Episode #109 "Leap Of Faith"

[Mr. Vigilante]

1 minute ago, IzzyFan99 said:

I  like it.  Hardin is always cool and Keith Gordon does a solid job as the villain.  Laura San Giacomo is also very cute and Tim Truman's score is particularly atmospheric and memorable. It's either a very underrated episode or I'm just easily pleased 

 

 

It's ok, but Keith Gordon does do a good job.  Something that bugs me about this episode is that several scenes cut to a blurry quality resembling a cheap 70s horror film.  Unless it's just my dvd.

[IzzyFan99]

6 minutes ago, Mr. Vigilante said:

It's ok, but Keith Gordon does do a good job.  Something that bugs me about this episode is that several scenes cut to a blurry quality resembling a cheap 70s horror film.  Unless it's just my dvd.

It's probably one of my favourite Season 5 episodes. 

Yes, I noticed that issue. The scene where Hardin first meet Tania is very blurry indeed. I don't know why the quality of the picture dips so significantly in that particular scene. 

Edited March 9, 2020 by IzzyFan99

[Bren10]

27 minutes ago, IzzyFan99 said:

I  like it.  Hardin is always cool and Keith Gordon does a solid job as the villain.  Laura San Giacomo is also very cute and Tim Truman's score is particularly atmospheric and memorable. It's either a very underrated episode or I'm just easily pleased 

 

You're easily pleased.

 

[Tommy Vercetti]

I also don't mind Leap of Faith. I really don't think it's that bad. It is a 21 Jump Street ripoff but I do like Joey Hardin and he did a good job in the episode. Keith Gordon was great. He was also great in John Carpenter's Christine.  It also has Paradise City and some great locations. I guess I would consider it a guilty pleasure. I just don't mind Leap of Faith.

[Jack Gretsky]

Here's the first (and only) episode of "YCU;" as long as we don't think of it as a Miami Vice ep, it's fun, if cheesy, on its own merits.  If this had spun off into an actual series, I would have given it a shot.  How well it could be sustained is another question.

But, ugh, some of those late 80s-early 90s fashions!  Even hotties like Justin Lazard and Jennifer Rubin look stupid in do-rags and New Bohemian apparel. 

The scene where Joey meets Tania looks like the image was zoomed - the sharp definition of the cinematography of the other scenes is gone and the close-ups look awkward and mis-aligned. 

[ViceFanMan]

Another of the 3 mistaken-to-be “lost” episodes (the others being “World of Trouble” & “Miracle Man”)...that actually did air on NBC, but after “Freefall” had already been aired as the finale. I figured the 3 episodes that were aired after the finale had to be ‘contractually’ aired for legal purposes. So, they just aired them later, going into June of 1989.

Lots of fans probably didn’t realize or know this...as they assumed the finale was it. Who happened to catch these episodes, great...otherwise by that point the network no longer cared to advertise or promote the show, as it was technically no longer in production. Therefore, the “lost” episodes myth was born. What cracks me up is some home video sets try and make their set sound the best by advertising that they include all the “lost” episodes as well. Well, first there was only 1 true lost episode, and the original Universal DVD sets included all the episodes as well. 

As for “Leap of Faith”...well, it wasn't spectacular or anything, but it wasn't horrible either. I think the biggest issue is this wasn't really a MV episode. Crockett and Tubbs were only in the first few minutes...then it turned into the "Joey Harden Show".  Without the regular MV cast much, it was sort of boring. 

But, this was some sort of proposed Pilot for a spin-off series starring Justin Lazard as Joey. However, it doesn't surprise me it never got off the ground. I liked Justin Lazard as an actor, and I liked his recurring character of Joey Harden...but I don't know if he really had show "lead" quality--at least at that time. I think if they had created an actual series around this episode, the show would not have lasted very long...maybe one season at best. This group just didn't have the "magic" to captivate viewers enough.

But, really this wasn't that bad of an episode for a one-time thing...decent plot and action! Keith Gordon is a good actor and he was perfect for the creepy, sociopathic Professor Terry Baines! But he'll always be Arnie Cunningham from the 1983 horror movie Christine to me.  

I also loved the song Paradise City by Guns N' Roses at the beginning! Decent filming locations too. Overall this wasn't much of a MV episode at all, and hardly any of the cast had a role in it. But, it still wasn't as bizarre and stupid as “Miracle Man”. I originally gave this one a 4...still do. 

Edited September 11, 2021 by ViceFanMan

[Adrian321]

I did not think that there could be so much crap fitted into an episode.......... I give it a 2/10.........  It felt like a diffrent show.......

Just because of how much crap this contains, and the fact that it BARELY has any original MV characters. Atleast it has a bit more songs than S5 average..... gotta give it that

"Leap of crap" as someone said a few years earlier is THE perfect title for this........ and I agree 100%, never more on any MV subject.

