‘Tokyo Vice’ Episode 5 Recap: Body Count

“Everybody Pays”? That’s one way of putting it. “Everybody Dies” might be a more accurate title for this episode of Tokyo Vice, one in which the show’s body count increases substantially—including two semi-major players in the illicit game reporter Jake Adelstein finds himself swept up in. 

But the deaths are only part of the story. Written by Adam Stein and directed by Hikari, this ep swerves the audience hard when it comes to advancing its romance angle, spools out an intriguing backstory for one of its protagonists, and reveals just how deep the yakuza’s rot has seeped into legit Japanese society.

When you think about it, all of the deaths that occur in the episode stem from Jake’s investigation into the mobbed-up predatory lender that’s been hounding loan recipients into suicide in order to collect on their life insurance, and his decision to involve yakuza boss Ishida in that investigation, against Detective Katagiri’s explicit instructions. (“Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas,” he says. Accurate!) 

It’s Katagiri who helps Jake answer the question put to him by Ishida: Who is spreading the rumor that the boss is in bed with the cops? The answer, it turns out, is that he has a Tozawa mole within his organization. And as I predicted last episode—I’m not tooting my own horn or anything, it was easy as pie to figure out—the mole is Kume, the underboss in charge of Jake’s friend Sato.

What looks like the setup for a ceremony in which Sato must slice off his own pinky to make up for his refusal to brace Samantha for a payoff turns out to be a setup of a different sort: Ishida confronting Kume about his betrayal. Ishida hands his gun over to Sato to do the deed, but Sato can’t bring himself to kill his own mentor; Kume solves the problem for everyone by leaping off the rooftop to his death. 

Sato finds solace in the arms of Samantha, who responds enthusiastically to his romantic overtures. (I figured her fellow gaijin Jake would be the guy to get lucky here.) She explains to Sato how she was raised a devout Mormon—a past revisited in the episode’s opening flashback—and how their connection reminds her of the religious euphoria she occasionally experienced during church services. She also encourages him to change his own life, if, as he says, he’s afraid of winding up like Kume. After all, she’s changed her own life, a difficult but ultimately successful task.

Or is it successful? The private eye Matsuo is still on her case, and it turns out it’s not money he wants from her, but sex. This seems to me like an awfully convenient time for her to have a yakuza boyfriend; if I were Matsuo, I wouldn’t make any long-term plans right about now.

On Jake’s end of the bargain, he gains some priceless intel from Ishida. The yakuza boss tells Adelstein that the key to his investigation into the loan sharks isn’t a matter of who gave out the predatory loans, but who didn’t. This leads Jake to a legit bank, where a nebbishy functionary has been passing along clients with bad credit to the loan sharks in exchange for a payoff from, as it happens, the Tozawa organization.

But when the poor sap comes to Tozawa to report Adelstein’s investigation, the mob boss encourages him to stop it in its tracks by committing suicide. Jake is upset to have lost his lead; his buddy Tin Tin is upset that their work led a guy to his death. It’s hard not to think Tin Tin is the one with his priorities in the right order.

Like Sato, Jake attempts to drown his sorrows; when Sato takes off with Samantha—to whom Jake is extremely rude, acting entitled to her time and attention—Jake winds up with her friend Polina. Though she cuts off his hopes of romance (“Jake, we will not be fucking”), she takes him to her favorite torii gate in Tokyo and generally lifts his spirits.

But there’s more violence to come. Sato returns to the Chihara-kai headquarters to find the doors wide open and bodies littered throughout the grounds and hallways. He interrupts two assassins trying to take Ishida down. As the fight continues, we discover that one of the killers is Miyamoto*, the first cop Jake befriended. (Jake’s arc this episode actually begins with he and Miyamoto sparring in an aikijutsu dojo.) Ishida kills Miyamoto and saves Sato’s life, though it’s unclear how bad Ishida’s own wounds really are.

And with that, it seems like a good time to take stock of Tokyo Vice as a whole. Adelstein makes a lot more sense as a character than he did at the start, and that goes a long way. A little action never hurt a crime drama either. But there’s definitely a sense that the mystery aspect of the story is a bit too easy to suss out—seriously, who else but Kume could have been the mole inside Ishida’s organization? And certain character beats, like Jake’s phone call to his oh-so-concerned mother (Jessica Hecht), feel really paint-by-numbers.

That said, this is still a stylish crime drama in a fancy and exotic milieu, involving secretive criminal organizations, cynical cops, and idealistic reporters. These basic components are sort of hard to screw up unless you’re, like, trying really hard. It may not make for remarkable television, but watchable television? You bet. I’m looking forward to next week’s double dose of episodes, to see if it rises or sinks from here.
CORRECTION: Several readers have pointed out that the man killed during this fight is not Miyamoto. I regret the error.

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.