Nothing evokes words like “dated,” “seminal” or “Lamborghini” quicker than über-sleek Eighties buddy cop series Miami Vice. But Willie Nelson is always Willie Nelson — timeless both in sound and style. Never is that more apparent than in the 1986 Vice episode “El Viejo”, Set against the backdrop of Miami’s fast and furious Reagan Era drug war (and a soundtrack of New Wave synthesizers), Nelson — sporting a cowboy hat, bushy beard, bolo tie and a stoic, thousand-yard-stare — plays Jake Pierson. A rough-hewn retired Texas Ranger who lives on a diet of cat food, the mysterious Pierson helps Crockett and Tubbs take down a Bolivian cocaine kingpin and his goons in a gunfight, taking a bullet in the process. Ever the cowboy, he shuffles off Miami’s mortal coil in death scene worthy of Shane.
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