Season 5: Overall Assessment


rodriguezisdead

Recommended Posts

This isn't vice to me. Crockett wearing Leather and jeans, Tubbs wearing god knows what.

 

There's hardly any music, action or sense of production values. Atleast in Season 4 Crockett wore some pastels, there were some cool montages and action(the boat chase in God's work) etc. But this season just feels like a generic A team esque rip off from the late 80s. 

 

It started feeling less like an NBC network show and more like a USA made-for-cable show of that era. The production values and cinematography plummeted big time, more than any other TV show I can think of. Crockett and Tubbs acting totally out of character in most places, C&T separated most of the time, a generic score, and fewer and fewer soundtrack songs made Season 5 really dismal in places.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...

I just just got seasons 4 & 5 so I'll watch some of those for the first time since they first aired.

When was it decided to cancel the show? Was it decided at the beginning? I ask because I remember there being a cloud over the whole season with everything pointing to this being the end. It feels like a completely different show. It feels like this is season 11 rather than 5!! I can't believe the show changed so fast when modern shows last so long with minimal changes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

The Burnett trilogy is probably the best of MV in my book. But following the return of Sonny's memory he is a changed man, and is never fully accepted back into the OCB fold IMO. He is sulky and cynical for most of the eps in which we see him after this and although this is necessary to convince us that his time (and hence the show's time) is over, it just doesn't make for particularly entertaining viewing. It doesn't help that we see so little of so many of the cast for most of the Season either eg. Castillo, Rico at times. The one thing that Season 5 has to do, and it does it well in my book, is show us how Sonny's total disenchantment with the System must logically end. 

 

Your whole post was great.  It's been a LONG time since I've seen many of the S5 episodes so I won't comment on the individual eps now.  The Burnett trilogy was excellent and it would ahve been great to carry over some of the fallout through the rest of the season.  This was done to a slight extent but a lot was glossed over in spite of the few times Sonny is shown in therapy.

 

When S5 aired I was 32 years old and I truly hated Sonny's scruffy S5 look as well as many of the eps.  But after recently viewing episdodes from each season as well as reading some of the commentary, I agree S5 was the logical outcome in terms of Sonny's look and personality, and the relationships within the OCB,  I think many of the episodes could have benefited from stronger writing and if there had really been an effort to show and to deal with Sonny's (and the team's) aftereffects of the amnesia episode, it would have been much more satisfying.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

I for one always loved season 5. I always enjoyed it a lot. It has a lot of episodes I consider fantastic and I really liked the late '80s/end of the decade look and feel of the season. It's a great season IMO and vastly better than the often abominable season 4 and I completely disagree with some negative assessments of it

Edited by Tommy Vercetti
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 months later...

i think the writing on season 5 was better than season 4, and the tone was more consistent. a couple dark episodes, but not the silliness . Well there is Jack of All trades and Miracle Man.... Hostile Takeover was the best of the season. To me it feels like Miami Vice climaxes with the Burnett trilogy  and should sort of end there, but goes on. Like a movie where they say it went on 5 or 10 minute's too long. There's a couple episode's, The Lost Madonna , Fruit of the Poisoned Tree, and even To have and to Hold and even Lombard that feel like they would have fit in season 1 and 2.

Tim Truman's music for me is all wrong for MV and adds to the odd feeling of the season. The show overall feels tired. There's much less effort put into the cinematography and music, which started two years earlier under dick wolf. Michael Mann at this point didn't have much to do with the series i don't think. The other producers had changed somewhat. Thankfully it got a good finale. It could have ended worse like so many shows, but at the same time it was only 5 seasons. It was disappointing that the show was really mishandled in the last couple of seasons.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

1 Hostile Takeover

2 Redemption In Blood

3 Heart Of Night

4 Asian Cut

5 The Lost Madonna

6 Freefall

7 Line Of Fire

8 To Have And To Hold

9 Jack Of All Trades

10 Fruit Of The Poison Tree

11 World Of Trouble

12 Borrasca

13 Victims Of Circumstance

14 Bad Timing

15 Leap Of Faith

16 Too Much Too Late

17 Miami Squeeze

18 Over The Line

19 The Cell Within

20 Hard Knocks

21 Miracle Man

This was the hardest season to rank.

