This Week In Miami Vice History

[mvnyc]

November 11th - 17th:

 

"The Great McCarthy", the 8th episode of the 1st season, premiered on NBC on Friday, November 16th, 1984 at 10PM EST. Some notes about this episode (from Miami Vice Wiki):

* The Barnett Bank building that Izzy robbed in the opening is now owned by Bank of America.

* The famous boat race scene would not be the last time Don Johnson raced powerboats. He raced in the late 80s APBA powerboat championship in a Wellcraft SCARAB, the same boat Sonny Crockett piloted in seasons 2-5.

* The aforementioned scene is also one of the very few times the color red appears on the show; red was one of the colors Michael Mann 'banned' from use on the production of the series, but owing to the fact the extra boats taking part in the race were simply owned and crewed by members of the public, the production team had to relent on this occasion and allow the red speedboat to take part.

*This episode is the last in the series to show Crockett and Gina as being in a relationship. It is never really explained at what point they stop seeing each other, but evidently by the end of the season they are no longer together.

* During the game of pool with McCarthy, Crockett sinks the yellow ball three times.

* After borrowing the money from Gina and Trudy following their bust, Crockett and Tubbs walk towards camera and jump over a wall, in the process stepping in some plants they clearly didn't know were there.

* The boat race is a continuity nightmare, with the relative positions of the boats taking part constantly changing from shot to shot.

 

"Tale Of The Goat", the 7th episode of the 2nd season, premiered on NBC on Friday, November 15th, 1985 at 10PM EST. Some notes about this episode (from Miami Vice Wiki):

* This was the only episode that delved into the world of voodoo.

* Little Coco's character, Baron Samedi, was named for the actual voodoo god of the same name.

* The theory of Tetrodotoxin causing a period of "zombieism" was written by ethnobotanist Wade Davis in 1983 and in his 1985 book "The Serpent and the Rainbow", but was debunked by the scientific community later in the 1980s, claiming the symptoms of voodoo zombies did not match the ones created by the poison and no substantiation of zombies created this way existed.

* When Legba and his thugs walk into the arcade, there is a man playing the video game "Centipede" right outside the door. Although his hands are moving the trackball and pushing the fire button, he is not actually playing, as the score list is up on the screen the whole time he is "playing" and can be seen quite clearly when the thugs walk past.

* Tubbs is shown reloading his 5-shot revolver during the climactic gunfight, arguably the only time in the entire series that he does so.

* While on the Blackbird, Tubbs is seen to fire several shots at Legba, but only the final one is accompanied by a gunshot sound.

 

"Better Living Through Chemistry", the 8th episode of the 3rd season, premiered on NBC on Friday, November 14th, 1986 at 9PM EST. Some notes about this episode (from Miami Vice Wiki):

* Gina & Trudy do not appear in this episode.

* "Born To Be Wild" is the first "third party" song to be used in more than one episode of Vice; it was previously featured in "The Great McCarthy."

* A flashback scene was filmed showing the shooting incident that led to the split between Tubbs and Batisse in New York, but was cut from the final episode without explanation.

* Izzy escapes his cell by picking the lock, but when he pushes the door open it is obvious there is no recess in the frame for the lock to latch into.

 

"Missing Hours", the 7th episode of the 4th season, premiered on NBC on Friday, November 13th, 1987 at 9PM EST. Some notes about this episode (from Miami Vice Wiki):

* Starting with this episode, John Petersen joins Jan Hammer for music credit in most of the remaining fourth season episodes.

* This marks the final appearance of Charlie Barnett as Noogie Lamont (the Noogman). This is also the only appearance of the character since the second season's "Trust Fund Pirates".

* Carson mentions "computer bulletin boards", which was the precursor to the internet chat rooms of today.

* The way in which the men in black never blink adds to their unsettling appearance in a tip to standard UFO legend.

* The abandoned hangar in which DeLong's lab is located, seen in a very brief shot, previously appeared in Season One's "Evan" as the location where Evan Freed gives a demonstration of the MAC 10, and in season 2's "Phill The Shill", as the location where Rivers has two dealers executed. It would appear again in Season Five's "To Have And To Hold" as the location where Tubbs (as Cooper) and Ramon Padroza are ambushed while making a deal.

* The episode uses the video effect of luminance keying to show the bizarre occurrences at the houseboat. Notably, DeLong's face is keyed out and Trudy's keyed in to illustrate her "out of body" experience. 

 

"Heart Of Night", the 3rd episode of the 5th season, premiered on NBC on Friday, November 18th, 1988 at 10PM EST. Some notes about this episode (from Miami Vice Wiki):

* This episode was the first shot for the fifth season, but was aired third due to the resolution of the Sonny Burnett Arc.

* May Ying and Ma Sek previously appeared in "Golden Triangle (Part II)", although they were played by Joan Chen and Glenn Kubota respectively, making this the only time recurring characters on Miami Vice were played by different actors between appearances. James Saito, who replaces Kubota as Ma Sek, was also in "Golden Triangle (Part II)" as Howie Wong.

* Because of Crockett's recovering from his trauma, he only appears for about two minutes in the episode.

* In reality, Crockett would almost certainly be in jail following his actions as Burnett, and even if he remained free, he would never be allowed to keep his job as a police officer.

