TV: Miami Vice S1, Disc 1

Original series title: Gator Cop

Miami Vice stands as one of the most enduring sensation shows, existing as much as a time capsule as entertainment.  Its sensation cred hangs very much on the surface elements: Miami locations, shot with MTV-derived visual vocabulary and soundtrack,* all populated by the definitive mid-80s look.

Novel visuals alone rarely keep the viewers tuned in; Vice's viewer retention came entirely from its solid fundamentals.  While the name of reputed auteur EP Michael Mann is synonymous with the series, the show's creator, Anthony Yerkovich, is more important to the longevity of the series, having brought a resume full of Hill Street Blues credits to Miami.  Yerkovich's presence makes the ensemble of vice cops a capable foundation on which to hang all of the zeitgeist-snaring speedboats, ferraris, and perpetual five o'clock shadow.  This helped the series easily endure annual batches of new cop shows that mimicked its surface, but never grasped its substance.


Episode 1: Pilot

The series begin with the leads of the show separated by thousands of miles, but both hunting the same man: Senor Calderone, or as the Miami police know him, The Colombian. The pilot's teaser segment focuses on Ricardo Tubbs (PMT), beat cop and brother to a slain detective (backstory told primarily in a short, dialogue-free montage) as he loses Calderone's trail through a murky, neon-lit club -- so much neon, it in fact resembles a Miami location.

Eddie!

While Tubbs arrives in Miami far from his series status-quo,  Johnson begins more-or-less how he'll always be remembered: white jacket (singed by a bomb throughout much of the pilot), stubble, pastel tee, no socks.  In his introduction, Sonny Crockett bides his time through exposition that while necessary, is rough sailing.  He and his partner Eddie (Jimmy Smits' second-ever credit, according to imdb) wait to meet a Calderone middleman while recapping the case for viewers and discussing, loudly and on a busy corner,  the woes of cop salaries and the strains the undercover life puts on their marriages.*  It's just barely enough development for Eddie that the viewer might believe he's not the obvious dead-meat partner, unresolved, regretted argument with his wife and all.  In a minor added burden for Sonny, he sees the bomb just before it goes off, allowing him one plaintive NO! before an Eddie-dressed mannequin is all blown up.

While it's arguably better to have the charismatically world-weary Johnson on hand to establish the series' milieu, nothing can improve the fact that, having just explained the plot-to-date in sufficient detail for audience comprehension, we're now forced to hear it all recapped a second time for Sonny's boss (Gregory "El Puerco" Sierra, ambiguously sinister*) during the mop-up, and then yet again for his cordially estranged wife (Doogie Howser's mom, Belinda Montgomery).  Left to the viewer is the decision of which sounding board comes off as more cliche:  Montgomery's bland concerns about the corrosive lifestyle of an undercover cop, where she actually falls back to the "flip side of the same coin," chestnut, or Sierra's hoary "By the book, Sonny!" admonishments.

Our two protagonists finally meet, each assuming the other is their link to Calderone.  The ensuing botched bust enables a tepid car versus speedboat chase (set to the series' theme, much as an episode of Airwolf might) to rouse the audience for the close of the second act.  Unfortunately, there's a saggy intermission before act three begins, which concerns the fate of one of Calderone's minor underlings.  At length the man is jailed, tried, released, flipped, and then shot before he can spill anything of use.  Our heroes find the next point on the trail simply by searching the underling's apartment, which could have been accomplished directly in a quarter of the time.  This all smacks of a sequence padded generously when the pilot received a two-hour timeslot.

A larger problem with the third act is that for good or ill, it establishes the well of formula for third acts throughout the series: set up a drug buy and then bust the dealer.  While committed to this course, the pilot (and, generally, the series) back-burners the story weakness by ladling on Miami atmosphere and cranking up Phil Collins.  A relatively tense Colombian standoff occurs, with Calderone barely escaping after sacrificing yet more of his underlings and a cool two million in bail.  As the major loose end, he'll be returning soon.

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* No stranger to occasionally ponying up money for the music rights,  the pilot has a few glaring examples of what in the Rock Band era we'd call "...as made famous by.." to save for the Top Hits of the 80s.

* For undercovers, these guys aren't very circumspect.  Arriving on Sonny's boat, Tubbs yells at him "Oh, IS THAT YOUR COVER?"

* A minor subplot in the pilot is that someone in law enforcement is leaking to the cartels; Puerco is implicated, then revealed to be a red herring, but retains some shadowy background the series never pays off.

