mirrorimageegamirorrim Posted May 20, 2015 Report Share Posted May 20, 2015 What is your opinion regarding the use of inter-episode/inter-season continuity in Miami Vice? Despite the instances of recurring characters and the story arcs that result from them, most episodes of Vice are one-offs with no direct references to any other episodes. I can see positives and negatives in this approach. Do you wish there had been a greater effort made to tie everything together? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TubbsGirl1n&Ou7 Posted May 21, 2015 Report Share Posted May 21, 2015 Yes! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mirrorimageegamirorrim Posted May 21, 2015 Author Report Share Posted May 21, 2015 Yes!Ah, brevity. I can dig it. What would you like to change? For example, in "One Eyed Jack" I've always thought the football jersey Gina was wearing on Sonny's boat should have been University of Florida colors. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators James Posted May 21, 2015 Administrators Report Share Posted May 21, 2015 All those times when Sonny says "I've been working him for a few years", when a few years ago was season 1 and he wasn't working anyone... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Detective_Crockett Posted May 21, 2015 Report Share Posted May 21, 2015 (edited) It was never disclosed exactly how long Tubbs had been working for the NYPD, I would have liked to have known that, we know by One Eyed Jack he's been down in Miami for a month. I also would like to know how long it had been in the Season finale since Sonny was Burnett. Continuity is a pain. Edited May 21, 2015 by Detective_Crockett 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
COOPER&BURNETT Posted May 22, 2015 Report Share Posted May 22, 2015 There are some times I wish there was a greater effort to tie things together. For the most part, I'm very happy with what they did. There were some references here and there. What I hated most was actors playing parts of a recurring character that wasn't originally played by that actor, (May Ying, Lombard's son etc., It took me out of the experience.) Also, I hated seeing the same actors playing different parts over, and over again. I wish they did HOLIDAY related shows (Shadow in the Dark being the closest to a Halloween episode). Overall, I'm happy with what they did! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndrewRemington Posted May 23, 2015 Report Share Posted May 23, 2015 The most annoying thing is season 2 with Zito's beard coming and going and coming and going and coming and going... Zito looked much better clean-shaven, anyway! That beard was scraggly and made it look like he was either a hobo or didn't belong in Miami... 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mvnyc Posted May 23, 2015 Report Share Posted May 23, 2015 Also, I hated seeing the same actors playing different parts over, and over again. That would be my biggest issue, hands down. There are many hundreds of people they could've used in different roles for the show, why reuse an actor in another role? Did they think no one would notice, I think not... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Detective_Crockett Posted May 23, 2015 Report Share Posted May 23, 2015 The most annoying thing is season 2 with Zito's beard coming and going and coming and going and coming and going... Zito looked much better clean-shaven, anyway! That beard was scraggly and made it look like he was either a hobo or didn't belong in Miami...I feel the same way about that as you do, also Tubbs beard, I hated Tubbs beard! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt5 Posted May 23, 2015 Report Share Posted May 23, 2015 some good points here - but I liked Tubbs beard made him look good in Season 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndrewRemington Posted May 23, 2015 Report Share Posted May 23, 2015 I liked Tubbs's beard, too. Just not Zito's. Thinking of Tubbs's beard, I can only picture him yelling, "SONNNYYY!" 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
airtommy Posted July 15, 2015 Report Share Posted July 15, 2015 Continuity wasn't a normal feature of TV action shows back then. I remember when Wiseguy came out it was definitely something different, with its story arcs. The makers of MV were so overburdened with producing this show on location, adding in all the cool music, and staying focused on high-quality cinematography that I think trying to focus on continuity and longer-running plot lines would have been too much for them. It would have distracted them from what mattered - taking whatever scripts they were given and producing them in true cinema fashion. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miamijimf Posted July 16, 2015 Report Share Posted July 16, 2015 (edited) That's neat airtommy, reviving some older threads. There have been some interesting discussions in the past. To answer one of your earlier questions- I forget the thread- I'm afraid those umbrellas that hide a lot of the old hotels on Deco Drive are permanent now. Burn Notice turned into a continuing story in its later years but they kept the same basic core of writers supervised by Matt Nix. I'm not sure Vice did nor am I sure that continuity is a good thing. Edited July 16, 2015 by miamijimf 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noggie Posted July 16, 2015 Report Share Posted July 16, 2015 Eventually, there would be shows where each episode was a small piece of a larger story. I'm glad Vice hadn't gone that direction but a little more continuity would have been nice. Season 5 was the closest the show got to being one long story. Lombard's appearances in season one were the right way to go I think. One thing that has improved in modern TV is the use of recurring actors in the SAME part. I rarely see an actor twice on a show in different roles. That doesn't seem to happen anymore. I remember how jarring it was when Bill Smitrovich appeared in the season 2 premiere. I'd just watched the pilot a few months earlier so I thought he was the same character! