dudes: let's write stuff abt MIAMI VICE, the TV show

I’m just starting with it but Tokyo Vice seems decent so far.

It’s interesting to me that there’s basically a whole subgenre of police procedurals indebted to The Wire. (Maybe Tokyo Vice will resolve the apparent dysfunction easily idk.) But Narcos Mexico was another one that really dug into the dysfunction.

Sorry, thread derail.

Just watched the Pilot for the first time since 1984. I loved this show so much as a 12 yo and thought Sonny Crocket was the coolest thing ever.

What a great show! Has any other TV show, let alone a network TV show, edited scenes with music so completely? The version of "All Night Long" by the latin band in the scene in the club when Tubbs meets Calderon is perfect. Philip Michael Thomas really great job with the contained rage in that scene. In fact, he's as much if not more of the star of the episode as Crocket.

er, as Johnson.

The "In the Air Tonight" sequence rules.

Side note, loved how Crockett and Tubbs p much never arrested anyone, they just killed them

That pilot pretty much nailed it, iirc the rest is really hit or miss.

Side note, loved how Crockett and Tubbs p much never arrested anyone, they just killed them

Not in the Pilot! Crockett convinces Tubbs to arrest Calderone instead of blow him away in cold blood. Calderone jumps bail (by seaplane, natch, it's Miami) at the v end. Maybe this is where they learned their lesson.

Kind of echoed in the beginning of the movie, where they let the bad guy get away, saying something like "we will get him next time."

Second episode very good as well - Ed O'Neil doing ersatz Popeye Doyle.

Maybe it's the SD, but I did find some of the show looked surprisingly cheap.

there are some good sequences later in the first season. the multi-part episodes are pretty dope

E3 Spoilers: Sonny and Rico, tracking down a gang of murderous drug dealers who killed one undercover cop and put the other in a coma, get their big break when they recover a staticky cassette tape recording of the shooting on which coma-cop post-shooting barely whispers a description of the gang. After huge deal of time and effort to clean up the recording, Sonny and Rico proceed to decipher this near-death rattle description while screaming down the highway at night in Sonny's convertible Ferrari.

Let us now write faux.MV plots

Strong disagree that this show peaked with the pilot! Surely it was the truly insane Sonny Burnett storyline - and generally some incredible high 80s set design / direction that makes it feel like a shampoo commercial - like, loving shots of swimming pools etc up there with Less Than Zero - I remember it being totally worthwhile up to the halfway point, think Don Johnson’s stubble reaching actual beard length is the cutoff point? Or did Tubbs grow a beard too? Also Jan Hammer stops doing the music so maybe that is when the magic fades.

Anywqy fuckin epic great show.

As with Moonlighting the early eps feel a bit doughty and still have some 70s DNA - the show flies when it jettisons all that and goes pure 80s sleek.

Where is this show streaming? It's not on Hulu or Netflix — if I want to watch it on Amazon Prime I'll have to pay, which I'm not going to do.

Never mind; I forgot to check Tubi, and of course it's there.

really wanted them to do a sequel to the Miami Vice movie and use the Golden Triangle two-parter from Season 1 was a jumping off point for the story.

*as

Just watched the Ed O'Neill episode — some surprising soundtrack choices (Devo, what I think was Al Jarreau) and pretty dark story-wise.

As with Moonlighting the early eps feel a bit doughty and still have some 70s DNA - the show flies when it jettisons all that and goes pure 80s sleek.

― meat and two vdgg (emsworth), Monday, July 10, 2023 9:52 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Just watched the Ed O'Neill episode — some surprising soundtrack choices (Devo, what I think was Al Jarreau) and pretty dark story-wise.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Tuesday, July 11, 2023 12:41 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is what I am finding fascinating - it feels cheap and 70s in some ways (some really obv soundstage parts they'd use CGI on now, a driving scene obv not in a real vehicle), but also pointing toward the nihilistic stories of later prestige tv. Really looking forward to some of the episodes with recurring characters and multi-part stories.

The music is absolutely critical, too. There are a ton of scenes that start without dialogue, just characters driving cars, piloting boats, or entering a new drug meetup, and the music just plays setting a critical vibe until the dialogue comes in, often over the music as it continues to play out. I don't remember another show where the music is so vital.

I had a mashup of the 'In the Air Tonight' scene + Ween's 'Demon Sweat' in my head for years and finally synced it up a little while back and was stunned by how well it works: http://www.youtubemultiplier.com/64ad50acdb839-miami-sweat.php

imagine if instead of "In the Air Tonight", they'd used Pac-Man Fever

You may say I'm a dreamer

Yeah my recollection is the show is trying to aim for more offbeat moments at the beginning, and only later does it really fully embrace the mood and true Miami vice vibe we all know and love.