[Viceguy]

I actually don't think this episode should be rated at all, in all honesty. It was never meant to be a Miami Vice episode, but rather the pilot for a potential spin-off that wasn't picked up.

[Adrian321]

27 minutes ago, Viceguy said:

I actually don't think this episode should be rated at all, in all honesty. It was never meant to be a Miami Vice episode, but rather the pilot for a potential spin-off that wasn't picked up.

well......... even with this in mind......... and it is a good point indeed, that it may be unfair to judge it at MV standards when it is supposed to be a spinoff......

And glad they didn't pick it out; it would've never had a fraction of the succes of MV (succes rate that was declining rapidly in the last seasons; with few excelent episodes).

For example. MV's pilot, it is my 5th favourite episode from the entire series. Because it was the first one, they tried to make it good enough, so it will spark intrest; but with "Leap of crap" they launched it bad; and I can say with almost 100% certainty that it would only go downhill........

[ViceFanMan]

Not a strong or memorable episode...but it was meant to try and create a spin-off show with Justin Lazard as Joey Harden. However, most viewers probably didn’t even know it aired originally...as it was one of three episodes aired after the finale, “Freefall”. So, I doubt it even had that many viewers, and many think it was a “lost” episode, not aired until reruns...which is not actually true. 

[Jack Gretsky]

On 9/14/2020 at 11:40 AM, Jack Gretsky said:

Here's the first (and only) episode of "YCU;" as long as we don't think of it as a Miami Vice ep, it's fun, if cheesy, on its own merits.  If this had spun off into an actual series, I would have given it a shot.  How well it could be sustained is another question.

But, ugh, some of those late 80s-early 90s fashions!  Even hotties like Justin Lazard and Jennifer Rubin look stupid in do-rags and New Bohemian apparel. 

The scene where Joey meets Tania looks like the image was zoomed - the sharp definition of the cinematography of the other scenes is gone and the close-ups look awkward and mis-aligned. 

I like this one - and maybe because it's so earnest and corny.  Like I said last year, I would have watched this "YCU" series had it been picked up.  The love scene between Ray and Clair is very beautiful and truly erotic - maybe I feel that way because it evokes my college days strongly as they were around this same time period, I kind of looked like Ray, and the girl I loved had long brown hair like Jennifer Rubin's.  Their bed scene was quite vivid.  

[sdiegolo78]

I'm not really a fan of this episode mainly because we only see C&T briefly for the first few minutes and of course no EJO. I don't even enjoy re-watching it. During my first viewing in the late 90s/early 00s i was wondering if that was really MV...

On the other hand, I find interesting the YCU thing and potential spin off. I can imagine Joey Hardin replacing Crockett after his resignation post 'Freefall'....

The story was ok and villain was of acceptable MV standards, weird and psychotic enough. And the roof jumping thing was very weird! Keith Gordon's character demise was poetic justice.

I appreciated the reference to Crockett being shot back in the 70s (before joining Vice), nice touch. I believe the same event was mentioned by ex-wife Caroline Crockett during the pilot.

I just don't feel to rate this more than 5. It may probably grow on me overtime, who knows.

Edited March 26, 2022 by sdiegolo78

[ViceFanMan]

2 hours ago, sdiegolo78 said:

I'm not really a fan of this episode mainly because we only see C&T briefly for the first few minutes and of course no EJO. I don't even enjoy re-watching it. During my first viewing in the late 90s/early 00s i was wondering if that was really MV...

On the other hand, I find interesting the YCU thing and potential spin off. I can imagine Joey Hardin replacing Crockett after his resignation post 'Freefall'....

The story was ok and villain was of acceptable MV standards, weird and psychotic enough. And the roof jumping thing was very weird! Keith Gordon's character demise was poetic justice.

I appreciated the reference to Crockett being shot back in the 70s (before joining Vice), nice touch. I believe the same event was mentioned by ex-wife Caroline Crockett during the pilot.

I just don't feel to rate this more than 5. It may probably grow on me overtime, who knows.

Yeah, this originally was filmed as a proposed pilot for a possible spin-off, most likely starring ‘Joey Harden’. So, that’s why hardly any of Crockett & Tubbs, and no rest of the MV cast. Of course the show never got off the ground, or went past this episode.

It ended up being one of the 3 episodes NBC aired after “Freefall” (the other 2 being “Miracle Man” & “World of Trouble”), so that didn’t help it, I’m sure. Many fans didn’t even realize that there were a few more episodes that NBC aired (I’m sure they contractually had to air them), as “Freefall” was aired as the supposed series finale. So, those 3 episodes are many times mistakenly thought of as ‘lost’ episodes, too (along with “Too Much Too Late”), when in reality NBC did air them. 

