MIAMI VICE: Best Episode – Out Where the Buses Don’t Run

When we hear the title Miami Vice, what instantly comes to mind is pastel aesthetics, music-video-style editing set to the rhythm of top radio hits, and a black Ferrari Daytona gliding through the lamp-lit streets of the nighttime city. There are few titles in television history with a style as distinctive as Miami Vice—few shows that so profoundly shaped both the fashion of their time and pop culture’s image of it. And although all the key elements of the series’ style crystallized in the pilot episode, the third episode of the second season—Out Where the Buses Don’t Run—is still most often cited as the best installment of Crockett and Tubbs’ adventures.

Neo-noir in Glamorous Style

By the time this episode aired, viewers were already well acquainted with the world created by Anthony Yerkovich and Michael Mann. We knew the titular cops, Sonny Crockett and Rico Tubbs, and their police colleagues, led by the taciturn Lieutenant Castillo. We were also familiar with the show’s aesthetic and tone—a dark neo-noir drenched in 1980s extravagance. And we knew not to expect happy endings in screen-Miami—victories against the criminal underworld often came at a cost to the heroes.

Out Where the Buses Don’t Run seemingly follows that established formula. The driving force of the plot is Hank Weldon—a retired cop trying to convince Crockett and Tubbs that a long-absent drug dealer, Tony Arcaro, has returned to Miami. Weldon had unsuccessfully tried to put Arcaro behind bars years earlier. The protagonists approach the news with skepticism—Weldon is obsessed with the criminal, an obsession that drove him to madness and got him expelled from the force.

This episode is above all further proof of the creators’ incredible sense of style in storytelling. It’s evident from the opening scene—a typical MTV-style sequence where a local dealer glides by on roller skates to the sound of The Who’s Baba O’Riley. It reveals Miami Vice’s characteristic aesthetic dichotomy—gritty police work and the heroes’ psychological dilemmas juxtaposed with shameless visual excess. This contrast is even more evident in the raid on the drug dealers’ hideout, set against the photogenic backdrop of Biscayne Bay, with eye-catching details—waves crashing against the heroes’ speedboat, bullets splintering wooden structures, bodies dramatically falling into the water. Every element feels emblematic of the show’s style—whether we’re in a dimly lit precinct or an abandoned building lit by flashing police lights.

This tonal dissonance between seriousness and exaggeration is most evident in the character of Hank Weldon. On the surface, he’s larger than life—a class clown who jokes at every turn and serves as comic relief. But he’s also a man broken by life, blinded by his obsession with Tony Arcaro, and hiding a deep-seated fury at the system he once served. Weldon’s concealed tragedy erupts in the episode’s moving finale.

The Iconic Final Scene

The creators of Miami Vice repeatedly tried to recreate the iconic scene from the pilot episode, where Crockett’s Ferrari raced through nighttime Miami to In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins. The best example of this comes in the climactic sequence of Out Where the Buses Don’t Run, set to the elegiac Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits. The music perfectly builds up to the episode’s shocking conclusion—Crockett and Tubbs enter an abandoned building and discover the mummified corpse of Tony Arcaro, walled up inside.

It turns out that the unhinged Weldon killed the dealer when legal means failed to bring him to justice. The former cop drops his clownish mask and becomes a cautionary figure for Crockett and Tubbs—a symbol of the professional and personal burnout that the heroes will face until the end of the series. Equally important is Weldon’s former partner, Marty Lang, who helped him hide the murdered criminal’s body. He delivers the most memorable line of the episode—when asked why he helped Weldon, he simply replies, “He was my partner.”

The final sequence is the main reason Out Where the Buses Don’t Run is considered one of the best Miami Vice episodes. Though the series had previously shown its heroes losing battles against criminals, few moments hit as hard. It’s also a scene that foreshadows the show’s later themes—burnout, systemic corruption, and the futility of the war on crime—which eventually lead Crockett and Tubbs to resign from the force in the final episode.