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vincent Hanna Posted July 16, 2015 Report Share Posted July 16, 2015 (edited) When I first got into the show, I thought there was going to be zero continuity between episodes so I was pleasantly surprised when Characters mentioned things that have happened like the speech between Gina and Sonny in Bought and Paid for, "You wasn't the one who was raped".."You've got one hell of a memory sonny". That was brilliant and great example of how to do it without it coming across heavy handed and forced. In Red Tape, Switek mentions that he could have rolled over when Zito died but he stayed focused on the job. Obviously the two parter with Zito's death where C&Ts goes to his house with the Goldfish Lombard showing up in two episodes of season 1 and he's mentioned in Nobody Lives Forever.(I just ignore the abysmal S5 ep) These details help MV create it's own little universe. It's pretty cool. The re-using of actors never bothered me though. What do you think of them re-using houses/apartments? Like Brenda's house re-used in Shadow in the Dark. Edited July 16, 2015 by thedeparted94 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
airtommy Posted May 3, 2020 Report Share Posted May 3, 2020 I think the poor continuity was the inevitable result of Michael Mann's vision for how MV would be produced. In 112 episodes they used 52 directors and 81 writers. Mann wanted to hire young unknown hungry directors and give them free reign to turn each episode into its own mini-movie. Then, for the next episode it was on to the next director. All that aside, two things really stuck in my craw when I last watched the series: 1. In "Hard Knocks", Castillo tells Switek "You're the best we've had". Just like that, they've turned the bumbling oaf character into an uber-competent wizard. 2. In "Heart of Night", Trudy says "When I was a rookie cop, I had my first shoot. Man, I was really wracked up by it. The Lieutenant, he was there for me." Of course, Trudy was on the Vice squad before Castillo and was hardly a rookie in "Dutch Oven". In fact, Trudy is the person who tells Castillo where his office is in "One Eyed Jack"! But I consider those incidents to be more of a Season 5 problem than a Miami Vice problem. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt5 Posted May 3, 2020 Report Share Posted May 3, 2020 (edited) 34 minutes ago, airtommy said: I think the poor continuity was the inevitable result of Michael Mann's vision for how MV would be produced. In 112 episodes they used 52 directors and 81 writers. Mann wanted to hire young unknown hungry directors and give them free reign to turn each episode into its own mini-movie. Then, for the next episode it was on to the next director. All that aside, two things really stuck in my craw when I last watched the series: 1. In "Hard Knocks", Castillo tells Switek "You're the best we've had". Just like that, they've turned the bumbling oaf character into an uber-competent wizard. 2. In "Heart of Night", Trudy says "When I was a rookie cop, I had my first shoot. Man, I was really wracked up by it. The Lieutenant, he was there for me." Of course, Trudy was on the Vice squad before Castillo and was hardly a rookie in "Dutch Oven". In fact, Trudy is the person who tells Castillo where his office is in "One Eyed Jack"! But I consider those incidents to be more of a Season 5 problem than a Miami Vice problem. Good points - I remember in “Miami Squeeze” from Season 5 when Crockett is having one of his marathon sessions with his therapist he mentions that the team had such spirit and mentions Tubbs, the Lieutenant, Switzek, Gina and Trudy but does not mention Larry at all. That stuck out for me a little. That particular episode along with “Fruit of the Poison Tree” was directed by Michelle Manning a Universal\NBC big shot who started her career as a producer on the movie “The Breakfast Club” (1985). Edited May 3, 2020 by Matt5 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Posted May 3, 2020 Report Share Posted May 3, 2020 vor 1 Stunde schrieb airtommy: I think the poor continuity was the inevitable result of Michael Mann's vision for how MV would be produced. In 112 episodes they used 52 directors and 81 writers. Mann wanted to hire young unknown hungry directors and give them free reign to turn each episode into its own mini-movie. Then, for the next episode it was on to the next director. All that aside, two things really stuck in my craw when I last watched the series: 1. In "Hard Knocks", Castillo tells Switek "You're the best we've had". Just like that, they've turned the bumbling oaf character into an uber-competent wizard. 2. In "Heart of Night", Trudy says "When I was a rookie cop, I had my first shoot. Man, I was really wracked up by it. The Lieutenant, he was there for me." Of course, Trudy was on the Vice squad before Castillo and was hardly a rookie in "Dutch Oven". In fact, Trudy is the person who tells Castillo where his office is in "One Eyed Jack"! But I consider those incidents to be more of a Season 5 problem than a Miami Vice problem. I think this was a general continuity issue starting long before season 5. Vice entered a lot of revolutionary grounds but continuity best practice was not one of them. That started in first season after Yerkovich left and the main characters increasingly „lost“ their complete background and their past and became cops without any private life (eg Crockett‘s wife and son played a big part in the first episodes and then were never mentioned again until season 4, we never learnt a single word about backgrounds of Gina, Zito, Trudy, etc). Usually, series solve the problem of weekly changing writers and directors with a „red book“, a style and backbone guide for character and series continuity that has to be considered by all new writers and directors. Mann was obviously so fixated on style by season 2 and beyond that he never cared about such series story telling basics. Around the time of Phil the Shill they suggested filming a script about Crockett‘s son but he refused to bring his son back into the series and decided for „Definetely Miami“ instead which was storywise a paperthin episode, but Dick Wolf revised that decision for him later in season 4 when MM was off