This is my least favorite season. The reason is the bleak tone. Serious is one thing. Thats why I like S3. But these episodes just LOOK depressing. There are some great episodes but I just don't watch them much.

The season starts out real good but runs out of steam towards the end.

6/10 overall.

We'll it's been fun reviewing my favorite show. Even though at this point I'm about as burnt out by this season as Crockett and Tubbs.

Now I'm gonna go somewhere where the waters warm, the drinks are cold, the music is loud, the women are easy, and I don't know the names of the players. Cheers.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

I think I just finished watching all the rest of season 5 episodes I hadn't seen before.

Honestly? I think they should have stopped after the third season. Season four was kind of like, "Whoops, we did a couple of things wrong with season 3. People liked the pastels, didn't they? Well, let's bring some of them back". But true to the famous saying that you should never change a winning team, that ship had sailed when Michael Mann left the show and allowed Dick Wolf to goof off with "Missing Hours" and "The Cows of October". What happened in season 4 and 5 was like you trying to bake that awesome cake that your grandma used to bake, but having no real understanding of what ingredients and what ways of preparing it made it so great. You'll end up with something that will half resemble your grandma's cake, but will never be as good.

Well and with season five, it often feels like, "Ok, let's do a few more episodes and then we'll wrap this up". And I don't just mean extended absences of the core cast or dwindling action scene budgets. In the later S5 episodes, you can sometimes just sense that Don Johnson was like, "Alright, a few more weeks of this and I'll be moving on to bigger things". They just weren't trying anymore. Nobody was. And some of the stories just felt like the newly brought in rookie writers were neither understanding, nor even trying anymore to emulate the magic formula of seasons 1 and 2.

It has always felt kind of odd to me that I've been such a huge fan of the show for 30 years, but never even watched season five and only part of season four. That only changed when I got the whole box set. But having watched all of it now, season five to me is about as forgettable as seasons one and two are so massively unforgettable and an enduring staple of 80s pop culture.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/30/2014 at 4:26 PM, deepundercover said:

I agree about the order on the DVD's.

 

I'm now going to watch World of Trouble after Freefall, which doesn't really work.

Strange order of episodes. 

 

Were they originally broadcast in this order?

As for the strange airing order of the last few season 5 episodes:

There were still 3 episodes (World of Trouble, Miracle Man, and Leap of Faith) that the network had not aired yet, when it came time for the May sweeps. They went ahead and aired the supposed series finale Freefall during this time, to try and have one last cash-in on the show.

However, they still had to air these other episodes...so they were aired after Freefall, going into June of 1989. Many fans don't realize this and think these 3 are "lost" episodes never aired by NBC, when in fact they were aired...just after the show was supposed to have been concluded. 

The only true "lost" episode never aired by the network was Too Much Too Late. It was 1st aired by the USA network in 1990 (the year after the series was cancelled) as USA was the 1st cable network to air syndicated reruns. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 years later...
On 9/13/2013 at 4:33 AM, menno112 said:

I did the crazy thing last night by first watching 2 episodes of season 1 (Milk run and Smuggler's blues) and than watching an episode of season 5 (The cell within.)It fascinates me how much a show can change in 4 years time. Everything has changed: The clothes, the style of music, the colours, the hair styles, the mood. I have never seen a show change direction as significantly as Vice did. The first 2 seasons where the happy days seasons: fresh, fun, cool.The third season I suprisingly like a lot. Great stories, but much darker.The fourth season is quite crap. Hardly any memorable episodes and that is where the show lost direction.The 5th season is the darkest season, but with some great episodes.To me, Vice will always be the first 2 seasons, with a new found love for the 3rd. The 4th and 5th brought down the overall level of the series. You cannot help imagine what if they stopped Vice after the first 2 or 3 seasons and Don would have had a serious entrance into the movie world what could have become.

