If you would like to hear dialogue like this delivered whole-heartedly from people dressed like el debarge rejects I strongly suggest going back and reacquainting yourself (or maybe for the first time) with Miami Vice. No, not the movie update Michael Mann did a couple of years ago (not that it was bad – I liked it) but with the show. The other night while skimming recommendations from Net Flix I came across this forgotten gem and immediately added Disc one of Season one to the top of my Queue.
After watching it I was not sorry I did.
Disc one is loaded. There’s something like five or six episodes on it and the first, being the pilot, is essentially a two-hour tv movie. I wish I had realized this when we turned it on the night before an early a shift, but once inside the dangerous Miami world of speed boats and unconstructed jackets we couldn’t stop, could you?
Let me set the mood here:
The pilot opens with Rico Tubbs as we know and love him sitting in a parked car in the Bronx staking out some thug-looking types in the distance. Three textbook 80’s hoods complete with wristbands, headbands, Latino heritage (who says we haven’t come a long way in tv’s loosening of stereotyping?) and, the piece de resistance, the ghetto blaster planted firmly ashoulder approach obviously up to no good. After a banal argument about where to go for the night they stop at Tubbs’ car and suggest, ‘Yo man, let me hold a coupla $20’s.’ Of course Tubbs shoos them away and out comes, yep you guessed it, the switchblade* and the aforementioned exclamation of knife-wielding violence.
To bad for them Tubbs has a shotgun.
I won’t bore you with other verbose descriptions of events here, suffice it to say Jimmy Smits (yep!) gets blown up, Crockett has an alligator named Elvis and Phil Collins ushers us into a showdown with drug kingpin and cop killer extraordinaire Caulderon. A finale that we can, indeed, see coming (a mile away) in the air tonight.
Hold on.
One thing I will do however is state my own personal surprise at how, as a long time LOST fan, I never realized what a fan of Don Johnson Josh Holloway** must be. Either that or they are related because Crockett then really reminds me of Sawyer now.
Also, someone please explain to me the bizarre insertion of comedy throughout this one, such as where one of Caulderon’s flunkies is being arraigned and all the lights in the court room go out. Attempted bust out? No, power failure that is quickly remedied only to reveal everyone working in the courtroom is packing – judge and all including a seemingly trigger happy middle-aged female stenographer. Like they were already sure they wanted the Scarface market (Check out ) but thought it better safe than sorry to go for the Police Academy one as well***.
In the A-tees!
………………..
* Whatever happened to the switchblade?
** I assure you before another person takes this insight as a bashing that Sawyer is indeed one of my favorite characters on LOST and this is not a dis. Not that I’m that big a fan of Johnson, it’s just an observation.
*** Like the way I said I wasn’t going to describe it any more and then immediately proceeded to do just that? Now that’s what I call excitement!!!