I almost feel like they’d filmed it earlier, but ran out of time to place it somewhere to try and propose this new spin-off series...and when MV was officially cancelled part way into Season 5, they probably felt there was no reason to go forward with a spin-off from it. Keith Gordon is a good actor & always played an amazing psycho or deranged character, lol! His most famous role was probably Arnie Cunningham in Christine (1983)...based off of Stephen King’s novel. 

[Swevicus]

"Heap of Filth", as I've heard some folks semi-affectionately call this one. Right off the bat, I can think of a few ways this could have been improved:

1. Keep the characters of Joey Hardin and Paul Cutter - the rest were a bit "meh" but nice to look at
2. Have Tubbs go undercover as a teacher (with Joey as a student)
3. Paul and Castillo work together (with a little friction, which is to be expected)
4. Have Joey be the one to fall for Claire and have him left in shock at her death (this would be the perfect opportunity for Crockett to give him some words of wisdom)
5. Tubbs gets in too deep with Baines's knowledge, who has him fired
6. Have both Stan and Trudy take Tania's role in this story as the IT whiz and provide the missing links to the murders, with Gina replacing Tubbs
7. Eventually, with Baines exposed, he takes Gina hostage, with the Vice boys (and Joey) arriving to save the day, with the same result
8. Paul offers Joey a gig as a Young Criminals Unit detective, which he accepts (and bids farewell to Crockett, who gives him some last words of advice)

There you go. I just made the story a lot better.  

[ViceFanMan]

7 hours ago, Swevicus said:

"Heap of Filth", as I've heard some folks semi-affectionately call this one. Right off the bat, I can think of a few ways this could have been improved:

1. Keep the characters of Joey Hardin and Paul Cutter - the rest were a bit "meh" but nice to look at
2. Have Tubbs go undercover as a teacher (with Joey as a student)
3. Paul and Castillo work together (with a little friction, which is to be expected)
4. Have Joey be the one to fall for Claire and have him left in shock at her death (this would be the perfect opportunity for Crockett to give him some words of wisdom)
5. Tubbs gets in too deep with Baines's knowledge, who has him fired
6. Have both Stan and Trudy take Tania's role in this story as the IT whiz and provide the missing links to the murders, with Gina replacing Tubbs
7. Eventually, with Baines exposed, he takes Gina hostage, with the Vice boys (and Joey) arriving to save the day, with the same result
8. Paul offers Joey a gig as a Young Criminals Unit detective, which he accepts (and bids farewell to Crockett, who gives him some last words of advice)

There you go. I just made the story a lot better.  

Well, it was actually originally filmed as a proposed "Pilot" for a possible spin-off show...most likely starring the Joey Harden character (as well as some of the rest). But, I think they just ran out of time to air it before Freefall had to be aired as the "finale". So, it (along with World of Trouble & Miracle Man) ended up being aired afterwards--going into June of 1989 (many fans didn't even realize this as they thought Freefall was it, and those 3 episodes are many times mistakenly referred to as "lost" episodes as they think they originally never aired). The new show idea never went anywhere past this episode, but the whole idea was to not really have the MV cast involved much other than sort of introducing it at the beginning. Even if they had decided to go ahead with a new series off of it, I don't think it would have lasted very long. The Joey Harden character was okay to "pop" up a few times on MV, but he wasn't "strong" enough to carry his own show. 

Edited March 16, 2023 by ViceFanMan

[Swevicus]

Probably would have been better as a feature-length movie/episode if it was meant to be a pilot. Then again, it's a pretty subpar story.

[ViceFanMan]

3 hours ago, Swevicus said:

Probably would have been better as a feature-length movie/episode if it was meant to be a pilot. Then again, it's a pretty subpar story.

Yeah, lots of times proposed pilots for possible new spin-off shows are actually only a regular 1hr episode of whatever current show they're trying to spin-off from. They don't want to spend the money and time to do a 2hr/movie length one if it ends up being a no-go, and/or the network rejects it...which in this case it didn't go anywhere anyway, because number 1 they ran out of time to air it before the supposed "finale" of MV, and number 2 MV had been officially canceled well before the finale aired, so there was no reason to try and pursue this new spin-off show if MV itself was done. Plus, LOF was pretty weak overall, and not that great of a spin-off idea, in my opinion. I think a show centered around it would have gotten canceled pretty quick, if they had decided to go forward with it.  