Seasons 1 & 2 are quintessential Vice—the stars were perfectly aligned, and all the elements were present that made it the series we all know and love.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Vice changed because the times it was trying to capture changed. If it hadn't changed it would have looked like "Saved by the Bell." And which seasons you like frankly depends on what you value more about Vice: style or substance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, Robbie C. said:

Vice changed because the times it was trying to capture changed. If it hadn't changed it would have looked like "Saved by the Bell." And which seasons you like frankly depends on what you value more about Vice: style or substance.

You say that but what came next was decline, 3 was solid but they were still rehashing episodes from 1&2, 4 was an inconsistent and 5 was poor. Lets face it the show changed because of the main players left the series, including the man behind the camera. And Jan became disinterested as well.

They way I see it the show changed direction way too quickly, it was only the end of the second season. At the end of the day the Vice fans at the time were not complaining. The show for the 3rd season could have easily have went back to the gritty formula we saw in season 1, problem was they couldn't because the main people were no longer involved.

If the show had started in 1984 with season 3 it would not have captured the public's eye and changed television. Seasons that followed 1&2 were just another cop show, before that it was something unique, hence why everybody fell in love with it.

 

 

 

Edited by RedDragon86
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've never thought season 5 was poor. I actually thought it was much better than the previous season, if only because it was tonally so much more consistent. In fact, the season opener "Hostile Takeover" is a contender for my favourite ever episode of the show.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Leigh Burne said:

I've never thought season 5 was poor. I actually thought it was much better than the previous season, if only because it was tonally so much more consistent. In fact, the season opener "Hostile Takeover" is a contender for my favourite ever episode of the show.

Love that Burnett Arc!

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, Leigh Burne said:

I've never thought season 5 was poor. I actually thought it was much better than the previous season, if only because it was tonally so much more consistent. In fact, the season opener "Hostile Takeover" is a contender for my favourite ever episode of the show.

I enjoyed "The Burnett Arc" but what makes 5 disappointing is the lack of effort from Don, he comes across as bored and not 100% committed to his role  as he was previously and sometimes he is absent from episodes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, RedDragon86 said:

I enjoyed "The Burnett Arc" but what makes 5 disappointing is the lack of effort from Don, he comes across as bored and not 100% committed to his role  as he was previously and sometimes he is absent from episodes.

I never really got that impression, to be honest. In the Burnett episodes he hits his first villainous and then conflicted character out of the park. And afterwards it always felt to me like he was just paying a more subdued version of the character, like all the things he'd been through had genuinely had a lasting affect on him - which is another thing I really rate about the fifth season. As much as I love the early stuff, it does kinda bug me that they experience these awful experiences week-in, week-out, losing loved ones and seeing good people meet undeserved ends, but then by the next episode everyone's happy and joking again. In the last season you really feel like all the crap they go through is getting to them, Crockett especially, and I really love that.

Edited by Leigh Burne
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, RedDragon86 said:

I enjoyed "The Burnett Arc" but what makes 5 disappointing is the lack of effort from Don, he comes across as bored and not 100% committed to his role  as he was previously and sometimes he is absent from episodes.

Then that’s on him, and in my view is a mark against him. 
I started watching Vice when it was in syndication so saw the last seasons first. I tend to prefer them because they were more intense. But I also like Vice for the characters and writing, not the fashion. I think that makes a difference in how you see the seasons. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/16/2019 at 12:22 AM, Robbie C. said:

Vice changed because the times it was trying to capture changed. If it hadn't changed it would have looked like "Saved by the Bell." And which seasons you like frankly depends on what you value more about Vice: style or substance.

Season 1&2 has both style and substance. Its a common misconception that because early "Vice" has such great style and visuals that substance must be lacking but it actually has both in my view.

The Wolf era could only dream of making episodes like "Buddies" "Lombard" or "Little Miss Dangerous" 

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, RedDragon86 said:

I enjoyed "The Burnett Arc" but what makes 5 disappointing is the lack of effort from Don, he comes across as bored and not 100% committed to his role  as he was previously and sometimes he is absent from episodes.

