#Miami Vice clips do have triggers for violence and discussing violent actions

[thereismoretomylifethenice]

I’ve had Miami Vice on the brain again, and I’ve finally decided to articulate how the pilot of this 1980s cop show perfectly illustrates WHY Hans betrayal in Frozen just does not work as a story-telling component. Bear with me. There will be spoilers (obviously) for Brother’s Keeper and Frozen. I’m going to make a guess that the Venn diagram between Vice fans and Frozen fans does not have a huge overlap, so a brief summary of the former. The pilot of Miami Vice focuses on two cops, Detective Sonny Crockett, a Vice detective in Miami, and Detective Ricardo Tubbs from Brooklyn, who are separately tracking the same mysterious cartel lord. Crockett wants to bust him because he’s in Miami fueling the drug wars, and Tubbs wants to get him because he orchestrated the murder of Tubbs’s older brother in New York. Hence a partnership is born. (as of August 2023, the whole show is free on Tubi if you want to track it down). A DEA agent named Scotty Wheeler wanders in and out of the pilot. Wheeler is Crockett’s former partner, before he went to work for the Federal government, and his wife and kids are still very good friends with Crockett’s estranged wife and son. Wheeler is also selling information to the drug lord, in return for cash. By the time Crockett learns that Wheeler is the department leak, he has already spent six months on the case, his latest partner was murdered in a car bombing meant for a drug dealer who went rogue from the cartel, the informant he has been working on for a long time gets murdered before he can talk, and Crockett’s professional world and case is on thin, thin ice. (The chaos in his personal life is Crockett’s own doing). When Crockett learns the truth, he goes to confront his friend. I’ve linked the scene for anyone who wants to see it, but let’s just say that it is one of the best ‘betrayal’ scenes I’ve ever watched.  No real spoilers for this part because it’s bloody brilliant. Mind you, this all develops over the course of a roughly 100-minute pilot episode which is about the same as Frozen’s running time. It also highlights the main reason why Hans’s betrayal, thematically, flops beyond the *gasp* moment it provides for first time viewers. In fact, Wheeler’s betrayal gets more and more brutal every time a person watches the pilot, while the Hans one just kind of goes flat after a viewing or two. The key word here is investment. Wheeler is not an active player in much of the pilot. He’s there, doing his job, and he’s clearly friends with Sonny, and the other guys in the Vice department. These relationships are the key. We’re told that Wheeler and Crockett have known each other about ten years, that they were partners, and that Wheeler took a bullet for Crockett at some point. The casual camaraderie between them is what sells it though, and digs the knife in deeper. The first time we meet Wheeler, he’s at Crockett’s house with his family, helping Crockett’s estranged wife throw a birthday party for Billy Crockett… a party that Crockett misses because he is dealing with the car bombing that killed his partner.

Throughout the episode, the two guys joke about old times, make bets on the Miami Dolphins games, and share an easy-going friendship that has already stood a lot of trials. Then, when Crockett confronts Wheeler, he cannot help bringing up all the Christmases and Thanksgivings they have shared, and the family dinners where they brought their wives and kids to each other’s houses. They were friends, and Crockett trusted Wheeler implicitly. When Crockett learns the truth, he hates his friend for what he did. In contrast, there is no history between the Arendelle sisters, and Hans. That is perfectly fine for the kind of story Disney is telling… until you realize that they intend to use this theme of the sisters being angry at Hans as a reoccurring note throughout the shorts and the sequel that occurs three years after the event of the original. When you look at it bluntly, the relationship supporting this reaction involved a cumulative… twelve hours of interaction between Hans and either sister? If that? Anna ran into him before the coronation, and they spent part of the evening together. Then she runs off to find Elsa. Elsa meets him at the party, freaks out, freezes everything, and runs off… then meets him briefly in her ice palace and again in the dungeon. She’s probably only spent an hour with the dude while Anna spent a few hours tops. Elsa being mad at him for almost killing her sister and her is understandable, as is booting his butt back to his own country. Still vehemently loathing this guy three years later, to the point she won’t even look at a random snow sculpture of him, but destroys it instantly is… a bit excessive. What he did was horrible… but to be that angry three years later at a guy she has barely even spoken too indicates that Elsa has some extreme grudge holding powers that really seems to be a lot in the grand scheme of things. She spent a handful of minutes with this guy… and has then spent multiple years loathing him. That kind of seems like Hans is winning the mind games here when he really shouldn’t be. If they had given Hans some kind of backstory with the sisters, this reaction would make more sense. If he had been their friend before everything went sour, then sure. If he had been Anna’s pen pal while she was locked up in the castle, and then he betrayed her, a bit of loathing would be justified. If he had had any kind of actual, real relationship with the sisters that would give some weight to his betrayal, besides just the shock value, maintaining this story thread would make sense. With what they give us though, it just looks bizarrely obsessive on Elsa’s part, and grudges are a good look for no one. (It’s also what happens when a lot of writers are using a fictional character as a stand-in for high school dating drama that they’re still upset about, instead of crafting a character who has a place and purpose in the overall story-telling arc… but that’s beside the point.) (For kicks and grins, here's the scene that follows the betrayal scene. Probably the most iconic use of Phil Collin's In the Air Tonight EVER.