Pros: Realistic Miami heat -- even indoors, everyone sweats madly.
Cons: PMT's jamaican accent, oh brother.

Then: A
Now: B-


Episode 2: Heart of Darkness

Batts was part of the Gambino crew.

Our opening gambit has some refreshingly meta touches, as the guys weasel into a meet and greet with a porn director, while he's working. The director is of course just an underling, but the man he works for is of interest to the FBI: one of their own, who has been under so long that the bureau fears he -- and there's that title -- may have switched sides (to Russia?).

What may come as a surprise is the meta nature of who's playing said agent: Ed o'Neill, onetime Popeye Doyle approximation and future hapless shoe salesman.  O'Neill's range isn't quite wide enough to nail the hair-trigger uncertainties around Artie, and it's all made worse by a script that too often leavens the bleak subject matter with throwaway jokes and is then capped with an ending that has it both ways: Artie pulls back from the edge, makes the bust, and then kills himself off-camera. In response, our heroes do some shots for him.  Well, it's more of a salute than Eddie received.

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Pros: The porno setup is that the a/c is broke; comment on the pilot's everybody-sweats look?

Cons: In a series entering its third hour, the pointed comparison between O'Neill's Kurtz and Sonny's Willard come across strained at best.

Then: B
Now: B


Episode 3: Cool Running

Wedged between the pilot and imminent changes to the series' status quo, episode three has a perfunctory flavor.  A Jamaican gang, presumably riled by Tubbs' Little Jacob patois, is busy carving a bloody swath through Miami coke middlemen.  When they elude the police for the fifth time, the one lasting contribution to Vice lore is made: the department calls in a specialist: the first of the recurring character stoolies, Neville "Noogie" Lamont, the neurotic, fast-talking streetwise one.  While a little of his shtick goes a longway, in the 80s, television audiences could seldom get enough of that type. When Noogie helps bust the Jamaicans, it sets him up for return appearances through most of Vice's run.   .

Pros: Not fully cooked yet, but the series' visual style is improving steadily.
Cons: Like "Heart of Darkness," it's a stepping stone to a better series.

Then: B
Now:  C


Episode 4: Calderone Returns

By contrast, episode four is firmly in Vice continuity; it contains brief homages of every episode to-date.  First and most important (though more important in the following episode -- yes, it's a two-parter, just like the pilot...), you'll note Calderone's name in the title.  The senor himself is absent, but he's sent the finest Argentine hitman to Florida to kill off seven would-be coca entrepreneurs, oh, and one bothersome Sonny Burnett for a touch of payback.

Second is Sonny and Caroline's marriage.  Just as the two begin a tentative reconciliation (prompted by the lawyer-parody behavior of their divorce attorneys), the hitman, er, kills the deal,  pushing Caroline back into occasionally-recurring status.  Homage three comes when a bullet meant for Sonny fells El Puerco instead(he lingers in surgery until the end of the episode), giving Sonny another slain-comrade motive.   Then, to draw the elusive shooter out into the open, the boys brace a would-be smooth-talking man who's also on Evita's list; the sequence goes on too long (homage #5; the pilot's saggy middle), and then the poor guy is shot off-camera (#6, recalling the end of Heart of Darkness).  

Determined to at least kill Sonny's marriage,  Evita charges into Casa de Crockett uzi blazing full-auto, and when forced to pursue his prey outside, he is shot by the assembled entirety of the supporting cast on the front lawn.*  It's the final straw for Caroline, who drives off just as Tubbs receives two key plot points to move us into part two: first, that Lou Puerco has died; second, they now know that Calderone is presently in the Bahamas.   Throwing out the rulebook Lou loved so very much, Sonny proposes a spontaneous two-man search and destroy mission.

* Honestly: Switek, Zito, Gina, and what's her name the Pam Grier cop are all outside waiting for him, and everyone hits with at least six rounds.

Pros: Kick-ass cliffhanger line, as our heroes aren't taking any more of this shit.
Cons: A little on the nose with plot callbacks.

Then: B
Now: A-

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Episode 5: Calderone Returns, Part II


Part 1 ended with the boys seemingly departing forthwith to the Bahamas; part two's nearly eight-minute teaser starts with the less exciting business of actually finding Calderone's exact location before they set out.  With their immediate supervision dead, Tubbs and Crockett are free to use harsh interrogation on the senor's flunkies before leaving on a jaunt to the Bahamas and extract a final vengeance.  Thoughts that the script may have come in a lot short are hardly dismissed as their speedboat trip becomes a near four-minute music video of revenge-justifying flashbacks set to Russ Ballard's Voices.