* The originally scripted ending called for Castillo and May Ying parting ways during the day with Castillo leaving first. This was changed to the broadcast ending.

* Trudy recalls the events of "The Dutch Oven" when talking to May Ying about how Castillo defended her when she had her first shooting of a suspect.

* It is implied Cortez finally breaks May Ying by sexually assaulting her, as he is seen putting his shirt back on afterwards, while Rivas quips, "I should have thought of that before. No woman could tolerate you."

* Once again, as in "Hostile Takeover", when Castillo is questioning Crockett at OCB in the opening scene, he refers to Detective James Hagovitch as James Yagovitch. It is unknown why this name pronunciation change from "Mirror Image" occurred.  

**This is one of several episodes that does not end on a freeze frame.

Edited November 11, 2016 by mvnyc

[Daytona74]

vor 4 Stunden schrieb mvnyc:

"Missing Hours", the 7th episode of the 4th season, premiered on NBC on Friday, November 13th, 1987 at 9PM EST. Some notes about this episode (from Miami Vice Wiki):

Some things are better left forgotten...

 

vor 4 Stunden schrieb mvnyc:

* This marks the final appearance of Charlie Barnett as Noogie Lamont (the Noogman). This is also the only appearance of the character since the second season's "Trust Fund Pirates".

Kind of a shame about Charlie Barnett. If you believe the old anecdotes, he was a real "problem child" for everybody on the show. Don Johnson may have developed his antics as his fame increased, but Charlie Barnett was apparently a complete nightmare to work with, because he had difficulties keeping schedules, and he had a drug problem as well that was making him very flaky and undependable. I think the drugs were also what got him kicked off the show eventually. Kind of ironic for somebody who was playing an occasional drug user on screen.

Edited November 12, 2016 by Daytona74

[summer84]

Again very interesting background details about the show!

I don't mind watching "Missing Hours," (I must be the only one not to.)      Mostly cause it's a Trudy centered episode and I don't find it boring.

I remember reading Olivia Brown didn't even rehearse the script, because she thought the producers were joking.  

But I do agree on that producer Dick Wolf should never had created the episode, they could have come up with much better storylines. And I feel that way about "Tale of The Goat" too.  

 

[Vincent Hanna]

I don't know what Dick Wolf was thinking with some of those Season 4 story lines. There was a recent interview with him explaining that because it was "Miami Vice, you could do these wacky episodes".

Um…what the hell? Alright If it's good for Vice then I want to see Aliens, Frozen Rastafarians and Bull semen in a Law and Order episode.

[summer84]

New writers were brought in for season 4 and what could have turned into a great season, ended up being one of the worst, focusing on themes that had nothing to do with actual Vice undercover work. And I wasn't a fan either of the Sheena Easton character.   

Although every series has it's bad seasons. At least one or two. Luckily MV contains more than 20 episodes, per season, so there are plenty of great episode to choose from, considering Miami Vice only lasted for 5 seasons.

[Daytona74]

Am 12.11.2016 um 18:19 schrieb Vincent Hanna:

 There was a recent interview with him explaining that because it was "Miami Vice, you could do these wacky episodes".

You can also crash a TV show straight into a brick wall with an attitude like that. Yes, the show was pretty malleable and they went many different directions with it. Drugs this week, prostitution or arms dealers next week. But there's a limit. You never saw any aliens on Dallas. If you get my meaning.

 

Am 12.11.2016 um 19:36 schrieb summer84:

New writers were brought in for season 4 and what could have turned into a great season, ended up being one of the worst, focusing on themes that had nothing to do with actual Vice undercover work.

Yeah, if memory serves, Crockett says "Why were we called?" about a half dozen times at the beginning of a season four episode. Really a good question actually. Why would you enlist the help of a vice squad to go searching for a washed up reggae singer's frozen body? I guess the writers were secretly also not really sure what they were doing  .

I sincerely hope that if they ever do a remake of the show, in the form of a weekly TV series or a miniseries, that they will remember what people loved about the first two seasons and go with that. It's not that difficult to get right. If you think of a miniseries like Fargo (at least the first season), they had completely different people working on it (although the Coen Brothers kept watch over it in the background), and yet, they came up with something that really perfectly captured the vibe of the Fargo movie.

Well, and then in season two of Fargo, they ruined it again by putting aliens in it... 

Note to every TV producer on this planet... absolutely no aliens ever. Unless you're The X Files of course...

[Vincent Hanna]

Did they really put Aliens in Fargo? What the..

Instead of shows "Jumping the shark", we should call it the "revealing the Alien" moment.

[Daytona74]

vor 45 Minuten schrieb Vincent Hanna:

Did they really put Aliens in Fargo? What the..

they sure did...

 

I really loved season one. But they kind of lost me again with season two. And not just because of the aliens.

 

vor 45 Minuten schrieb Vincent Hanna:

Instead of shows "Jumping the shark", we should call it the "revealing the Alien" moment.

 

The old jumptheshark.com website (no longer available) actually pinpointed the Alien episode as the moment Miami Vice jumped the shark.

Edited November 15, 2016 by Daytona74

[Matt5]

Great details . Thankyou for posting !