Vice Detectives Sonny Crockett (Don Johnson) and Ricardo Tubbs (Philip Micheal Thomas) are on the edge of having their cover blown when they are involved in a hunt for a serial killer.

Written by Jack Richardson, this episode first debuted on 4 March, 1988, and sees Paul Delgado (John Bowman) abducting girls, tying in with his doll fetish, and uses pure cocaine to kill them.

The pressure is on law enforcement to put a stop to it, but also by the drug dealers, as Delgado is drawing far too much attention to them and their works.

Posing as their alter egos Burnett and Cooper, they are pressured into hunting down Delgado, but they can’t bust him without blowing their cover. In fact, they are so far under that they can’t even make contact with the rest of the team.

Music includes Capricho Arabe by Francisco Tarrega, Billy Idol’s Sweet Sixteen, and Aerosmith’s Rag Doll.

It’s rather bothersome that Thomas isn’t given a lot to do in terms of dialogue, Johnson’s character gets the lion share, and that’s too bad, because the show works best when they are balanced.

Still, it ends up being a pretty solid episode, racing towards a climax that could expose the detectives if they can’t find a way out. Both characters walk the line to the edge, as they and a number of dealers hunt for leads, information, and suspects.

This one is a little dark, and pretty damned enjoyable, it also has a pretty solid twist part way through the episode. But Tubbs should have been given more to do than just stand around and spout the occasional line.

Hell Hath No Fury is penned by Micheal Duggan from a story by David Black, and is a much better Trudy (Olivia Brown) story than Missing Hours was. It first aired on 11 March, 1988, and deals with subject material that still happens today, including the fact of white privilege.

A convicted rapist, Alan Beaks (Don Harvey)  is about to be released from prison, and one of Trudy’s friends, Ellen (Carla Brothers), his last victim, is traumatized by the thought, and goes so far to hire an assassin in an attempt to kill him.

Beaks on the other hand is using the media to paint himself in the role of victim, and the episode will push Ellen and Trudy to the breaking point. While Trudy does what she can to keep Ellen safe and out of the limelight, Crockett and Tubbs try to run down leads, and find some way to shut down Beaks once and for all, but keep Ellen from breaking the law.

The music of this episode features no outside tunes, just score by Jan Hammer and John Petersen. The guest cast also includes John Micheal Higgins, as a talk show host, wherein he defends Beaks.

This is a solid episode, but I think it would be done differently, and even darker today.

Next week the casework continues on Miami Vice…