad, perverse, and humiliating. So well-done there, Miami Vice<\/em>. And here\u2019s Trudy wearing her hooker clothes in the office again, a neon purple wig and sea-green opera gloves. Costume director Bambi Breakstone; get this woman a medal.<\/p>\n # After the trust-fund pirates pat down Crockett & Tubbs, their go-between snarks, \u201cThat\u2019s the \u201980s version of shaking hands.\u201d (One of my favorite things about \u201980s film\/tv is how often the characters talk about living in the \u201980s, e.g. Tuff Turf<\/em><\/a>.)<\/p>\n