Episode: Season
Three, Episode Nineteen: “Red Tape”
Original airdate:
March 13, 1987
Directed by:
Gabrielle Beaumont
Teleplay by:
Jonathan Polanksy
Story by: Dennis
Cooper
Summary:
While serving a routine search warrant, young hotshot
detective Eddie Trumbull (a baby-faced Viggo Mortensen(!) in a blink-and-miss-him
role) is killed in an explosion, the latest in a series of lethal boobytraps specifically
targeting cops. Eddie’s distraught partner, Bobby Diaz (Lou Diamond Phillips,
awesome), vows to seek vengeance for his murder.
Tubbs, who was almost caught in the blast that killed Eddie,
quits the force in a shouty huff, then makes a big show of being desperate for
quick cash. This is, of course, turns out to be all part of a furtive
undercover Vice operation: Tubbs is secretly trying to ferret out the source of
a leak within the police department. The mole turns out to be one Detective
MacIntyre (Scott Plank), who, with the aid of his Justice Department girlfriend
Vicky (four-time Oscar nominee Annette Bening), has been selling information
about search warrants to criminals.
MacIntyre soon approaches Tubbs and offers him quick cash in
exchange for all of Vice’s files on a dangerous crime lord named Avila (Michael O’Gorman).
Tubbs plays along with MacIntyre’s scheme, but Diaz catches him in the process
of stealing Avila ’s
files. Suspecting that Tubbs is the mole, Diaz trails him to a meeting with
MacIntyre and Avila ,
then tries to kill him to avenge Eddie’s death. Diaz is shot and killed by Avila ’s bodyguards. Rather
than face arrest for his role in the deaths of several police officers,
MacIntyre shoots himself.
Iconic Moments:
Structurally, this is a deeply—and almost fatally—flawed
episode: For three-fourths of the episode, the fact that Tubbs is secretly
working undercover is (needlessly) hidden from viewers. Seeing Tubbs act in a
very out-of-character manner—he’s shouty and bullying and hysterical, he’s
corrupt, he’s a big old jerk to his Vice coworkers—gets tedious very fast: We know this isn’t how Tubbs behaves, so obviously
he’s undercover, and it’s frustrating and a wee bit insulting that the episode
tries to hide that knowledge from us for so long. You know what does
work about this episode? Lou Diamond Phillips. His Diaz is all anger and energy
and heartbreak and passion, paired with long, long legs and a great thatch of
floppy hair. In this very early role, the kid is mesmerizing.
Moments of Castillo
Badassery:
Castillo doesn’t have too much to do, though he does share a
nice scene with a grief-stricken Diaz. A year later, Edward James Olmos and Lou
Diamond Phillips would reunite on the big screen for Stand and Deliver, which earned Olmos a much-deserved Oscar
nomination.
It’s All in the
Details:
Switek, who thus far in the series has mostly served as
comic relief, has a good scene where he tries to talk Tubbs out of quitting the
force. In a rare serious moment, Switek shares with Tubbs a little of the deep
grief he’s been feeling over the recent murder of his partner, Zito.
In a refreshing change of pace from their usual undercover
roles as hookers, Gina and Trudy go undercover as paramedics:
Sign of the Times:
Vicky explains to a coworker why she’s working through her
lunch break: “I just want to use the WATS line.” WATS—wide area telephone service—lines were the earliest form of fixed-rate long distance; if you worked
for a company with a WATS line, you could make free long-distance calls. Back
in the eighties, when long-distance phone calls were ridiculously expensive,
this was kind of a big deal.
Music Notes:
Lou Diamond Phillips goes down in a hail of bullets and dies
in Tubbs’s arms while “Closer to Heaven” by The Alan Parsons Project plays.
Another Alan Parsons Project track, “Money Talks”, is also used. In addition, the
episode features two tracks from Rupert Hine’s conceptual project Thinkman: “Best
Adventures” and “The Formula”.
Rating:
It’s not a great episode, but hell, Lou Diamond Phillips is
worth at least three flamingos on his own.
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