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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.

One thing I think it did contribute storywise early on is insight into the black ops/covert ops world and the idea that US law enforcement and alphabet agencies aren't always the good guys. As well as the idea of conflicting agendas and aims between said agencies and undermining one another. The show did not present law enforcement as a homogeneous brotherhood and I think that was a relatively new concept at the time. I don't remember prior cop shows that addressed things like the Golden Triangle and the CIA's complicity in its operation. Things like that make us look bad and a lot of shows I think stayed away from things like that. Viet Nam was also something we were still smarting from in '84 or just refused to talk about at all. I think Yerkovich and Mann (or whomever) deserve credit for not being afraid to tackle those subjects.

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.

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.

Sad news as one of the greatest NFL coaches in Miami history as passed away. He lived a long life. Passing on at age 90. I remember cheering his teams on many times while watching with my family. May he Rest in Peace.

His show Law & Order is just repetitive drivel. This is the episodes in nutshell, 2 detective question suspects, witnesses all day, door to door, then we end up with a court scene at the end, then times that by 30 seasons.

Im from North Jersey, Morris County

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).

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.

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.

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?

I could go on and on about this, but don't really see a point. Vietnam alone could have spawned many more plot lines than it did. And then we have the characters themselves...Tubbs being miracled into Metro-Dade after breaking tons of rules (and likely a few laws) coming down from NYPD could have gotten far more reference than it did (Prodigal Son was thin because they missed a golden opportunity to link Tubbs back to NYC in a real way). Most of my fan fiction comes directly from trying to close continuity holes the producers left in Vice. As an aside, I think the assertion that viewers couldn't deal with strong continuity shows until recently is wrong. Dallas proved that, as did Magnum PI, the original Battlestar Galactica, Gunsmoke, and many other shows spread across a number of television "eras." Vice chose to focus on style and image, and paid a heavy price for that.

In Freefall when Crockett leaves his boat he is wearing a T shirt from Kansas University, which is not exactly good football continuity either (but a good inside joke as DJ is from Kansas originally). There were lots of other missed opportunities

For many MANY years, there have been extremely few days pass that I do not watch an episode. Some things stick to memory, and some things don’t. I’m equally amazed by both of those things.

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.