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| The first episode of the arc is even called "Mirror Image", for Christ's sakes. |
This was the natural destination for Miami Vice, the thing it was building up to all this time. All of those mirrors of Crockett and Tubbs who rose and fell, all of those poor people who got lost in the cracks of the corrupt system, every dark instinct that had to be fought against as one went undercover as a drug lord. It was all leading to this, the moment when one of them strayed too far into the world of Shadow and got dragged, kicking and screaming, into the abyss of moral decay and darkness. They did not just fight the monsters, they wore their sinister costumes to blend in, and one bad day was all it took for Crockett to become of their party. That he managed to claw his way out of that hellish pit, sobered and shocked by what he became in that inky blackness, is something of a small miracle. It is still, however, a darkness that he must live with, the sins of Sonny Burnett staining his soul for all eternity.
It's a wonderful idea on paper. Unfortunately, like the death of Larry Zito, it's all hollow inside.
Crockett's descent into darkness is lessened by this tug of war between what the writers want and the needs of Miami Vice as a serialized television program. Take a casual peek at the Miami Vice fan wiki for these episodes and you'll find people pointing out a great big narrative contrivance like they're Cinema Sins: in reality, if Crockett committed all those crimes as Burnett, he would not get his job back at the end but instead go to jail for a very long time. Loathe as I am to give pedantry a pass, they're right. This should, by any measure, be the end of the show. At the very least it should be the end of Don Johnson as Sonny Crockett. It's the ultimate narrative collapse, one of many logical endpoints that its particular mélange of misery was building up to. Unfortunately for the Burnett arc, there is still a season left to go and we are forbidden from breaking Sonny Crockett forever.
What you're left with is a curious dance of half-measures. The folks making this arc want the total collapse and descent into darkness of Sonny Burnett, to make him a criminal mastermind and cold-blooded killer. At no point during this arc does Sonny Burnett actually kill anyone in cold blood. Every single person Burnett shoots over these three episodes is just like Hackman: someone who was going to shoot Burnett first and thus making it a self-defense shot. The one exception to this is a bit where Burnett meets Tubbs in a dark alley and shoots him on sight, but since Tubbs is a main lead and has plot armor, it's not a cold-blooded kill. I guess cold-blooded attempted murder is fine by the NBC censors. This need to preserve the precious integrity of Miami Vice as a long-running series diminishes most of the dramatic tension of the arc. It's clear that it wants to be the ultimate moment of grimdark, the demons of the Shadow World let loose upon the psyche and dragging a good man down to their level. The need to preserve some moral fiber, to not allow Burnett to truly become a monster in service of What Happens Next, just make the whole proceedings shallow and empty.
That's the true failing of this period of the show. It tried to make things darker and grittier with more misery and pain and people becoming the worst versions of themselves, but its big shocking dramatic twists revealed nothing but shallow emptiness. It happened with the death of Larry Zito, it happened with the death of Caitlin Davies, and it happened with the rise of Sonny Burnett. I don't want to imply that these seasons and their twists were completely unwatchable. There was good drama to be had amidst them, this isn't the Chibnall era or anything. It's just that the biggest pushes were hollow and empty when you look into it on anything beyond the surface level. There is a silver lining, however. I can't truly attest to whether or not the folks behind the Burnett arc truly wanted to go past the limit and destroy Sonny Crockett in a hail of ego-death and a trail of bodies. It is interesting to think of the hypothetical universe where they did, and what that would have meant for that world's Season 5 if it even happened. Back in the real world, though, this ending for Miami Vice is deferred, and that means that the people behind the show have to come up with a new one. They manage to do that, and come up with an ending even better than this grim darkness.
Season 5 is a curious beast, in that it technically ends early at 17 episodes. There are four more beyond that, "lost episodes" which NBC never aired because they were washing their hands of Miami Vice. They aired in reruns after the fact, and are... interesting to think about. I'll talk about one in a second, but the remaining three are the return of a Season 1 antagonist for the purposes of a tragic end, an episode that's a backdoor pilot for a Vice spinoff that's basically Great Value Brand 21 Jump Street, and one about drug addiction and abuse that actually does push the line of grimdark too far for good taste. With the exception of that last one, these probably should have aired, but it was 1989 and Miami Vice's cultural star was fading. The world had moved on from the Reagan years, and was a very different place than it was in 1984. As the great man in burgundy said: It's the end, but the moment has been prepared for.
There's a theme that builds over part of Season 5, in two episodes of the original run and one of the lost ones. Having shown us over four seasons that the system is utterly corrupt on every level, we now have characters realizing this and coming to their own fucked-up dark enlightenments about it before dishing out vigilante justice outside the system. "The Cell Within" has a criminal that Tubbs busted in the past, who did his time and served in penitence, deciding to use extreme measures of imprisonment and execution for even the smallest of crimes to rid the world of evil. "Over The Line" is even more explicit, with a group of corrupt cops who have gone rogue and need to be infiltrated by Crockett and Tubbs. The lost episode "Miracle Man" even has an actual vigilante superhero who becomes a voice for the people and inspires the citizens of Miami.
All of these people have seen the kinds of horrors we have seen over the run of Miami Vice, and all of them have taken that step over the line as Crockett did when he became Burnett. The truth was clear to them, searing and bright as they Did What They Felt Had To Be Done. The system doesn't work. You have to go outside the system, become monstrous, in order to enact true and meaningful change. The Miracle Man has a much more tragic backstory for why he does what he does, but the antagonists of the other two episodes knowingly darken themselves to do what they feel must be done. Like the reflections of good cops gone bad in prior seasons, this is a ghost of what is yet to come for Crockett and Tubbs.
