#john heard

Boy is there more going on with this one that it looks like on the surface, so prepared for a long one! The first half of Season 2 of Vice is basically all classics, and then after the halfway mark, there's a bit of a shift to Cool On The Surface But Nonsense In the Middle Vibes Episodes, where it seems like the staff have kind of bought into their own hype. Sure, Vice is a show that relies heavily on its vibes, but those vibes are supposed to enhance the storytelling, not be the storytelling. Coming on the heels of the meandering, vibes-over-coherency Definitely Miami and Yankee Dollar, I had misremembered One Way Ticket as another "too cool for plot" episode, but it's a solid, character-driven effort with a lot of interesting societal and interpersonal meat.

Interestingly, this is one of only three Vice episodes written and directed by the same person; this one is helmed by Craig Bolotin, and I suspect that consistency of purpose with the writing and directing might be part of why it feels as solid as it is. (Although, the other two-- Stone's War and The Afternoon Plane-- both written and directed by David Jackson, certainly don't fare as well on that front, so maybe not!)

We open on an incredibly 80's wedding, replete with dresses that look like they're made of tinfoil and so, so much Big Hair.

Sonny and Rico are in attendance, sitting side by side. We learn shortly that the wedding is for someone Sonny knows and Rico does not, which means that Rico is abso-fucking-lutely there as Sonny's plus one.

I'm of the opinion that One Way Ticket is the point of a relationship upgrade for the pair of them, especially given their behavior in the last few outings leading up to this one. (See how in sync they are in Back in the World, Rico's weird possessiveness in Phil the Shill, the Public Horny Foreplay Talk and incredibly heartfelt "head and heart/please come back alive" conversation in Definitely Miami, and uh. Last week's "I am at work and I want to fuck you" threesome invitation in Yankee Dollar.)

A man in a suit that brings "Joker" to mind dons a Spirit Halloween wig and moustache and pretends to be a waiter

Jan Hammer is the DJ for this wedding (really)

After the ceremony, Sonny and Rico hover awkwardly at the edges; Rico, despite being the outsider at this wedding, gently insists that Sonny cannot leave until he says goodbye to his friend. Sonny goes to speak with the father of the bride, Richard, who is surprised to hear they're leaving early; Sonny looks incredibly awkward and Rico makes a joking excuse to get them off the hook.

Rico is in full Sonny-protective mode this episode, but not in the brittle, "oh god if I don't intervene Sonny will implode" way that he'll shift into in Season 3. Rather, it is gentle, honest, and familiar-- his behavior is spousal rather than "unlicensed therapist attempting to prevent disaster and not even getting paid for it."

His excuse-- "Can't have too good a time. Everyone back at the monastery gets jealous" is the right balance of genuine and cute, but a man we have not been introduced to yet watches him and Sonny with a look of pain and intense melancholy. Noticeably, the camera cuts to this man right as Rico says the word "jealous."

Two bridesmaids drag Robert's away and the Very Sad Man steps closer and asks, "How are ya', Crockett?" Sonny gives him a deeply bitchy look, says nothing, and leaves. Rico, following Sonny's lead, looks the man up and down with disdain and does the same.

The fake waiter kills Assistant DA Richard Langley by firing indiscriminately into the wedding party; he escapes, and we next see Sonny looking forlorn and shellshocked in front of a wedding cake with evidence tape around it.

The Sad Man from before approaches again and asks if Sonny could use any help; Sonny declines and heavily implies that The Sad Man got someone named Grainy killed in front of him. Rico shows up behind the Sad Man and the Sad Man, on the border of tears, complains that Sonny's "partner has great timing" and departs.

I cannot overstate the extent to which Thurmon, played by John Heard, looks like he's about to erupt into a wet pitiful crying jag. You could argue it's because of the man who just died in front of them, but.... he didn't not look like he was going to cry before the shooting, too. Whatever his relationship is or was to Sonny in the past, he is clearly incredibly upset about it, and wants to repair whatever was broken, whereas Sonny is just angry.

