Detective Ricki Tubbs

This is absolutely one of those Vice episodes where you are given two versions of the truth and are asked to be discerning enough to realize which one is real. Vice likes doing this a lot with music-- you see something happening on screen that's contradicted by lyrics or musical tone, and you have to figure out if what you're seeing is the lie or whether it's what you're hearing. In The Maze, we are presented with a spoken truth (some people aren't "good enough" to be cops, the world is hard and dangerous, a kid with a gun can't be thought of as a kid ever again) and a witnessed truth (a "bad cop" is suffers no consequences because he's a cop, people you think of as disposable or even frightening are worth protecting, a kid with a gun may be dangerous but that doesn't make him not a child) to striking, devastating effect. There's a distinct sense in this episode that our protagonists are playing proscribed black and white roles in a drama they're not quite ready to see shades of gray in yet-- later in the series their disenchantment with the justice system will come, but in this point in the series, they don't quite see what we, the audience see.

I started this one thinking "it's always weird seeing other cops outside of the main squad," and then one of them immediately died

Womp womp

The two "new" cops, Tim and Dickie, are talking about how they finally made some "real arrests," and how they usually can't get charges to stick because something-something-the-law, and that it's because of guys like them that the area they're in is starting to get "cleaned up"

Immediately Sonny and Rico correct them, very gently explaining the concept of community organizing, and pointing out that whatever "clean up" they've seen happen recently has nothing to do with the cops and everything to do with the people who live here deciding to stand up for themselves and invest in their neighborhoods

This is the thesis of the episode

From here on in it becomes a split between Tim's tough-on-crime view (what's said) and Sonny and Rico's maybe-heavier-policing-isn't-the-answer view (what's shown)

The dancing guy, Pepe, is played by a choreographer known by the real-world name of Shabba-Doo

Sonny pours water on him because Sonny is an asshole

There is a scene in which Switek offers Zito lunch while Zito tries to pick up a woman through the window of the bug van; both of them tell the other they're "pitching" and I. I have questions

Tim, the asshole cop whose partner got shot, suggests that the best way to catch the criminals that killed Dickie is to just go into a building full of squatters guns blazing, random innocents be damned

Sonny glares at him like he is a leopard and Tim is a plate of ground beef

They decide to, instead, send Tubbs undercover in to see if he can clear the squatters out and get them to safety before they go after the Escobars. In order to do this they dress Tubbs up as the world's most beautiful filthy transient. He looks like he should play Jesus in a modern version of Jesus Christ Superstar

It should be mentioned that the ~*scary dangerous building*~ the homeless people and the Escobars are in is a dilapidated hotel owned by a rich white guy who's on the phone about golf when we meet him, and it turns out the only thing really scary about it is that the people inside are living in terrible conditions because they are poor. In case, y'know, other parts of the episode weren't already clear enough on the whole "maybe the system is broken, actually" angle.

After Tubbs is in the hotel for approximately three and a half minutes, Tim charges across the street with his gun because it's "ridiculous" that this is "taking so long"

He completely ruins the operation and causes an immediate gunfight between the police and the Escobars to break out; Tubbs and the rest of the squatters are taken hostage as a result. Tim is not punished for this-- Castillo says that if he "didn't need every man," Tim would be sent home, but that's it.

Let's be very clear, this is a perfect example of why the whole "one bad apple ruins the whole bunch" thing is 100% true about the police

You get one Tim the Asshole on your squad and people fucking die

Actor Joe Morton, who I best know as Henry Deacon from Eureka, but who others may know better as the SkyNet Scientist from Terminator 2, plays hostage negotiator Jack Davis. He has a big ol' stick up his ass, but he's kind of hot anyway?

Sonny smokes like twelve cigarettes in the course of about 3 minutes, and then goes outside because he can't stand to look at Tim any longer. Castillo makes an attempt to comfort him in his extremely Castillo way (he's the one who says the Escobars, who are a bunch of teenagers, "stopped stopped being kids when they started using guns"), which does not seem to calm Sonny down much. He tells him the best thing he can do for Tubbs is "be cool," and then there's a lovely little match on Sonny's face and Rico's face, both looking off to the side, both looking worried.

The graffiti in this episode slays me

666 is COMIN

Why ME

Rico plays with the child hostages, and a teenage girl dances to the music playing inside her head. I genuinely feel like this is one of the saddest episodes of Vice-- we see the squalid conditions these people are forced to live in, they're humanized and made very real feeling, even if they don't have many lines, and you know that even if they all get out alive, nothing good is going to come of it, because they've been living illegally inside an unused building and the police will have to remove them, leaving them all completely homeless. There are multiple shots throughout the episode of the beach-- its crystal blue water, the sun, the pristine sand, palm trees-- through the broken windows of the collapsing hotel. The squatters are bereft in an ostensible paradise, completely disconnected from the glamorous world outside their crumbling walls.

Sonny suggests that they pinpoint the exact location of the hostages; Tim asks why they should bother when it was the hostages who "got them into this."

