Episode: Season
One, Episode Seven: “No Exit”
Original airdate:
November 9, 1984
Directed by: Actor/director
David Soul, best known as Hutch on Starsky
& Hutch
Story by: Charles
R. Leinenweber
Written by:
Maurice Hurley
Summary:
Crockett and Tubbs are on the trail of notorious arms dealer
Tony Amato (Bruce Willis), who’s looking to unload a supply of stolen
surface-to-air stinger missiles. While Tubbs poses as a prospective weapons buyer,
Crockett keeps Amato’s house under constant secret surveillance. After Crockett
discovers that Amato has been regularly mistreating his wife Rita (Katherine
Borowitz, who, quite awesomely, has been married to John Turturro since 1985),
he reveals his identity to Rita to prevent her from hiring a hitman to off her
husband.
Tubbs and Crockett successfully bust Amato for attempting to
sell the missiles, but the arrest is scuttled by federal agents looking to keep
Amato in place in order to go after his powerful client list. Distraught that
her husband will be free to keep abusing her, a gun-toting Rita shows up at the
courthouse and kills Tony.
Iconic Moments:
Bruce Willis! We’ve got Bruce Willis in his very first credited performance, pre-Moonlighting, pre-Die Hard, pre-stardom. In stark contrast to the kinds of easygoing, wisecracking characters that soon will make him famous (this episode aired in late 1984; Moonlighting will make him a household name by early 1985), Willis plays Amato as a cold, ruthless, humorless dick. It’s a good choice: Amato is downright scary and awful.
Bruce Willis! We’ve got Bruce Willis in his very first credited performance, pre-Moonlighting, pre-Die Hard, pre-stardom. In stark contrast to the kinds of easygoing, wisecracking characters that soon will make him famous (this episode aired in late 1984; Moonlighting will make him a household name by early 1985), Willis plays Amato as a cold, ruthless, humorless dick. It’s a good choice: Amato is downright scary and awful.
Themes:
Vice can’t win: Their clear-cut, solid case against Amato is
effortlessly demolished by the Feds, who have their own agenda. This is bad
news for Vice; it’s catastrophic for poor Rita. We’ll see this sort of thing
happen time and time again on this show.
Moments of Castillo
Badassery:
This is only Castillo’s second appearance on the show—Edward
James Olmos joined the cast in the middle of the first season, replacing
Gregory Sierra’s Lieutenant Rodriguez—but all his soon-to-be iconic character
traits (his grimness, his aura of perpetual sorrow, his reluctance to make eye
contact, his fundamental weirdness)
are already firmly in place.
It’s All in the
Details:
Dig the way Switek bulldozes right into this poor little kid
while discreetly trailing a prospective weapons buyer through the Miami airport.
Also, it was just super
lucky for Vice that the aforementioned weapons buyer happened to look a whole
lot like Tubbs, thus allowing Tubbs to easily saunter in and take his place.
Music Notes:
At some point, pretty much every single Phil Collins song made
its way onto a Miami Vice episode;
this week, it’s “I Don’t Care Anymore”’s turn. Also, while Tony is beating
Rita, Teddy Pendergrass’ soulful, sexy “Stay With Me” plays in the background (ironically,
one hopes).
Rating:
It’s probably a three-flamingo episode, but Bruce Willis
bumps it up an extra flamingo, just for being Bruce Willis.
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