The interminable padding is nearly redeemed by finally unveiling the classic version of the opening credits.  Throughout the first four episodes, have been sight tweaks to the theme and footage used, and any longtime viewer of Miami Vice could immediately sense something amiss; starting here the credits begin to jibe with your memory.

When we reach the second act, the pair split up and search all of the island. Crockett checks in with the Bahama police, who are quick to trumpet their corruption-masking incompetence.  Meanwhile Tubbs stages a hugely improbable meet cute with Caldrone fangirl #1, Angelina.* Equally improbably, Crockett, seeing Tubbs' twitterpation, lectures his partner to "go by the book."  Tubbs protests too much, slagging Angelina as "that overeducated hooker."

The following morning, both are happy to see news of Sonny's death by Evita has reached the local paper; callously neither gives a thought to poor Lou, who actually took the bullet.  The pair split again, Crockett to claim Evita's final paycheck, while Tubbs continues to court the hooker with Annie Lennox hair.  She remains evasive about her relationship with Calderone,  but agrees to meet Ricardo for dinner.*

Crockett's salary demands lead to an audience-waking car chase around the island to start the third act, which has the effect of ceding all the initiative to Calderone; his boat has left the island and the boys are no closer to finding him.  Angelina is the only remaining lead, so Tubbs puts to consummating their time-compressed relationship. In a bit of conversation following a hokey seduction (she wears a towel and bobs her head at him; it's the opposite of erotic),  Tubbs exhibits visible distress to learn he hasn't cuckolded his brother's killer: he's instead defiled the man's daughter.

Still, the seduction has the intangible benefit of setting Calderone up for an ambush at the suitably atmospheric-on-a-tv-budget island masquerade and beach bonfire.  But recall, he has the initiative and whisks Sonny to his boat, leaving Tubbs to levy another infodump on Angelina.  The two have a shout-off, his position self-righteous and hers shrill denial; no suspense is maintained in the least by a cut back to Calderone's mansion, where the kingpin soliloquizes at length as a prelude to killing Sonny.


I think the series erred by killing Calderone; they certainly erred in making Tubbs' surprise arrival at Casa de Calderone into an anticlimactic slow-motion shoot-out and execution, a move that may have been saved if the soundtrack were not still more shrieking from Angelina.  Calderone demanded a Scarface exit and received a Cannell.

* He's a detective, sure, but he jumps quickly from "she teaches school in the north part of the island" to finding her alone on a beach, painting. Tubbs uses this as an icebreaker by calling on his knowledge of caribbean artists.  Maybe Tubbs' awful Jamaican accent was sparked by actual love of the region?

* She already has lunch plans with her father, who is horribly developed as a new-money oaf, uneducated and uncultured.  For all the pointed contrasts between her sophisticate and his simpleton, Angelina doesn't have the first clue as to father's career as an alleged caribbean financier.

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Pros: All decks now clear of baggage!
Cons:   "This is not a renegotiation.  It's not even a negotiation. You see, my prices are not negotiable."

Now that's writing.

Then: A-
Now: B

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Episode 6: One-Eyed Jack


With the series-launching storyline now closed, Miami Vice begins to settle into an episodic format more conventionally suited to a police procedural.  While the material would remain at a Hill Street level of grit, the structure of the show tended to stick well below that rarified air.

First up is a period staple on cop shows: the misguided internal investigation.  Sonny is the target du jour, which comes just as a case breaks on some racketeers, with a Miami-vacationing Pat "the Cat" Patrice as the star witness.  Sonny does have a legitimate, if slight conflict of interest in the matter, as one of the ancillaries happens to be an ex-girlfriend.  However, the IA guy is played by Dan Hedaya, who has never been cast in a sympathetic role in his life, killing any possible chance the charges are true.*

This glare would win two emmys.

While Sonny fights to clear his name and bring Patrice in, One-Eyed Jack's reason for existing -- and its use of Hedaya as a dumb foil -- is its introduction of  Edward James Olmos' Lt. Martin Castillo, he of few words and less nonsense.  Initially off-putting to the established cast, he's equally at ease shooting down IA agents' weak arguments against his detectives.  The uncertainty the cast feels toward their new boss pays healthy dramatic dividends, and their eventual trust ends up feeling earned rather than the arbitrary benefit of the doubt given to Lou's shady dealings.

* Do IA charges really get aired publicly in the office, with all the suspect cop's co-workers present as witnesses?

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Pros: At episode six, we have a series.
Cons: Weak plot in the service of introducing the new status quo.

Then; B
Now: C