Steven Spielberg’s “Empire of the Sun,” an “American Playhouse” broadcast of John Guare’s Tony Award-winning masterpiece “The House of Blue Leaves,” and a hilariously high-energy performance on a season 4 episode of “Miami Vice.”
When the episode in question, “Amen… Send Money,” aired on NBC on October 2, 1987, “Miami Vice” was struggling in the Nielsen ratings. The writing, performances, and directing were still miles above most shows on network television. Major character actors were still booking roles on the show — indeed, the aforementioned episode featured heavy-hitting portrayals of rival, corrupt televangelists from Brian Dennehy and James Tolkan (best known as the slacker-hating Vice Principal Strickland from “Back to the Future”). But the once widely emulated fashions of Don Johnson (Sonny Crockett) and Philip Michael Thomas (Ricardo Tubbs) had lost their luminous luster. Again, the writing was still superb, but the show had been sold on its style, and the majority of the show’s viewership had grown tired of the eye candy.
So it helped when the series played to its pulp strengths and found an audaciously talented actor who could walk on and try to crack the seen-everything facade of Crockett and Tubbs. Ben Stiller gave it his all in his episode of “Miami Vice” (a show without which we would not have “The Golden Girls”).
