The episode first aired on NBC on October 18, 1985, and featured guest appearance by Bruce McGill as an eccentric retired police officer attempting to aid Metro-Dade detectives James "Sonny" Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs in the search for a missing drug lord.
When James "Sonny" Crockett (Don Johnson) and Ricardo Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas) arrest a small-scale drug dealer, they receive a visit at the police station from a man Crockett recognizes as retired Vice squad officer Hank Weldon (Bruce McGill).
Weldon informs the pair that the man they have arrested works for a drug lord called Tony Arcaro, who disappeared five years earlier, after narrowly avoiding a conviction.
Weldon is later released uncharged, and acting on information he overheard from his cell-mate, tips off Crockett and Tubbs to the location of a drug deal involving Arcaro's men.
When Crockett and Tubbs arrive at the scene, an abandoned tenement building, they find a disturbed but lucid Weldon, who begins to tear down a plaster wall.
[7] Guest star Bruce McGill was cast only days before production began, after Dennis Hopper, for whom the role was written, pulled out.
[1] McGill would later appear in several films directed by Miami Vice creator Michael Mann, including Collateral,[8] The Insider,[9] and Ali.
[16] DVD Verdict's Judge Ryan Keefer reviewed the episode positively, rating it a B+ and praising McGill's acting.
[18] A retrospective overview of the series by Wired's Jennifer M. Wood highlighted "Out Where the Buses Don't Run", noting that it is "largely considered the single best episode of Miami Vice".