Miami Vice: Quality Content vs. Mindless Entertainment.
Mindless entertainment as a descriptor is pretty harsh, but this is a two sided conversation I often have with my wife when she puts on a new show and really couldn’t care less what it is, what it’s about or who wrote it. It literally could be anything, and if it’s anime, all the better. These are the differences we share and I’ve learned to embrace them.
My wife approaches the television, and all other forms of entertainment much the same way a lot of other people do. It’s an opportunity to escape their day-to-day life and go somewhere else completely different, no matter how good it is or isn’t. It’s escapist and not meant to be life-changing. If it gets her away from thinking about the ER, patient care or the petty office squabbles that go hand-in-hand with that environment, then it’s a success. The overall quality isn’t a factor in deciding to buy a ticket on the ride. For her, she wants something that is palliative and calming, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
My approach to television, films, books, and even people come down to a very simple reality. I want to spend whatever time I have left on this earth, regardless of how old I am now, on material and people that are worthwhile, educational and emotionally moving.
Or something as close to that as possible.
Often times my interests are purely academic, like when I look backwards at media from a specific time period to get a better idea about what I’ll write concerning that era. If I can engage in something intellectually or has educational merit or sincerely emotional — I will find some value, somewhere. It’s not that tall of an order in reality. But if not — I’m pretty much not going to waste my time on it. Everything has a time and place, however.
I have a friend who offhandedly repeats the phrase:
“You spend serious time with serious people, and casual time with casual people.”
I’ve often found myself considering that anytime I sit down to watch the television or a movie. I don’t do escapist fantasy and I find little value in it.
As a qualifier, I’m a combat vet. I served in the US Marines and was stationed in Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War and I’ve seen enough death, destruction, civil annihilation and abuse for an entire lifetime. Most people who’ve been through a combat zone often feel the same way. I grew up in the 70s in extreme poverty and had a very tenuous and troubled path through childhood. I’ve seen more viciousness perpetrated on people in real life to tell me that I don’t need to tune in for it, especially if it’s just being billed as “mindless fun,” which it often is but, on the other side of the same coin — it isn’t. While I fully understand violent media like John Wick, Iron Man, Pulp Fiction or Law & Order: SVU, I’m not really interested in watching much more of it. I’ve seen enough. When my wife goes to watch the new Marvel movie, replete with endless violence, shooting, explosions and bad set-ups, I’d rather leave the room and watch The Golden Girls or even Notting Hill on another television set. It’s not that I’m not capable of understanding it on an artistic or educational level, it just … agitates me.
And this brings me to Miami Vice.
I’ve written before about how when I recently sat down during Quarantine to watch the show from the beginning to end, and I was shocked that I didn’t remember a single episode or story line. I had no memory of how Crockett & Tubbs became Crockett & Tubbs the media sensation, no memory of seeing Ted Nugent as a serial killer take a bullet in a cement yard while young and bare-chested. I had no idea that Crockett turned bad and became a psychopath drug lord or that he even married Sheena Easton. As much of a memory as I had about the show and growing up with it, I was shocked to learn that I had no memory of the show.
I do remember what everyone wore for some reason. Those white linen blazers. The pastel shirts. The white shoes. Crockett’s $20,000 gold Rolex. I remember the music. I remember the white Testarossa and I remember the iconic Lt. Castillo playing the role of the father we never had, who who let you run your rope out far enough and gave you that trademarked look of disapproval if you messed up or blew it. Olmos made that show even more dramatic, even with such a minor contribution. David Caruso would pick up the same mantle years later in CSI: Miami as Lt. Horatio Caine. The stylistic similarities were not a coincidence.
So, now that I’m all the way through 112 episodes and 5 seasons, I can see what a contribution to film, television and culture that show had, even if there seems to be a large contingency of people out there who would rather be dismissive of that and say otherwise. Miami Vice changed Miami, changed the culture of programming, and changed how police procedurals would be written for television shows ever after. Miami Vice brought a darkness to the television that no one was expecting and they camouflaged it with high fashion and fast cars to get it past the censors of the day.
A lot of television shows struggle in the first season to gain their footing to figure out what they are, what they’re doing, and what they want to say. Miami Vice though — knew what it was from the very first moment. It had a very clear footprint from the very first step. If you sit down and watch the very first three episodes, you’ll come to the same conclusion. You’re confronted with an evil version of both Ed O’Neill and Bruce Willis, two mainstream stars from the same era who had success playing lovable good guys. But in almost every instance in the first two years, the guest stars carried themselves in a very believable manner and brought even greater credibility to the show.