I'm actually going to respectfully disagree here on the Burnett arc bit, as my own opinion of course. Had this discussion with someone some time back and we both agreed that it was one of the reasons Vice took a bit of a hit as well in addition to other factors. We felt it was Dick Wolf going out on a limb and attempting to turn the show into a generic soap opera bit like today. Now admittedly you can also argue that by this time the 80s were basically over and there was simply nothing much left for the show to make content out of, the whole drugs and "vice" bit was already capitalized on and such but, I just didn't enjoy the arc. It dragged on for too long, every episode I was left wondering "So when's Crockett coming back?" but it went on for too long and I got quite bored. But hey, that's just me. 

 

Thing is, a show like Vice couldn't hold its ground the same way shows like Magnum could or anything else because the principles it was grounded in and what it capitalized on were so time/era specific that resources were very limited. The whole drug epidemic of Miami in the 80s, the punk retrowave and all, it could only last so long. And one can argue that if the show had launched a few years earlier it might have gone on for more. Maybe, maybe not but it's futile to think about it now. It's one of those things that I think Michael Mann saw through clearly by the 3rd season. If I'm not mistaken, he left because he thought the show simply wouldn't last as long by the end of his tenure and he was probably right. Partially because we lost him and Jan Hammer, but also because Wolf didn't share the same vision Mann did and the 80s were coming to a close so there was simply only so much material left to work with even by the end of the show's tenure itself.

 

Did I really just type this out?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

52 minutes ago, RedDragon86 said:

Season 1&2 has both style and substance. Its a common misconception that because early "Vice" has such great style and visuals that substance must be lacking but it actually has both in my view.

The Wolf era could only dream of making episodes like "Buddies" "Lombard" or "Little Miss Dangerous" 

 

I disagree, but that’s fine. For a third of season 1 Vice was pretty much a standard buddy cop show with visuals. EJO marked the partial transition in terms of style when it came to the writing. To do a counterpoint, I don’t think season 1 or 2 could have produced God’s Work. And no, Evan is not the same thing. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

57 minutes ago, Matt5 said:

Dick Wolf wasn’t the show runner in Season 5 he wasn’t on the show it was Robert Ward. @Assasinge

Ah I see, I guess I got my info wrong there then. However I still stand by my other points not talking about Wolf etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

46 minutes ago, Robbie C. said:

I disagree, but that’s fine. For a third of season 1 Vice was pretty much a standard buddy cop show with visuals. EJO marked the partial transition in terms of style when it came to the writing. To do a counterpoint, I don’t think season 1 or 2 could have produced God’s Work. And no, Evan is not the same thing. 

I can agree with this to a certain extent, but I also don't know many cop tv shows that have pilot openers with a Ferrari cruising down Miami with Phil Collins playing either :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, Assasinge said:

I can agree with this to a certain extent, but I also don't know many cop tv shows that have pilot openers with a Ferrari cruising down Miami with Phil Collins playing either :P

That was the style and visual aspect, which was where Vice stood out in the early seasons. I’m talking about the writing. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, Robbie C. said:

That was the style and visual aspect, which was where Vice stood out in the early seasons. I’m talking about the writing. 

What exactly was wrong with the writing in 1&2? and what was so special about in 3-4 and 5?

Did it get better by episodes like Killshot, Lend Me An Ear or Death & The Lady for example?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I consider the writing in season 1 and 2 erratic. It did get better than The Great McCarthy, for example. They also couldn’t settle into a solid writing tone. You can cherry pick episodes from the later seasons and I can do the same for the early ones. But your argument still rests on the assumption that everyone appreciates the same elements in Vice. Mine assumes that not everyone does, and that the later seasons come at it from a different angle reflecting the changing context of the times. And yeah, Death and the Lady was a better episode than some we saw in Season 1 or 2. Killshot maybe not, but it wasn’t worse than McCarthy. At least in my view. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.