It makes no statistical sense that Sonny has so many traumatized needy ex boyfriends, but goddamn, he just fucking collects them, doesn't he? Every self-hating, self-destructive closet case in Miami is in love with Sonny Crockett, and Sonny "King of Closet Cases" Crockett is not remotely equipped to deal with that.

Rico gets down on his knees crouches beside Sonny and asks if he can fill him in. Sonny takes a beat and then answers, fully and honestly. As with other post-Bushido episodes, they are totally on the same page-- this is not Evan, this is not Buddies-- Rico doesn't need to pry, and Sonny just tells him without getting defensive.

Grainy, it turns out, was a rookie who had been partnered up with Sonny; on his first week under, he was shot and bled out in Sonny's arms. (What is Sonny's hit rate for dead partners, here...?) Sonny arrested the shooter, but Thurmon, a lawyer, defended the shooter and a mistrial was declared.

Rico suggests they leave the wedding, and Sonny agrees, still on the same wavelength. Rico now looks like he is going to cry, and he pats Sonny on the arm once, thinks a moment, and pats him again for good measure.

Also, I think this might be the first instance of Rico calling Sonny "Sun" (as a shortening of Sonny, obviously, but he's not calling him "Son" like "my dear son Jimmy") as a nickname, which is cute as hell

In one of the only scenes featuring the rest of Vice Squad, we learn that the murdered DA was pretty much universally beloved; I note this mostly because, despite being given such a tiny sliver of the episode to work with, the cast does an absolutely amazing job of selling that idea. Each character is sitting with this sorrow in their own way, and the scene reads as emotionally completely real. You can surmise what each detective's relationship was with this guy we met for 30 seconds, and you buy everyone's hurt and disgust as genuine.

Larry still has his Bad Hat from the previous episode

I can't recall if the various French crime syndicate folks in this one are supposed to be France-French or Quebec-French but boy do they all have Quebecois accents

The shooter from the wedding-- Phillippe Sagot-- has a ridiculously low, gruff voice that does not match his face at all. He threatens a man named Marcel with a fork, and Stan and Larry arrest him and taunt him about being French.

Sagot, who was arrested for possession, not murder or being a suspect (at this point they have no connection between him and Langley), is a blithering idiot and mentions to his lawyer--Thurmond-- that something people like Langley just get shot. Bro. He wasn't talking to you about Langley! He mentions, also, that "twins are bad luck," about the two girls who were shot, and Thurmond realizes this guy had to have been at the wedding, because the papers never mentioned that the deceased girls were twins.

Also I have some concerns about the staff of the Miami Standard.

Headline: "Chief Prosecutor Richard Langley Murdered" /Immediately Beneath that: "Planners Outline Zoning Purposes" /Beneath that Again: "23 Killed, 35 homes destroyed, [X]51 damaged" / Presumable Other Article Headline: "Safety System Failed"

Why did zoning kill so many people

Thurmond goes to see Jean Faber, the French crime lord Langley was in the process of taking down, with the intention of questioning him about Sagot.

Jean, who is walking his daughter around a paddock on her horse, is equal parts sleazy and charming. He tells Marcy that "Popcorn wants you to tell him what to do, just like all your future boyfriends," and then greets Larry Thurmond.

There is some amount of clear friendship and intimacy between Jean and Larry T.; Marcy knows Thurmond and greets him, and he calls her "princess," and then Jean tells Thurmond how happy he is to see him and mentions he doesn't come back often enough anymore. When he clasps Larry T. around the shoulder, you get the sense that he is truly and genuinely fond of him-- he gives him a once over and then slides in with their faces parallel, almost like he's going to kiss him.

My tinfoil hat theory: the reason Larry T. is working for a mobster even though he knows it's wrong is because he and said mobster are (or perhaps were) Very Special Friends. Unfortunately, while Jean did not call for the killing of Langley, he also insists that Thurmond defend Sagot anyway despite Thurmond's insistence that he is quitting being his lawyer. Jean speaks to him through the bars of the paddock, leaving Thurmond quite literally caged as he walks away.