his post already. Other mistakes that happened by this disregard of continuity guidelines: Castillo suddenly speaks Japanese in Rising son of death although he never was in Japan (but in Laos and Thailand as we learnt in season 1), the character of Lombards son and Ma Sek completely changed in late season 5, Crockett said in Deliver us from Evil that he was 20 years on the job (this means we would not have been able to serve in Vietnam and had started on the force with around 15 years of age), Crockett had to stop playing wide receiver due to his knee injury but could perfectly chase criminals or run away for minutes without visible issues by foot in Yankee Dollar and Prodigal Son, etc. Bottom line: between early season 1 and late season 5 most main characters were completely stripped of any background as if no one of the producers ever cared about them, which culminated ultimately in Freefall when Crockett&Tubbs leave the force and no one ever learns what happens with the rest of the team with all of them having hardly any Screen time at all in the final episode. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robbie C. Posted May 4, 2020 Report Share Posted May 4, 2020 I've made this point many times, and I'm convinced it played a role in Vice's fading. When the images got stale or cliched they had nothing to fall back on, even though they tried in later seasons to invent things. It was just too late by then. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedDragon86 Posted May 4, 2020 Report Share Posted May 4, 2020 (edited) Continuity was an issue but the biggest issue of all was Wolf taking full control of the show. Season's 1-3 as you say might have lacked character development but those seasons were still brilliant TV. If the writers carried on in 4&5 and Wolf was just a line producer with Dennis Cooper until the end I don't think decline would have set in. Edited May 4, 2020 by RedDragon86 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Posted May 4, 2020 Report Share Posted May 4, 2020 (edited) vor 58 Minuten schrieb RedDragon86: Continuity was an issue but the biggest issue of all was Wolf taking full control of the show. Season's 1-3 as you say might have lacked character development but those seasons were still brilliant TV. If the writers carried on in 4&5 and Wolf was just a line producer with Dennis Cooper until the end I don't think decline would have set in. Dick Wolf had full control in season 3 already and was practically out by start of season 5 when Brams and other exec producers took over. Thus I don’t get the argument of deterioration pinpointing on Wolf between season 3 and 4/5. Also I don’t believe the root cause can be one person only. It was an open secret in 1987 that working streams between writers in LA and production in Miami had become very bumpy. several crew members commented that script quality had become an issue that caused high costs, delays (Eg slang in LA does not always work in Miami) together with bad quality. There were simply hardly any good scripts from LA, part of which in my opinion is the missing „red book“ and associated missing overall supervision by show runner as indicated above. I believe that MM is a strong visual type of producer but weak/uninterested in good storytelling whereas Wolf is just the opposite (more interested in stories including character development than in visuals). When Wolf left Vice after season 4 it got worse rather than better because of that. And given Dick Wolfs own show Law and Order, its scripts and it’s success I would say that there is no evidence that bad continuity, poor character development or running a show unsuccessfully was caused by him. Edited May 4, 2020 by Tom 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedDragon86 Posted May 4, 2020 Report Share Posted May 4, 2020 (edited) 9 minutes ago, Tom said: Dick Wolf had full control in season 3 already and was practically out by start of season 5. Thus I don’t get the argument of deterioration pinpointing on Wolf between season 3 and 4/5. Also I don’t believe the root cause can be one person only. It was an open secret in 1987 that working streams between writers in LA and production in Miami had become very bumpy. several crew members commented that script quality had become an issue that caused high costs, delays (Eg slang in LA does not always work in Miami) together with bad quality. And given Dick Wolfs own show Law and Order, its scripts and it’s success I would say that there is no evidence that bad continuity, poor character development or running a show unsuccessfully was caused by him. Wasn't Dick Wolf line producer in season 3? (co-producer with Dennis Cooper) he took over from Nicolella didn't he, then became co executive producer for season 4. Edited May 4, 2020 by RedDragon86 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bren10 Posted May 4, 2020 Report Share Posted May 4, 2020 According to this he was producer of S3 and coexecutive producer of S4 https://miamivice.fandom.com/wiki/Dick_Wolf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Posted May 4, 2020 Report Share Posted May 4, 2020 vor 1 Minute schrieb RedDragon86: Wasn't Dick Wolf line producer in season 3? he took over from Nicolella didn't he, then became executive producer/full control for season 4. Forget the title. Wolf took over at the beginning of season3 from MM as confirmed by several interviews. Wolf introduced the „ripped off the headlines“ stories starting with When Irish eyes. wolf stated in interviews very clearly that he was brought in by MM to change things and that he thought the biggest issue was „Style over substance“ (I agree in this point as retrospectively speaking season 2 stories were like candy- pink and sweet but very flat on nutrition value.) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Posted May 4, 2020 Report Share Posted May 4, 2020 vor 1 Minute schrieb Bren10: According to this he was producer of S3 and coexecutive producer of S4 https://miamivice.fandom.com/wiki/Dick_Wolf You don’t need to read this secondhand wiki, it’s all first hand in the end of the episodes (closing credits). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.