More Nearly Equal: Crockett and Tubbs on "Miami Vice"

In The Nature of Prejudice, Gordon Allport (1954/1979) proclaimed, “Prejudice (unless deeply rooted in the character structure of the individual) may be reduced by equal status contact between majority and minority groups in the pursuit of common goals” (p. 281). If I had to pick one episode from one classic television series that provides the clearest (albeit fictitious) support for Allport’s “equal status contact” hypothesis, then my choice would be the two-hour pilot episode (i.e., “Brother’s Keeper”) from Miami Vice (see also Lyons, 2010).

Written by Anthony Yerkovich, the episode chronicles the first case that pairs the two main protagonists—namely, European-descent James “Sonny” Crockett (portrayed by Don Johnson) and African/Latinx-descent Ricardo “Rico” Tubbs (portrayed by Philip Michael Thomas)—as reluctant partners who gradually gain each other’s respect and trust (Trutnau, 2005). Halfway through the episode, as the case appears to be falling apart, Tubbs declares, “You need me, Crockett”—a stance that leads Crockett to acknowledge that a “temporary working relationship” may be in order (see Sanders, 2010).

Although the primary villain eludes their grasp at the end of the pilot episode, Crockett and Tubbs eventually kill the villain and his henchmen in a stylish-yet-graphic shootout, several episodes later (i.e., “Calderone’s Demise”; Butler, 2010). This climactic scene seamlessly weaves together the cinematography of “pretty violence” (a common point of criticism) with the subject matter of interethnic friendship (a not-so-common point of praise) in a manner that helps to set Vice apart from every police series that preceded it on American network television (Sepinwall & Seitz, 2016).

I hasten to add that some commentators (e.g., Arnett, 2007) have contended that the real success of Vice lay in its combination of aesthetic innovations and sociocultural traditions; and other commentators (e.g., Stratton, 2009) have concluded that Vice is overtly racist, especially considering the show’s increasing prioritization of Crockett over Tubbs during the course of five seasons. Notwithstanding the Reagan-era conservatism within which Vice was created and sustained, I would argue that the Crockett-Tubbs relationship was more nearly equal than were the other interethnic relationships that viewers typically encountered in cop shows within the United States (see Kellner, 1995/2000).

As Vin Diesel and associates prepare to launch a new version of Vice in 2020, I wonder whether the new version will attempt to recapture the “equal status contact” theme that marked the initial episode of the original series. In many respects, the world has changed dramatically since Allport (1954/1979) proposed the development of interethnic friendship as a means toward improving intergroup relations in the U.S. (Shelton & Richeson, 2015).

Furthermore, the data concerning the presumably beneficial effects of “equal status contact” on interethnic relations in real life are not nearly as consistent as one might expect (Jones, 1997). By the same token, given that U.S. interethnic relations appear to be getting worse (due partly to the polarizing words and actions of President Donald Trump, according to a majority of Americans; Horowitz, Brown, & Cox, 2019), perhaps the timing for a revival of Vice—including the nuances of the Crockett-Tubbs friendship—is just about right for the American viewing public.