The next morning, Rico comes in and notes that Sonny is in early; he asks if Sonny slept at all last night. Sonny waxes philosophical about what a good man Langley was, and how screwed up everything is, and Rico asks him, "You get any breakfast?"

Talking to the Vice Discord folks, I mentioned how sweet this was, and the illustrious @wanderosed summed it up best-- these kinds of questions are relationship markers. "Are you taking care of yourself?" is one of the ways we say "I love you," especially to people we consider part of our families/households.

Rico tells Sonny they have a briefing, and Sonny asks if he can handle it-- this, like his immediate disclosure about Grainy, is a sign of how high Sonny's trust in Rico is right now. He would not have asked Rico to be the mouthpiece for what he witnessed about a friend's death at an earlier point in the series. Rico says yes, if he has to, but wants to know what he should say if Castillo asks after Sonny specifically. Sonny, a paragon of mental health, tells his partner to tell his boss that he went "to his therapist."

His therapist is his gun, y'all.

I cannot begin to describe how much I want Thurmond's car, a (genuine, unlikely Sonny's car) Ferrari Daytona in schoolbus yellow

We get nearly a minute and a half of Thurmond flying an airplane and then another nearly minute and a half of Sonny at the gun range and Thurmond flying interspersed, because a) someone needed to justify the cost of filming the airplane, and b) they are both so, so mentally healthy

I love Tommy (played by Annie Golden of Hair fame) and her mechanic business so much; she is such a clearly sketched and seemingly perfectly integrated into Vice sort of character that it feels like this must be a full-on recurring role and not one of her two appearances. If you asked me off-hand how many episodes Tommy was in, I'd probably have said at least six. It's just this one and Florence Italy! She mentions that a "high price lawyer" is also getting his car fixed, and that she's charging him more than Sonny.

Rico's level of Sonny-watching in One Way Ticket is at like a 12/10, and he just keeps looking at Sonny with such goddamn tenderness, ugh

Sonny gets an anonymous call on his car phone that the killer was Phillippe Sagot, and Tommy's detail from before about the lawyer becomes clear-- Thurmond must've seen Sonny's car at Tommy's and realized he would be able to send a message to him that way without revealing himself. Sonny and Rico tell Castillo what they learned, and Rico's eyes remained absolutely glued to Sonny throughout. After they leave Castillo's office, Rico, always the one who picks up on the details in their case files, tells Sonny that Thurmond is Sagot's lawyer.

Also can I just say. No one in this episode pronounces Sagot the same way. At all. I was convinced it was Segaux/Ségault/etc. (or the distinctly non-French Saigo) for most of the time I was watching it, and one guy straight up Eastern-European-ifies him and calls him Zsergo. "Sagot" would not have been in the running for me based only on pronunciation.

I need Zito's shirt

Thurmond visits his ex-wife and strongly implies to her that he's going to die, and also it is made clear that she is aware of the Sonny/Thurmond drama.

Did they get divorced because she was like "you are in love with that cop who hates you, sweetheart"

Sagot, concerned that fellow Faber employee Marcel might've snitched on him, kills Marcel in the shower in a very well filmed and surprisingly bloody sequence that leads to a wonderful graphic match between the architectural glass in his bathroom and the architectural glass in Castillo's office

Once again Rico's eyes are on Sonny, this time quiet and surreptitious

Jean Faber tells another goon to kill Sagot; Thurmond goes flying again; Stan and Trudy (where has Gina gone since the opening of this episode?) chase Sagot down; looking sweaty and sad, Thurmond appears to purposefully crash his airplane

There's a moment where Rico says something to Trudy, and a third unseen character says something too muffled to make out; Trudy reacts with "keep dreaming," and Rico laughs hysterically-- I wish I could figure out what was being said, but alas

They trace a second call from the anonymous tipster to an apartment building where the landlord, a genuine Crazy Cat Lady, lets Sonny and Rico in. The woman abruptly hands Sonny a whole ass cat like it's a bag of fries, and Sonny briefly appears distressed by this until Rico presses one finger to his lips, brings the same finger to the kitty and scritches her with it, and then gestures between Sonny and the kitty with his chin coquettishly tucked and a little smirk on his face. Sonny starts smiling as soon as Rico transfers his little fingertip-kiss to the cat, and quietly laughs as Rico mouths something inaudible to him over the cat while he gestures between them.