Enter the final episode. Enter "Freefall". In a mad way, I am reminded of the finale to Quantum Leap when I think of the themes at play here. In broad strokes, they're stories about guys in a procedural graduating up to a higher calling. This being Miami Vice, however, means it's not exactly a happy ceremony. Crockett and Tubbs straight up have a typical Miami Vice car chase interrupted by this higher power, and are drafted by the CIA to pull a dictator out of a banana republic in Latin America for the purposes of serving US interests. The mission is completed successfully... but it soon becomes clear that Crockett and Tubbs have been used as pawns in yet another game of American imperialism, and the dictator is a bad bad man. The climax plays out as a twisted mirror of the In The Air Tonight scene, taking place in broad daylight and using an action-packed song as opposed to a somber one, and in the end the boys shoot down the dictator's plane and stop him from getting away... at which point they are confronted by their apoplectic handler.
For the third time, Crockett and Tubbs are face to face with the Dark Heart Of America itself, the beating beast of imperialism. The language used by this CIA bastard is reactionary even for 1989, let alone with the lens of the present. Unconcerned with justice or getting drug dealers and their product off the street, and worried about the scary Communists turning the map red. The only things that count are American interests and anything counter to them. It's almost comedic how much history would fuck with this old-fashioned way of thinking. It's 1989. The Wall is going to fall in six months, you fossilized fuck, and you're still thinking like it's 1984 and we need Star Wars to stop the Russkies. You've seen Red Dawn too many times, and once is enough for that right-wing brain rot.
We've been here before, though. We've faced down imperialism and heartless "American interests", and our boys have been able to do nothing in the face of it. Baker, the CIA bastard, is the petty threatening arm of American imperialism here. He's a big big man who should be feared. He can do anything he wants in the name of American interests. He could have a couple of Miami vice cops shot dead for pissing in his pond, and nobody would blink an eye. So fear him. Respect him. Turn away and blink from this confrontation with your tails between your legs, like you did with the banker. Like you did with Maynard and the Iran-Contra affair. Stick to what you're good at, which is busting petty coke pushers on the beach, or so help me God I'll have your badge and your life.
That enlightenment has finally hit our weary Vice cops. They are now able to stare the Dark Heart Of America in its face and not flinch. You have to be willing to put everything on the line, and so they do. The only winning move in this game is not to play, to take yourself out of the system. Take the badge, then, you CIA stooge. See what I care. Crockett and Tubbs have grown beyond it, seen too much loss and death and heartbreak for it. They're done. It's time to move beyond the system, flawed as it is, for something bigger and better. They walk away from the imperialism, having been brave and unflinching in the face of its macrocosm, and go off to do bigger and better things outside of it. What do they do? What becomes of them? I don't know. That's not the question we should be asking, though. Don't you remember? I told you the question at the start of all this, oh so long ago. Let me remind you.
What was it all for?
Forget every pyrrhic victory, every precious life lost, every heartbreak and sorrow and darkening of the soul. Forget how flawed the system was on every level was for one moment, and focus on the microcosmic. The Miami Vice squad made a difference. People are alive who wouldn't be because of them, and criminals are off the streets because of them. They made a material difference in the world while brushing against the limits of the system they were in, and after so much pain and sorrow when the system pushed back they broke free of it. They're out. They can do whatever they want, and though they will remember the bad times they will also remember the good. That's what it was all for, on that level.
Miami Vice certainly was an interesting show to add to my internal landscape. It's a cop show on the side of the cops and thus requires you to silence that part of your brain that says ACAB to buy into the fantasy of this world, but if you can manage to do that you can gain an appreciation for a good show with quality drama. Its cinematic television style and vibes are off the charts, and it's something I won't soon forget. It's a part of me now, darkness and all. That darkness, the bleakness at play through every facet of the show, has changed me a little. I haven't descended into the world of shadow, but I do feel that I can handle things with a little more bite and edge now. I haven't lost that utopian sense in me, though, and it's still present within the heart and soul of Miami Vice. There's a dark heart of imperialism and moral decay beating throughout... but in tandem there's a kind heart in there that wants to make the world a better place, that strives to do so despite personal hardship and loss. That's what keeps the Vice squad going, and what kept me going through this journey. Making a difference, one day at a time.
Hey, speaking of good men who make a difference one day at a time...
I can see a bit of a mirror here to the shooting of Luther Mahoney in Homicide: Life on the Street, where they initially portrayed the shooting as maybe a bit dubious, but not line-crossing (Mahoney had lowered, but not dropped, his gun, and the framing felt very much like a setup for "The cop lets his guard down and the seemingly-defeated bad guy shoots him"), with Kellerman struggling over whether or not he did the right thing, and his partner defending him. But I assume it eventually became clear that Reed Diamond was leaving the show, so over the course of the next season, they recast the shooting as Kellerman's fall into darkness, with him becoming progressively meaner, more willing to break the rules, and more defensive (He leaves the series drunkenly trying to abuse his authority to harrass someone in a bar, only to be publicly humiliated when he remembers that he'd resigned in the previous scene), while Lewis very abruptly pivots from defending him to questioning his fitness.
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