This Week In Miami Vice History

[mvnyc]

December 9th - 15th:

 

"Little Prince", the 11th episode of the 1st season, premiered on NBC on Friday, December 14th, 1984 at 10PM EST. Some notes on this episode (from MIami Vice Wiki):

* Tubbs refers to Mark Sr. as "voted most likely to be Robert Vesco in high school". Vesco (1935-2007) allegedly committed securities fraud and escaped prosecution by fleeing to countries that refused extradition (Costa Rica, Cuba, etc). He was never put on trial in the US for his crimes, but Cuba did sentence him to jail in 1996 for 13 years for similar offenses. He died in November, 2007 in prison.

* The working title of this episode was called "White Bread."

 

"Phil The Shill", the 11th episode of the 2nd season, premiered on NBC on Friday, December 13th, 1985 at 10PM EST. Some notes on this episode (from Miami Vice Wiki):

* A "shill" is a person who is secretly in league with another person or organization while pretending to be neutral, usually for financial gain.

* Phil Collins' song "Life is a Rat Race" has never been released on any album since it was played on the show. It plays a final time during the episode's closing credits, the second time in the first two seasons a song other than the "Miami Vice Theme" is used there.

* Crockett's Ferrari Daytona's paint scheme is Tuxedo Black (twelve coats, to be exact).

* Phil Mayhew's distinctive car in this episode is a Lamborghini Jalpa, the lesser known Lamborgini of the 1980s behind the famous Countach.

* Switek's line about "This one's for you Elvis" refers to the time Elvis Presley shot at a TV with the image of actor Robert Goulet, which was the subject of the $100,000 question Phil asked Joe in the game.

* The last name of Phil Collins' character, Mayhew, along with the last names of other supporting characters in this episode (Stewart, Bruford, Banks, and Hackett), were last names of the members of Collins' band Genesis. Also, MacPhail was the last name of Genesis' early tour manager.

* After briefly disappearing in the previous episode, Larry Zito's beard reappears. This continuity error is due to the studio changed the running order of the episodes, which happened several times during season 2.

 

"Forgive Us Our Debts", the 11th episode of the 3rd season, premiered on NBC on Friday, December 12th, 1986 at 9PM EST. Some notes on this episode (from Miami Vice Wiki).

* Donna Rice (in an uncredited role) played Frankel's wife in the opening. This episode aired five months before the scandal involving her affair with presidential hopeful Gary Hart broke and was rerun on June 12, 1987, just over a month after it made headlines.

* This is one of only three Season 3 episodes in which Tubbs is shown brandishing his shotgun; the others are "Cuba Libre" and "Viking Bikers From Hell". Despite its appearance in these episodes, he never fires the weapon once in the entire third season.

* When Switek is using the "face-recognition" technology in the Bug Van, the word "asynchronous" is misspelled on the monitor.

* Beginning with this episode, the episode's title appears mid-screen, just as it did for the first 14 episodes of the first season. Starting with "Smuggler's Blues", the episode title had moved towards the bottom of the screen. The title will remain at mid-screen for the rest of Vice's run.

 

**There was no Season 4 premiere episode this week**.

 

"Line Of Fire", the 6th episode of the 5th season, premiered on NBC on Friday, December 16th, 1988 at 10PM EST. Some notes on this episode (from Miami Vice Wiki):

* Saundra Santiago does not appear in this episode.

* An example of something that slipped past the censors was a woman in a thong bikini with her backside exposed to Tubbs and Switek while they are discussing Felix and the FBI leak.

* The Netherland Hotel (shown when Tubbs, Switek, Felix and Bates have their shootout) is another Art Deco hotel that was renovated after Vice went off the air into a high-priced condominum complex.

* The Biltmore Hotel (where Crockett, Tubbs and Hardin/Mollis were staying) was renovated in 1987 and reopened after a ten year period of being unoccupied. It closed again in 1990 and reopened again in 1992 and is now a four-star hotel in Coral Gables.

* When Tubbs is searching for the St. Vitus Dance, the shadow of the helicopter shown moving over the trees in closeup is of a different type than the one he is flying in.

* In the scene where Crockett takes out the helicopter with a flare gun, it's very obvious that a model helicopter has been used to depict the explosion. Moreover, the model is of a different helicopter to the one that attacks the St. Vitus Dance.

This will be the last "This Week In Miami Vice History" thread for the next 2 weeks due to the show being on holiday haitus during it's original run.