They're dating, y'all

Unfortunately, the trace is a bust; the hotel room has no tipster in it, just a recording hooked up to a phone

The varying types and levels of despondency here is really something

Also. KNOCK

Sonny points out that if Sagot leaves the country, he's gone for good and they'll lose whatever evidence they have for the case, and Castillo simply says, "then he's gone," which is to say, ah, that's the Castillo we know, versus that weird "made up charges are good, actually" imposter from the end of Yankee Dollar

There's a chase sequence where the Daytona follows Sagot's speedboat (yes, the car chases the boat), which sounds like it should be really stupid, but which in practice feels like a persistence predator slowly stalking its prey-- he cannot get away from them, even though they should be at a disadvantage

Tommy, cooking fish in her garage, tells Sonny and Rico that all she'll be eating for a week is "trout and white wine." Sonny asks if anything weird happened with regards to the owner of Thurmond's car, and Tommy says, pointedly to Sonny, that yeah, the owner paid in full up front; Sonny, a man on a public employee salary trying to get service done on a supercar, rolls his eyes

It turns out Thurmond left a package for Sonny and Rico in his car, with everything that could convict Faber; Rico jumps to the conclusion that that means he's alive (and like, he's right) but it's a weird conclusion to jump to because Thurmond easily could've set that up before he died

What is Thurmond's ex-wife's blouse.... doing

Why does it have a whole normal collar and a chest hole

Based on his wife waxing philosophical about the "last time Larry was happy," Sonny and Rico go to Rum Cay and stumble upon Thurmond, who is fishing

Despite having everything they need to convict Faber, Sonny tells Thurmond that he has to come back with them and testify. Very specifically, he says, "you know what they say in law school: nothing beats live testimony," which is fascinating, because as a lawyer, Thurmond would certainly know the burden of evidence required for conviction better than Sonny-- which is to say, it is very clear that Sonny is only pressuring Thurmond to return with them as a form of punishment. He's still angry at him and feels that Thurmond hasn't suffered appropriate consequences for what he's done.

Thurmond doesn't really argue; he explains that basically, yeah, he knows he fucked up and he has hated himself for it, and that he always knew Sonny was a good man, and that he'll go with them if they need him to. He resigns himself to whatever his fate is.

For one brief moment, Sonny flares up with anger again, asking Thurmond if he thinks this "makes them even," and Thurmond says no, it was just "the best I had to offer." Sonny takes a beat, puts his sunglasses on, looks off to the side, sighs, and forgives Thurmond the only way he can, giving us the absolutely incredible freeze frame ending of "ah, to hell with it. You wanna be dead? Bang. You're dead," as he points at Thurmond with his hand imitating a gun. If Thurmond is willing to give up everything and go into hiding to help convict Faber-- to live as a dead man-- Sonny is going to let him.

This is probably one of the most upbeat Vice episode endings-- there is a real likelihood they'll convict Sagot and Faber, a witness does not end up getting badgered into testifying against people who will probably kill them, Sonny and one of his troubled ex-friends are parting on very nearly decent terms, and Sonny is given a reason to believe that maybe not everyone and everything is so bad as it might seem, and that people who have made the wrong choices can turn around and choose what is moral and ethical again. Of course, much like in The Home Invaders, another episode with a surprisingly positive ending, this kind of "win" can seemingly only be pulled off by way of divestiture from the system-- Malone retires, and Thurmond fakes his own death.

I wonder if that could be foreshadowing or something