I’m writing this because after watching Miami Vice and being hit with massive waves of nostalgia flashbacks to the mid 1980’s, I’m confronted by anyone I talk to about it. They — either understand that the show is considered one of the greatest shows ever made for television, and hadn’t seen a close equal until Breaking Bad, or — they say they’ve never heard of it, nor ever watched it.
That’s pretty surprising. It’s easy to understand in a world of choices and hundreds of channels. Miami Vice was made during a time when the only choices you had was NBC, CBS and ABC. If you could afford it, you might’ve had HBO, but that was about it. Enough time has passed now that a lot of people seem to be able to be in either place and that’s a plausible scenario. My 13 year old son while watching an episode from season 2, said:
“Wow, this show seems incredibly familiar. It reminds me of that video game Grand Theft Auto.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, and did the right thing and explained it.
Also, it’s interesting that Miami Vice is not in syndication and it’s one of the few shows that you’ll have to pay money for if you want to watch it. Whether you buy the DVDs, rent it from Amazon online, or pay a subscription directly to STARZ media who now handle the show. You wont find it on general cable anywhere. That said however, you can find it streaming for free on the Telemundo app on your Roku. Just have your settings set to English. Whatever international deals NBC has with Telemundo, it’s available there but with commercial interruption.
Quality Content.
Miami Vice has two episodes which most people say are their greatest in the series, and one which was a huge contribution to material on TV during its time. One episode is called ‘Evan’ and it’s about cops dealing with homosexuality and suicide. It’s an interesting take on the subject and incredibly moving. The perspective is from a place of continued suffering and post-traumatic stress. The reality of post-war Vietnam and PTSD is subject matter that resurfaces roughly once every five episodes. The writing of this episode was definitely far ahead of its time, shocking that it ever got made, and especially during the AIDS epidemic. I know it’s almost passe, and we hear it all the time, but that episode is NOT something that would be made today. This episode is also the only episode that is not included on any of the streaming services nor shown during syndication. The themes and the content and some of the offensive language are what is likely keeping it from being shown.
The other episode is called ‘Definitely Miami’ which I referenced earlier where Ted Nugent gets his karmic comeuppance. He gets taken down in his prime while being an abusive, scamming jerk. This episode is the most lucid encapsulation of the mid 1980’s as you’ll ever find. It’s material for archaeologists, anthropologists and art history students from the future. On a side note, Definitely Miami was filmed during days before Hurricane Kate hit shore and the sweltering humidity and thick clouds that are in the distance in every scene are the reason. Once again though, the episode ends with Crockett dealing with how to be alone in a world traumatized by loneliness.
Most of the resolution of the entire run of the show deals with either Sonny Crockett’s perpetual journey into being alone and fighting loneliness, and someone getting shot. Justice is served up with an endless stream of bullets and over-stylized violence. Audiences of the day had never seen anything like it on the small screen either. Michael Mann who was the showrunner at the time, the creative genius, brought cinema grade drama and realism to television in a way that the censors and viewers were likely afraid to explore beforehand.
Some things never fade. The Impact and Classic Style being the most lasting.
It’s no mistake at all that Miami Vice starts out with Michael Mann as the showrunner who envisioned the project and built it into the cultural juggernaut it became in two short years, but by season three, he handed the reigns over to Dick Wolf who changed the show for the worst and in ways which it wouldn’t, or couldn’t recover. Dick Wolf went on to create the Law & Order series and his vision of a much darker world of police and justice played out for viewers through the 1990s.
On a parallel note in television history, Hill Street Blues was a gritty cop show that preceded Miami Vice and created by the same person. Hill Street Blues ran its course and ended primarily because the networks refused to allow a lot of the sensitive written material to either go into production or be aired. The writers knew they had to dress up this new story of arms dealing at a Federal level, a flooding of cocaine coming from South America and other border countries, and massive municipal corruption that was rampant as a result of the extreme lean years of the 1970s.
Shows that decided to deal with social justice, or comment on social issues in a moralist tone felt compelled to do so because the world was either changing rapidly, or looked as though it was on fire and never going to get better. Civilization has a long history of the arts being the voice of the people and critiquing the movements of those in power and those who govern. Television became the theatre for the new age and the mildly educated working class masses that were being pummeled under the weight of decay and change.
Miami Vice just happened to be the most impacting dramatization of the decay of the period and the one most people seem to remember who lived through it.
Miami Vice wasn’t a show like The Golden Girls which won a lot of awards for the what they were doing, but it’s one of the shows that still holds up to repeat viewings and thoughtful consideration regarding the power struggles that changed the landscape of the 80’s and continues to do so thirty five years later. It’s worth investing the time watching, and like everything else, it’s finite and you’ll miss it when it’s over.