The pre-Olmos lieutenant has too much of a Barney Miller vibe. (He was on that show, so it makes sense from an acting standpoint, but he feels completely out of place.)

He had the air of this kinda harried and exasperated superior, def the show required the minimally emotive low key slightly mysterious menace of EJO.

it was far better when he was killed off. not only did it give the cool two-parter storyline, but then we got Olmos

Nice!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ-4RaIspRA

https://i.imgur.com/jeqGC2p.jpg

Our heroes

https://i.imgur.com/YFdgvRE.jpg

Edward James Olmos' first scene is all-time - when Crockett says he hasn't finished the report on the incident earlier in the day, Olmos gives him such a stare without saying anything - absolutely perfect.

then says "IT'S TOO BAD SHE WON'T LIIIIIVE"

Just watched that episode. Joe Dallesandro and Dennis Farina as mobsters!

I’m up to the Bruce Willis ep, “no exit”
Love Tubb’s Jamaican accent. It’s his secret weapon. Fools everyone

Bruce Willis is comically bad in this episode.

I thought Crocket was so cool when I was a kid, but seeing it again, he's no Tubbs. Thomas has some weird, but great line readings.

I bought my first double-breasted jacket when I was like 16 under the influence of this show. I was totally a Tubbs guy rather than Crockett's fuchsia henleys (which Johnson pulls off for his own style).

Talk about slaves to fashion , these guys will pull a midnight stake out in pink and baby blue

supercut of Tubbs being Tubbs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFCS48B7_sI

Started it up again, just watched the Ed O'Neill episode. The ending feels like it's got to be one of the first of its kind, which I feel like was everywhere for awhile in the late 80s/early 90s. Everything is settled and then they get bad news re: an offscreen death.

Gregory Sierra definitely feels out of place, he's good but it's the wrong show for him. Funny how he wound up portraying one of the primary antagonists in the very Miami vice-like deep cover.

I had a mashup of the 'In the Air Tonight' scene + Ween's 'Demon Sweat' in my head for years and finally synced it up a little while back and was stunned by how well it works

Tangential but this is very appropriate given that when I first saw Ween in early 1992 they introduced "Demon Sweat" as their Phil Collins number and asked us in the club to imagine the big bald head of Phil rising behind them. So now I want that to be the background of this scene.

https://i.imgur.com/ITGWMRK.jpg

Re-watched the pilot for CRIME STORY on Tubi tonight and holy hell, I remember that as one of the hardest things ever broadcast on network TV and it really holds up. Directed by Abel Ferrara!

Golden Triangle eps go some weird places. Castillo fighting with the waiter in back of the Thai restaurant and C&T showing up like “wtf” might be my series favorite moment so far

Calderone is one of the least-threatening villains. And Tubbs didn't even get to do the honors at the end!

The episodes following that first two-parter are kind of weak, but still enjoyable. I love they pull in undercover to a backwater Everglades town in a freaking Ferrari and in the parking lot are not one, but two DeLoreans.

Tubbs is just an absolute horndog.

I died at Tubbs' Jamaican accident fooling an actual Jamaican.

Rewatching this from the beginning. Fantastic as remembered, but I was surprised by how much cop show cliché carry-over there is in the early episodes, as well as by the amount of pseudo-witty wisecracking in those same episodes (halfway thru the season it feels maybe like they're cutting back on the latter). Lots of tropes from the type of action-adventure novels that used to be sold on spinner racks; a lotta John D. MacDonald vibes. But loads of originality too.

Hadn't remembered Gregory Sierra being the original boss. But as soon as Edward James Olmos comes in, his ultra-narrow ties trigger instant nostalgia... this is the Vice I remember. I feel as if I missed a lot of early Vice because I was in high school and it aired on Friday night when I often had some social thing to do. It was surprising to check and see that the first season aired on Sunday night. I think that explains why s1 is the season I've seen the most of.

I'll eventually get over it, but I find it hard to look at Zito. It's between the Lee Harvey Oswald resemblance and the fact that he's always disgustingly chewing on something.

So far it's all the location shooting that's blowing me away. I'm recognizing so many spots I've been to IRL. I think that was an interesting time in Miami Beach especially, transitioning out of its shabby period into the the Art Deco restoration period, just before the supermodels took over iirc.

Y'all --

MV didn't peak until its second season. The first one is a cool Matlock or something, with smoking and pastels and stuff.

eah my recollection is the show is trying to aim for more offbeat moments at the beginning, and only later does it really fully embrace the mood and true Miami vice vibe we all know and love.

― omar little, Tuesday, July 11, 2023 11:13 AM

otm

Crockett looks pretty good for a guy who smokes unfiltered Lucky Strikes and will eat two street hot dogs at once