User Reviews

Saw this episode for the first time since the 80's (!)

It just dragged me in because I could only vaguely remember how it all fits together... what a treat with a large screen TV & 5.1 sound. All the little bits that made this show a winner back in the day are here:

Music zeroed in to each sequence

Story basics laid, built on previous character actions

Suspense (need I say more ? )

Color of night in Miami

and more......

Yeah I know that picking the episode apart is easy 30 years later (a dirt bike in Miami??) but that last 7 minutes are IT. View it just for what it is: a cop show episode... sit back & let it swallow you up, you'll 'get' it. /RZ

Spoilers: A darker and grittier episode than a lot of the previous ones, set almost entirely at night, "Little Miss Dangerous" nevertheless boasts several of the elements that made Vice one of the defining aspects of '80s culture. Fiona guest stars as the winsome titular character, a prostitute/dancer-cum-serial murderess. From start to finish, she does a top-notch job of mixing sexy, street-smart, childlike, wounded, vulnerable, and deadly. Philip Michael Thomas gives a low-key, sensitive performance as Tubbs sets out to save Jackie (Fiona) from the seedy sex-club world she inhabits, unaware that she's the serial killer for whom the police are frantically searching. Larry Joshua as Cat--murder suspect, Jackie's dance partner, and her boyfriend and would-be husband--is a tough guy who's genuinely in love with her and willing to do literally anything for her. He gets a nice rock video sequence as he wanders Miami's back streets by night in search of Jackie. Don Johnson's best moment comes when Crockett, also showing a sensitive and even gentlemanly side, charms a bag lady who has crucial information. The rest of the Vice crew is largely in the background for most of the episode.

The gist of the episode is that the Vice crew are on a desperate hunt for a serial killer of prostitutes' tricks. Initially suspecting Cat, they overlook Jackie as just another prostitute--all except Tubbs, who's troubled by her youth and sets out to help her. He sees in her a reminder of some vaguely-described events he lived through in New York that ended badly for the girls in question (regrettably, we never learn the details). The eighteen-year-old Jackie has clearly been psychologically damaged by being handed around and perhaps unloved for the whole of her childhood. At one point she matter-of-factly declares herself unworthy of being loved, and twice she fatalistically describes herself as "just a physical substitute" for what her foster families and her tricks really want. While we know from the outset that she's a killer, we can't help--don't want to help--feeling for her, just as Tubbs does. As Tubbs reaches out to Jackie, she mistakes his attention and his attempts to rehabilitate her for romantic love and opens up to him, seeking love and a personal connection for perhaps the first time in her life. When Tubbs gently parries her sexual advances, her feelings of rejection set the episode's final tragedy in motion.

The music is perfectly suited to the episode, even by Vice standards, and fits the subtleties of the story, which has some masterful touches. The opening scene, in which we see Jackie vamping a handcuffed Cat during their on-stage act, is played to Ted Nugent's hard-edged "Little Miss Dangerous" (from whence the episode's title is taken, duh). The music (also restated later in the episode) is paired to the opening sequence like a fine wine to an exquisite dinner; together, they deftly set up Jackie's character and tell you much of what you need to know about her. This opening sequence also foreshadows the final scene, which consists of some of the best five minutes in the entire Vice canon, as Jackie drugs Tubbs, then handcuffs him to his safe house (ironically) bed. As Crockett, having leaned Jackie's secret, races to save Tubbs in a classic but abbreviated Ferrari-by-night scene (with a twist at the end), Jackie begins her murder ritual, which involves flames, drawings produced by her tortured mind, disrobing, and Tubbs's revolver, all to Public Image Ltd.'s haunting "The Order of Death," with its lyrics "This is what you want . . . this is what you get . . ." repeating hypnotically throughout the sequence. (This song goes so well with the scene that it's as if it was written just for Vice. Jan Hammer patterns some of the episode's incidental music after the song--a nice touch.) All of this comes together with utter perfection--you'll not find a better, or more shattering, five minutes in the whole series. It just doesn't get any better than this. I was shattered when I first saw it at first airing in 1986, and it's just as powerful for me today.

If you're a Vice fan, you're sure to love this episode. If you're not a fan but looking to be introduced to the show, this might be a good one to try out. You won't be disappointed.

Little Miss Dangerous left an impression on me when I was younger! Vice is right for what Crockett and Tubbs swim in with the Little Miss Dangerous episode. The Vice squad is dealing with the sleaze with sex acts at a location called Sex World, with the Crayon killer on the prowl. A serial and nihilistic direction style with gritty location, characters, gritty lighting, flames, fire and art work with an impression of a hellish inferno. The characters are warped, used up, and not wanting to be saved. Crockett and Tubbs investigate killings of johns and Tubbs befriends a childlike young women with a twisted boyfriend. The director creates grit, tension of a disastrous slow count down. The count down starts as Crockett suspects the boyfriend to be the killer, and finds the truth about the Miss Dangerous and tries to save Tubbs before it's too late. As the viewer watches the derailment, the last act sets in motion a warped killer dark/tragic ending! The ending leaves a bleak impression.

I keep thinking that there must be at least one dud episode in the season but if there is I haven't got to it yet. This one is another top episode which takes a break from the usual tales of drug dealing to give us a story of prostitution and murder.

Several men who have been visiting prostitutes have been found murdered and while out interviewing the local prostitutes Tubbs feels sorry for young and beautiful Jackie and tries to help her, not knowing that she is the killer. Initially Jackie's boyfriend is the prime suspect but is cleared when another murder takes place while he being observed by the police.

It was nice to have a break from drug smuggling stories and Fiona and Larry Joshua were great as Jackie and her boy friend, she made her character sympathetic even though we knew she was a murderer.

They don't make a soap strong enough to wash the layer of sleaze this episode left on me. Set in and around a strip club and focusing on an underage dancer/prostitute/serial killer (yes, you read that correctly), "Little Miss Dangerous" is perhaps a bit too ambitious for its own good. The serial killer aspect in particular just feels like one too many cards that ultimately send the house tumbling down.

On the plus side, we get a Tubbs-centric episode, and Philip Michael Thomas is really good here, reminding us that he can indeed carry an episode on his own. Johnson plays sidekick in this one and shows a lighter side of the often brooding Crockett that's really refreshing. But even with a sledgehammer to the heart ending, "Little Miss Dangerous" is simply spinning too many dramatic plates here.