CliqueClack Flashback – Miami Vice

From the neon lights of Biscayne Boulevard to the feral swamps of the Everglades, the mid-1980s belonged to Miami Vice. Debuting in 1984 — on NBC at 10pm — the series not only altered cop shows, it influenced all of television by bringing a movie-like look and feel to the small screen.

By setting and shooting the series in Miami, executive producer Michael Mann introduced America to a city vastly different from the sleepy retirement communities most associated with the sunshine state. Mann’s Miami was fast, modern, baroque and dark. The city was more than just a location, it was another character; a breathing backdrop to a series that reflected the glitz and glam of the ’80s.

Grab your shades and shorts and hop aboard the flashback train. We’re takin’ a trip to the 3-0-5, where gorgeous women, tanned bodies, cutting-edge sports cars and super-stealthy speedboats are the norm. Welcome to the world of Miami Vice.

Pastels and pistols: Taking center stage in this New Wave cop drama were detectives Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs. Crockett, played by Don Johnson, was the star of the show: an ex-college football hero turned cop, Crockett was a brooding loner who bore his share of personal and professional scars. Women loved him, men wanted to be him. A permanent five o’clock shadow covered his often scowling face, but boy could this guy dress.

Sonny Crockett may have been the first metrosexual: His wardrobe consisted of white sports jackets worn over Crayola-colored tee shirts, loose linen pants and loafers sans socks. He donned sleek Ray Bans and ran slick gel through his hair. Many a fool thought they could duplicate the look, and by many, I mean me. The sight of my skinny 15 year-old self attempting to look hip in a white sports coat and an aquamarine tee was not pretty. The word “dork” comes to mind. At any rate, the role launched Johnson into superstardom and transformed the struggling actor into a major sex symbol.

Philip Michael Thomas played Tubbs, a street-smart New York cop haunted by the murder of his brother by a vicious drug kingpin named Calderone. Tubbs possessed wit and charm, which complemented the more solemn Crockett perfectly. Rounding out the cast were Edward James Olmos as the mysterious Lt. Castillo, Saundra Santiago and Olivia Brown as female top-cops Gina and Trudy, and Michael Talbott and John Diehl as Stan and Larry, a sort of Abbott and Costello responsible for comic relief.  All the secondary characters eventually received their own story arcs, but none of them matched the depth or intensity of Sonny and Ricardo.

MTV cops: It was rumored that NBC programming Chief Brandon Tartikoff scribbled “MTV cops” on a memo, thus giving birth to Miami Vice. Whether true or not, “MTV cops” certainly spelled out the series in two words. Music was central and not just the award winning synthesized score composed by Jan Hammer, but original songs recorded by artists past and present: Bryan Adams, Tina Turner, Miles Davis, Jackson Browne, Dire Straits, U2, Willie Nelson and Phil Collins are just some of the A-list singers and bands heard on the soundtrack.

Songs were integrated into plots and served as self-contained music videos within each episode. Watching Crockett and Tubbs cruise the streets of Miami to Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” still ranks as one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. In fact, I tried to reenact this scenario with my friend Matt while driving a Dodge Omni down the mean streets of Olean, New York. We weren’t able to capture the same magic, but what the hell.

Musicians didn’t only offer their songs to the series, but many tried on their acting hats. James Brown, Glenn Frey, Gene Simmons, Ted Nugent, Frank Zappa and Sheena Easton all made cameo appearances with mixed results. Frey and Simmons were okay — Nugent and Brown were awful.  Easton’s character, Caitlin Davies, married Sonny in season four, only to be killed off after five episodes. Throw in future Hollywood heavyweights like Bruce Willis, Julia Roberts, Wesley Snipes, Ben Stiller and Chris Rock, and you have a set that helped propel many young entertainers to fame and fortune.

Gritty and dark: Producer Michael Mann and creator Anthony Yerkovich deftly contrasted the bright, shiny spectrum of South Florida against the seedy, dangerous underworld of narcotics and prostitution. The series took advantage of its 10pm time slot by raising the sex and violence quotient to a degree not seen on network television prior. The story-lines often dealt with a myriad of unsavory individuals that included unstable pimps, disturbed drug dealers, psychotic hookers and crooked cops. A moody lighting scheme contributed to the dark atmosphere and enhanced the edgy subject matter. Later police procedurals such as 21 Jump Street, New York Undercover and The Shield all adopted a similar shooting style and story structure.

Leaving its mark: From 1984-1989 Miami Vice wore the crown as king of cop shows. It was a consistent ratings winner for NBC and went head-to-head with TV institutions like Dallas and 20/20. Don Johnson went on to a less than stellar movie career but achieved new-found fame in 1996 with Nash Bridges, portraying what else but a cop.

Edward James Olmos moved to the big screen as well and garnered a Best Actor Oscar nomination for Stand and Deliver; however, he would achieve his greatest success in the Sci-Fi Network’s Battlestar Galactica beginning in 2004. The rest of the cast faded into obscurity with the exception of John Diehl, who has nearly 100 credits to his name since Vice ended. Producer Michael Mann hit the big-time as Writer/Director of movies like The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, The Insider, and a feature film version of Miami Vice in 2006, starring Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx.

Miami Vice can presently be seen in syndication on the Sleuth channel or over at hulu.com. The energetic, grim episodes still hold up even if the big hair and loud clothes don’t. You could call it style over substance television, but I always thought the series did an excellent job crafting interesting drama and developing layered characters. It was its commitment to originality that made it memorable. In my mind, the best television dares to be different and doesn’t give a damn about the naysayers. One of the most influential series of the last thirty years, Miami Vice not only defined a decade, it defined “cool” in a whole new way.

Here’s an extended clip that sums up the show: clothes, cars, guns, hot chick, ’80s song and Ted Nugent.

Sources: IMDB, Wikipedia

Clacked by Scott Tunstall
on Dec 31, 2008 @ 14:05 EST5EDT