Yes Tim

Definitely not you, fuckwad

When Davis negotiates to let the small children hostages go, Jaime, one of the Escobars, argues with one of the older boys that "they're just kids," and that they should do as the police said and let them free. Jaime appears to be about fourteen.

Sonny insists he go in to find the hostages; Davis stands behind him shaking his head no at Castillo. Sonny goes in to find the hostages. He climbs over a fence and through a hole in the wall in his loafers and chinos.

When Sonny figures out where the hostages are located, they send in what appears to be the entire national guard of Florida. The Escobars, it should be noted, are five teenagers.

At the end of the episode, approximately twenty adult men with machine guns point their weapons at one teenage boy. He breaks down in tears and falls to the ground, because no matter what Castillo said, he is ultimately a frightened child.

Let me just start by saying: really getting the sense no one who worked on this show knew that there are multiple countries and cultures in Asia. I'll give them credit for it not being a standard 80's "the East frightens us in a capitalist way" TV show plot, but Castillo is like. A samurai? Who learned how to Samurai in... Thailand. His Thai wife and her new husband and the drug lord who brought them here all seem to have Chinese names, and I feel like somehow this is all supposed to be related to the Vietnam war. Also I'm pretty sure none of the actors in this episode are Thai. I... okay, Miami Vice. Not your best look.

The episode opens on what is apparently supposed to be a flashback to Thailand (but is definitely just Miami) set to Catch the Wind, but not the Donovan version. Castillo is in a speedo and Joan Chen is wet. It's extremely unclear that it's a flashback.

Crockett and Tubbs show up at Castillo's house and Tubbs examines his statue. Castillo explains what's going on and. And. And I'm gonna get into some Old Skool Fandom(TM) heresy here, but: I do not understand Castillo/Crockett when Castillo/Tubbs is right there. Sonny asks about how they can help transactionally ("you've done stuff for us before, we should do stuff for you"): Rico switches to Spanish and asks for Martin to let them in. Tubbs spends the whole episode with his eyes glued to Castillo, and is the one who notices when something is wrong first every time. Sonny barks at Castillo's enemies; Rico waits beside him, gently and persistently trying to get him to open up. Rico drives this whole episode, with Castillo sitting shotgun-- poor Sonny is relegated to the back. Tubbs is 100% ready for this to be Scary Boss Gets Tender With His One Employee Who Gives Him Space to Be Vulnerable and Sonny is still stuck on "the US government is corrupt sometimes."

Castillo tells Sonny and Rico to "call next time" before they show up at his house; they laugh as if he is making a joke. I do not think he is making a joke.

John Santucci is here as a corrupt official and he talks openly about how basically he's in charge of the flow of opium into poor urban communities in the US, and Sonny gets his 10-mile predator stare on. After Dale (Santucci) leaves, Crockett and Tubbs directly confirm with Castillo: so he's an American federal agent who is doing drug crime for profit? Also Miami Vice was just about speedboats and shoulderpads, right

Following up on that, when Castillo meets with Lao Li, the Thai drug lord who Dale is working with, Lao Li basically smiles and says he's not a criminal, just a capitalist, and that he's here to retire in Miami. But it's not political or anything

Of course they undercut this with Castillo saying something like "no it's not, it's Southeast Asia" when C&T say the whole drug thing is "nuts," and it's like. Really, Castillo? You think the problem is the region where economic circumstances created by the US necessitate the sale of drugs to the US? And not the US?

Peter Kwong is here as the shitty teen(?) grandson of the drug lord and there's a scene where he and another grandson literally snicker about how they're going to do SO much crime when Lao Li is like "no one do crime plz"

Castillo is positioned as having an unshakeable sense of duty and loyalty and honor, but when it comes down to it, his code of honor is not the code of honor he claims to be bound to. His sense of duty and the rules he follows are, in fact, rules he follows to the letter-- but they're personal, not societal. He tells Sonny he is a police officer and that he would not do vigilante justice, and then has an entire family and all their associates, including children, put under 24 hour police surveillance because he thinks maybe one of them might do crime eventually. He has nothing to actually get Lao Li arrested for, so he carefully manufactures a situation where Lao Li's hand is forced into killing. What Castillo says (and he doesn't generally say a lot) and does often don't match up, but he's incredibly forceful and convincing. Lao Li recognizes this-- he points out that they're much the same and that he shares great respect for him-- but it's very easy as an audience to be convinced that Castillo is significantly less morally grey than he is. He is absolutely loyal and bound to a code of honor-- but it's the code of honor of a gangster, not the law.

Lao Li definitely tries to play the "maybe this could be an enemies to lovers story wink wink" at the end there and Castillo is like "enemies is good"

My stunning wife Joan Chen is the most beautiful woman on earth and Castillo should've just been like "do you want two husbands." I think Ma Sek would've been into it. And maybe then he wouldn't have gotten involved in crime and Heart of the Night (in which both his actor and Joan Chen are replaced anyway-- Ma Sek's actor is literally replaced with James Saito who plays a different character in this fucking episode) wouldn't have happened