MONDO EXTRAS

The whirlwind hooker recruiting tour of Carla continues, as she and Tubbs enjoy a candlelit dinner in a room filled with so much clichéd '80s decor, you'd dismiss it as an antiquated stereotype if it wasn't, you know, filmed in the 1980s. "I've never been treated like this," Carla gushes, and when it's Philip Michael Thomas showing you the time of your life, you've led quite the exciting existence indeed. "You should always have the best," Tubbs says. So why isn't he leaving so that Denzel Washington can complete this scene? Anyhow, Carla wants the Funnest Day Ever to continue with dancing, and Tubbs is all, yeah, yeah, we'll go dancing all right, but first, let's talk about this bus locker key I'm holding menacingly. "That was Roxanne's," Carla exclaims. Undeterred, Tubbs asks, "You know what was in that locker?" Carla confesses that she does know, as she was there when Roxanne stashed away the cocaine for safe-keeping. "[Wesley Snipes] don't know it, but I'm going to get in that business with him," Tubbs purrs in his Creole? Cajun? Florida Panhandle? accent. "I need you to help motivate him. I want you to take this back to him." Carla declines. Tubbs restates his request...BY SHOUTING AT THE TOP HIS LUNGS! "You think I do this for nothing?" he screams, breaking a few crystal dishes for effect. "Why do you think I got you out of jail? You think your stuff is worth five grand? IT AIN'T! I THROW PIECES LIKE YOU AWAY EVERY DAY!" Carla offers to pay Tubbs back, and he agrees that she will. "I'm going to tell you just how you're going to do it," he says in a barely audible Costa Rican? Lost City of Atlantan? Esperanton? accent. "I'm going to hook into [Wesley Snipes], and you're going to take him this." Carla tries to run, and Tubbs grabs her by the arm, causing Jan Hammer's Casio to squeal in surprise. "You made a mistake with me," Carla cries. "My boyfriend's a cop! So you better back off!" And with that...girl fight! Tubbs and Carla have a hair-pulling slap party and we're the guests of honor.

I wish had the vocabulary to describe just how transcendently awful Philip Michael Thomas is in this scene. Normally a non-entity of an actor even under the least challenging of circumstances, Thomas takes his non-game here to new levels of unachievement. Not only do you not believe for one second that Philip Michael Thomas is an undercover cop posing as a pimp, you begin to doubt the very existence of cops and pimps. And God himself. Philip Michael Thomas is about as menacing as a warm bath, as street as Sesame, and as Caribbean as that pirate ride at Disneyland. Actually, the pirate ride is filled with more lifelike characters.