[Miami Beau]

On 3/16/2023 at 6:54 AM, Swevicus said:

"Heap of Filth", as I've heard some folks semi-affectionately call this one. Right off the bat, I can think of a few ways this could have been improved:

1. Keep the characters of Joey Hardin and Paul Cutter - the rest were a bit "meh" but nice to look at
2. Have Tubbs go undercover as a teacher (with Joey as a student)
3. Paul and Castillo work together (with a little friction, which is to be expected)
4. Have Joey be the one to fall for Claire and have him left in shock at her death (this would be the perfect opportunity for Crockett to give him some words of wisdom)
5. Tubbs gets in too deep with Baines's knowledge, who has him fired
6. Have both Stan and Trudy take Tania's role in this story as the IT whiz and provide the missing links to the murders, with Gina replacing Tubbs
7. Eventually, with Baines exposed, he takes Gina hostage, with the Vice boys (and Joey) arriving to save the day, with the same result
8. Paul offers Joey a gig as a Young Criminals Unit detective, which he accepts (and bids farewell to Crockett, who gives him some last words of advice)

There you go. I just made the story a lot better.  

Very nice. The whole Tubbs involvement as a teacher would have worked great. I can imagine Tubbs showing up at school dressed like he did in Indian Wars with the glasses (minus the beard). 
Also Paul Cutter/Castillo OCB scene would have been awesome. Especially if Cutter showed the same emotion he did during the bodybag scene. 

They should have filmed another scene with Crockett and inserted it at the end. Or at the very least, had Crockett phone Hardin and have Crockett’s voice be heard over the phone. 

So Edward James Olmos had left production at this point and they were also finishing Victims Of Circumstance and starting production on World Of Trouble, so that’s why we don’t see much of C&T. 

[ViceFanMan]

7 hours ago, Miami Beau said:

Very nice. The whole Tubbs involvement as a teacher would have worked great. I can imagine Tubbs showing up at school dressed like he did in Indian Wars with the glasses (minus the beard). 
Also Paul Cutter/Castillo OCB scene would have been awesome. Especially if Cutter showed the same emotion he did during the bodybag scene. 

They should have filmed another scene with Crockett and inserted it at the end. Or at the very least, had Crockett phone Hardin and have Crockett’s voice be heard over the phone. 

So Edward James Olmos had left production at this point and they were also finishing Victims Of Circumstance and starting production on World Of Trouble, so that’s why we don’t see much of C&T. 

I don't think the MV cast was ever supposed to have much to do in this episode, other than Crockett & Tubbs sort of "introducing" it at the beginning, as it was originally filmed to try and be a possible pilot for a spin-off series--with Joey Harden and his group and/or crew. However, I think the episode might have been filmed much earlier than when it was finally aired...possibly even before the show was officially canceled. They just ran out of time to get it aired before they needed to air Freefall as the "finale"...which by then the series had been canceled.  

[Adrian321]

On 12/15/2012 at 2:41 PM, Tommy Vercetti said:

I'm of the opinion that this ep isn't quite as bad as it's made out to be. There are things that suck about it, obviously. No Crockett and Tubbs and the Vice crew and it's a ripoff of 21 Jump Street. Vice was always it's own thing and completely original. It never ripped anything off so for it to rip off another vastly inferior show is annoying.However, I think there's good points about this ep. The opening scene with Paradise City is really good. Joey Hardin is good character, played well (his ep Line of Fire is a top 5 favourite of mine) and he does a good job carrying the episode. Keith Gordon is a very good actor and he gave an excellent performance as Baines. He was also great in the film Christine. There's also some very nice scenery in this ep.Overall it's not quite as bad as it's reputation suggests. I think there's a lot worse episodes then this, but it's far from quintessential, good Vice.

Well.... I think that is the biggest issue of them all ! You tune in some MV, using whatever device, and instead of atleast watching the ACTUAL characters involved in a plot, you see something completely disconnected ?! That is a pretty important thing !

I consider the episode quite trashy as it is, but because it doesn't even involve the characters, it is top 5 Worst episodes, easily.

[ViceFanMan]

7 hours ago, Adrian321 said:

Well.... I think that is the biggest issue of them all ! You tune in some MV, using whatever device, and instead of atleast watching the ACTUAL characters involved in a plot, you see something completely disconnected ?! That is a pretty important thing !

I consider the episode quite trashy as it is, but because it doesn't even involve the characters, it is top 5 Worst episodes, easily.

In a sense, but this episode was supposed to be a possible spin-off for a totally different show, starring the Joey Harden character--and his cohorts. So, it is not going to include the main MV cast much. But, of course by the time it aired MV had already been cancelled, so the idea of a spin-off had probably already been dropped--although I get the "impression" this episode was filmed earlier, before they knew MV was not going to come back.

It's not a "strong" episode by any means, and even if MV had come back for a 6th season, I'm not sure this show would have lasted a full season if they had gone ahead with the spin-off idea. But, I don't think it's "trashy", and there are sadly other MV episodes worse than it.  "Leap" was just not cast well (although I was okay with the Joey Harden character himself), and it was definitely proposed at the wrong time!