Amnesia and the Burnett episodes


Yann529

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Nope - he just sold it. He did however, drink a lot !  You have to understand, he didn't know he was cop after being blown off the boat in the episode Mirror Image until the doctor told him he was Burnett, drug dealer.

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Did Burnett take cocaine to maintain his iron control ? ?(

 

Well he was drinking heavily and he was carrying around at least one small vial of coke which he eventually gave to Mikey. Could Burnett have also been using?

Not totally out of the question given his erratic behavior around Celeste.

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True, I got the impression as Burnett he always tried to maintain control in a business like manner, keeping his head clear and all angles covered. I also believe the writers would have added his drug use to the story line as they did when he shot Tubbs. 

 

Interesting discussion for sure! :thumbsup:

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  • 9 months later...

This is just a super essay on different types of amnesia and how realistic the Burnett arc was in terms of medical reality/possibility.  The author is not a medically trained person but did her research very well.  As a nurse myself I found myself nodding my head at many of her points and I re-watched the episodes in question afterward (just a few weeks ago).  It's amazing how well the writers, directors, and Don Johnson's acting brought so much truth to what could have been a very hackneyed storyline.

 

The author of this essay has written some excellent MV fanfiction, including a 3-part story that takes place immediately after Redemption in Blood.  I highly recommend it and wish the powers that be over the series had explored some of the issues that were bound to arise in the aftermath of Sonny's return.  There was a little bit of that exploration, but very little.

 

re:  whether Sonny used cocaine himself during the Burnett episode--I didn't really get that impression.  But it's an intriguing possibility to consider and something I believe could have happened.  However, since he (as Burnett) told Celeste several times that cocaine is for losers and she could take care of herself just fine if she stopped doing it, I don't think he was using.

 

Yes, he was drinking heavily at night during the latter part of the Burnett episode.  To at least some extent, I felt like this was related to his increasing realization that a big chunk of his memory was missing, he was confused about his identity and his frequent flashes of memory were disturbing to him.  Sonny Crockett already had a history of using alcohol to numb the pain, so on some level it must have been a familiar way to stop the questions in his mind about who and what he was.  

Edited by vicegirl85
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You have to give them props. The amnesia storyline could have been easily been "Missing Hours" level of quality but they managed to make those eps some of the best of S4-5.

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I agree, they were excellent!  Too bad so much of Season 5 just didn't live up to the great premise of the Burnett storyline :(

Edited by vicegirl85
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I still like to imagine that in an alternate dimension,  season 5 was ALL Burnett. The entire season the Vice squad is trying to find Burnett as he becomes the strongest hand in the Miami drug trade, but his years of being a cop is inadvertently helping him keep them off his tracks (similar to any movie where a secret agent loses his memory but still knows how to fight). However, throughout the season, his empire slowly crumbles as he begins to have flashbacks of his previous life. In the 2nd to last episode he avoids death in the same car explosion and gets his memory back. The 2nd to last episode of the series ends with him in the parking lot where the explosion occurred, and the entire Vice squad, along with the SWAT teams and other cops have their guns surrounding him (imagine Burnett/Crockett in his dark suit and ponytail, slowly lifting his arms, as the camera slowly pulls up and we just see endless amounts of cops with their guns drawn on him in a circle).

 

Last episode opens with him telling his crew about his amnesia and now he just got his memory back. He tells them how they're gonna need him in order to get the bad guys he's currently doing business with. They work together, he plays the patsy for the Vice squad the same way they've always done, and they get the bad guys. The end of the episode has Crockett talknig to a psychiatrist under the judges orders, and after the trial, it's determined that Sonny did have an alternate personality, and is absolved of his crimes.

 

However...he has to relinquish his badge. In a fit of anger, Tubbs tosses his badge aside as well, but then Sonny talks him ouuta it and Tubbs resigns/transfers back to the NY dept.. The 2 of them drive off into the sunset just as the last episode ends already. Only for me, Sonny heads off to Georgia to be close to his son and ex-wife. Tubbs goes back to NY to be close to Valerie.

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A very intriguing idea!  I have to believe that in reality Crockett would not have been permitted to work undercover again (but what fun would that have been for us?),  I wish they had spent more episodes/time developing the Burnett arc and the fallout after Sonny returns.  It was pretty glossed over for most of S5. 

 

I also actually like the ambiguity around whether--and how much--he remembers of his experiences as Burnett.  There's a good argument to be made that he still has major gaps in his memory AND that he remembers more than he actually admits to.  I wish we had been shown more of that (although that might have notched down the action too much for many fans).

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Yeah the TLDR version of my post is that basically season 5 should've been what we DIDN'T see in the time between the end of the last episode of season 4, and the start of season 5. We should've seen those 3 months in between. And basically the first 2 episodes of season 5 should've basically been the last 2 episodes of the series. With the trial bits from a few episodes, psychiatrist bits from a few episodes, and of course "Freefall's" ending put in there.

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I know I'm maybe the only one with this opinion, but the whole Burnett thing just made me smile...

 

Just a forced, barely believable trick to shake an audience starting to be used to the show. It always sounded more marketing than true inspiration to me. More, as I said in another post, that one is not the Burnett we use to know, but a new weird and artificious character popped up during the series' end of the rainbow.

 

I know that most of you finds the saga cool and tough, but I have many doubts the audience would bear a whole season that way back then.

 

Just my view, sorry, guys ;-)

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I agree that a whole season of the Burnett we saw in the "trilogy" is more than I'd have wanted.  Also agree, that Burnett is not the one Sonny developed and portrayed as his cover for the previous 4 seasons.  The old Sonny Burnett projected a low-profile, casual image (IMO) despite his designer togs, Ferrari, and fast boat.  He threw on what was clean each day and always acted like he didn't care about his look--it was just something that happened ;).  The Burnett of Hostile Takeover and Redemption in Blood was meticulous (definitely not an image Sonny tried to project), took pains with his clothing, and rarely smiled.  He was very different.

 

Now, I do think a lot of the new Burnett image could be explained by the memory loss issues and his need to survive in the cutthroat world of drug dealing.  He had to overcompensate somewhat; project total self-confidence, even arrogance, in order to dominate the thugs around him, especially since he was uncertain about his identity and his past.  Without memories of the past, he could create a new Burnett and he did that successfully.  His native intelligence, instincts, and even (unconsciously) his police training, could be detoured into a completely extra-legal kind of leadership. 

 

Yes, there's a lot of fantasy in the story arc!  Still I think it was very well-written and DJ made the character believable.  I wouldn't have wanted a whole season of Burnett, but I'd have liked more of the aftermath to have been developed.

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I have to agree too that a whole season of the Burnett arc would be too much though.  Typically, it's a risky move in trying to make the hero turn bad, but it was well-executed since the episodes placed a significant amount of emphasis on his psyche, and importantly, the series displayed an increasing progression of mental hardship and burnout rather than solely making a shallow attempt to show just how "bad" Sonny could be.

 

Was the arc and the aftermath extreme, and pushed the suspension of disbelief much further?  Of course.  ...But the arc was a tangible manifestation to display the extremes of Sonny's psychological descent.

 

As vicegirl85 explained earlier, the difference in depiction of Sonny Burnett in the Burnett arc versus the Sonny Burnett we're normally accustomed to is understandable, because there is an underlying psychological and motivational shift between these two personas.

Edited by Vice Immersion
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