‘Tokyo Vice’ Season 2 Episode 5 Recap: Changes at the Top

Tokyo Vice Season 2 is a confident show. It glides from character to character, plot point to plot point, and strength to strength. Its directors know how to frame and wrap light around the characters to make them seem as vivid and memorable as the high-frequency emotional tenor of the material demands. Its sex is graphic and sexy, its violence graphic and brutal, its heroes lovable, its villains compelling. Its story has the comfortable familiarity that genre work provides, with the ability both to shock and to dig surprisingly deep that distinguishes a genre’s standouts. In a year of stiff competition (Fargo, Griselda, Sexy Beast, True Detective), it’s a crime show to remember.

On a plot level, this week’s excellent episode (“Illness of the Trade”) is aimed directly at the yakuza — somewhat literally, by the end. Jake’s eyewitness account of Tozawa entering the building from which his nominal boss “committed suicide,” as per the official explanation, enables his editor Emi to give him the goa-ahead to investigate further. 

Good old-fashioned snooping and shoe-leather reporting leads both him and his unofficial partner Katagiri right up to the edge of the truth. Tozawa is suffering from liver disease, like many of his compatriots in the booze, meth, and tattoo-needle-heavy world of the yakuza. Normally, we learn, this is a death sentence, due to the lack of organ donors in Japan. Sometimes the bosses who can afford it will travel to Thailand for a blood infusion that extends their lives six months, since the U.S. and its better procedures are off limits to known criminals. Jake knows Tozawa was at least attempting to get into the States by blackmailing that minister over Polina’s murder, though he believes the gangster didn’t pull it off. But if he only has six months to live, why bother taking over the whole Kansai organization by murdering his boss?

Obviously Tozawa has no plans to die anytime soon. At a sumptuously staged business dinner with all of the organization’s local bosses, Tozawa announces his plan to do away with the entire obayun-based structure in favor of a corporate one. Now the money will flow down from the top instead of up from the bottom, eliminating the need for tribute payments. The only catch is that Tozawa will be at the top. If you’re not down with that, Tozawa says, go be low-rent thugs with his blessing. 

Virtually everyone goes along with the scheme in the end — but Tozawa’s wife, whose family historically runs both this entire yakuza organization and a host of legitimate businesses, objects to this risky blending of the two worlds. (Three worlds, actually: We learn from Emi’s husband Shingo that Tozawa’s yakuza outfit is a major backer of right-wing politicians. Insofar as both movements involve taking money from the people who actually earned it and using violence to keep dissenters in line, it’s a fitting combination.) So Tozawa yanks the outrageously expensive necklace he’s given her right off her neck; the next time we see it, it’s clasped around the throat of his lover Misaki. The message, that Tozawa’s love is really a collar and chain, is not a subtle one.

Big things are happening at Chihara-kai too, unfortunately for them. Sato and his superior, Hayama, finally make it home from their disastrous trip to the mountains, after much Sopranos-esque goings-on involving hiking through the middle of nowhere and forcing a young family to drive them to safety. (The bit where Hayama tells them to shut off their annoying music and their baby starts crying the second they do so was one of the episode’s funniest moment; the other is Katagiri buying some stickers for his kids after intimidating a clerk into giving up burner-phone serial numbers so he can help nab the yakuza who are using them.) Sato’s secret stash of guns saves their bacon, but boss Ishida sees right through the ruse.

Sato, however, is not punished for his part in the deception. While Hayama’s lies prove he’s still the rash, weaselly guy he used to be, Sato’s deceit was on behalf of his brothers in Chihara-kai, whose lives he hoped to protect with the guns. It’s Sato whom Ishida is ultimately grooming for leadership, not Hayama.

Unfortunately for a great many people, Ishida is unlikely to tell anyone of his reorganization plans. Assassins fill him full of lead in Samantha’s club, just after she and her architect would-be boyfriend Masa successfully negotiate a real-estate deal surrounding a top-secret project that will make Ishida rich, give Samantha full control of her club, and safeguard Masa’s career and reputation. Everyone would have won, had Masa not been shot to death with a bullet to the head and Ishida not riddled with bullets. (I’m hesitant to say he’s dead in the absence of a headshot; Sato received similar wounds and made it, so who knows.)

I had wondered where Samantha’s relationship with Masa was headed, after it became clear he had no intention of ratting her out or otherwise messing up her life. (You don’t usually let a thief crash on your couch for the night.) The man was simply too perfect: tall dark and handsome, brilliant, creative, successful, suave, dashing, and decent. Such characters do not last long in stories like this.

I hope for better things for two other thoroughly decent civilians. Jake’s colleague Trendy is hot and heavy with his new American boyfriend; writer Adam Stein and director Takeshi Fukunaga make both their pillow talk and their actual sex scene feel both warm and hot, if that makes sense. 

Tin Tin is having a much crummier time, unfortunately: He goes against Jake’s advice when digging into a scoop intended to spare Masa’s job designing the railroad station, leading the government to announce it prematurely and thus blow his potential story.

Tin Tin blames all this on Jake, who points out he advised Tin Tin against mentioning the location by name, as this would almost certainly provoke the government into divulging it publicly to avoid real-estate speculation of the sort Ishida wants to engage in. In response, Tin Tin heavily implies Jake is a dope who was hired more as a stunt than out of merit. Given that Tin Tin himself outscored Jake on the entrance exam, who is Jake to presume he can give Tin Tin — “My name is Kurihira!” he insists — advice at all?

These are the kind of humanizing moments that, along with the incredible photography that accompanies this review, make Tokyo Vice hum and sing. Just little bits of business like Jake extracting intel out of Sato by bribing him with a pair of sneakers, but only giving him one shoe at a time to keep the information flowing. Or the way Sato and Ishida are filmed in conversation, with each man’s blurry back obscuring much of the screen and overlapping with our view of the other man’s face, implying secrecy and collaboration between the two men. Or Samantha’s bitter but honest wisdom when Jake announces he’s on a quest to make Tozawa pay for Polina’s death: “Jake, I love you for wanting to take him on, but having a death wish isn’t sexy.” What an unexpected way to say “don’t be an idiot.” It’s sticky, stuck in your brain because you haven’t heard it put quite that way before. Tokyo Vice is becoming a pretty sticky show.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.