On the fifth episode of this podcast’s summer sidebar series on NBC’s crime drama Miami Vice, the writer and podcaster Jeb Lund joins me from Tampa, Florida for a look at the two-season story arc that pitted Bob Balaban against G. Gordon Liddy. Balaban’s Ira Stone, an Army reporter who served with Sonny Crockett in Vietnam, shows up in Miami 10 years later tracking down his sworn enemy, the mysterious drug trafficker turned private militia financier “Captain Real Estate”, played by the Watergate burglar and convicted felon in his acting debut.

Jeb wanted us to add a Season 4 episode to our agenda, The Rising Sun of Death, a sleazy one where Vice goes up against the Yakuza with the help of a Japanese PI who is after the murderous head of the Sumiroshi-gumi clan. This episode also features R. Lee Ermey as a dirty cop and a strip club that plays The Smiths.

These three episodes offer sharp critiques from the left of the treatment of Vietnam Veterans and US military involvement in drug trafficking in Southeast Asia, America’s intervention in Central America and willingness to work with fascists in the global fight against communism, and the political interference that renders law enforcement pointless.

Episodes discussed on this show:

Back in the World - Season 2, Ep 11

Stone’s War - Season 3, Ep 2

The Rising Sun of Death - Season 4, Ep 9

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Music video for Crockett’s Theme - Jan Hammer, 1986