Hey, I did at least send her flowers!
I did! Geeze. You remember which episode?
you’re asking too much from an old man 
Not knocking your post at all, but, do you watch the Law and Order =franchise? They reuse the same actors so much, we call them “repeat offenders”.
Less than these examples, I’ve noticed Donald Bellisario liked to use the same core cast so much they appeared in every show he touched. Black Sheep, OG Battlestar Galactica, Magnum, Quantum leap, Tales of the Gold Monkey, Airwolf, JAG…I call them the Bellisario Players.
I never watched it. But apparently Frank Zappa made an appearance in one of the episodes.
Loved the cast. Used to watch it every week after running out to the nearby Indian Restaurant and getting takeout thali on the metal plates.
We would return them after the show.
It was stylized crimee and mayhem.
Jan Hammer would compose the music realtime as he watched the rushes, 
The clothes, the cars the glitter…loved it in our yuppie period.
I thought the movie tho the better take.
Grittier, more intense and fabulous music. Just perfect casting. (Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx)
Check the trailer if you have not seen it.
YouTube? v=Qg-_CoQdhow&t=12s
what’s interesting in movie is Gong Li, who made semi-porn movies in Asia before becoming 'legit"
I don’t remember Frank ever being in Law and Order. 
Miami Vice “Payback”, season 2. Love the description:
Crockett goes undercover to take down Mario Fuente (Frank Zappa), a dealer of ‘weasel dust’.
Weasels ripped my dust!
IIRC, Miles Davies also was in the show … which became some sort of “theme” …
giving A and B celebs a small playing part
Or up-and-coming actors. Bruce Willis, Bill Paxton, Wesley Snipes, Ben Stiller, Helena Bonham Carter, pretty much anyone you can think of from the 90s showed up at some point.
I watched the entire series during the pandemic, as I’d found a used copy on BluRay just before the first lockdown. Kind of enjoyed the first season as a period piece, but thought most of it was utter garbage. Some of my complaints have been listed above, but to pile on…
- Noogie. Wanted to throw something heavy at the screen every time he appeared. “Hey, maaaaaaannnn!!” Today it’s cringeworthy just how offensive his shuck-and-jive act plays, no idea if it was viewed so terribly in 1985.
- Did anyone else notice how Castillo disappeared from the last season halfway through, then showed up in the final episode, only shot from a distance, with such a fake wig that I can only assume they couldn’t tempt Olmos back to say goodbye?
- The whole story arc of Sonny falling for this huge pop star and then spinning out into amnesia when she’s killed would be risible enough, but the idea that Sheena Easton’s character would rise to pop superstardom because of a limp soft-reggae cover of “I’ve Got You Babe,” usually performed in a ratty dress, is hilarious.
- I’d always heard the show was glossy but still gritty. The two surveillance dudes in the “bug” van were flown in from a different, supposedly comedy, show, I’m convinced.
- Maybe this show increased tourism to the city. Having never been there, I still envision Miami as being full of swarthy overactors imitating Pacino’s Scarface accent.
Yeah, awful show. But I actually really love the movie. It holds up, and Mann’s commentary track is fantastic.
Bruce Willis, with hair! Even more than he had in Moonlighting.
Phil Collins, Emo Phillips, Kyra Sedgwick all from the same episode(funny to see before, uh, augmentation occurred, Hey Brenda Leigh Johnson, you look different!), Richard Belzer, for once NOT playing Munch, Leonard Cohen, Gene Simmons, Little Richard - just from memory.
If I was able to travel that far back then, I would have visited Miami. I love art deco and neon, and beautiful people driving beautiful cars. I want to live in some of those houses! Now I think Miami is probably more like Burn Notice than MV.
There was a thread recently about shows with great first seasons that go down hill. I don’t remember if Miami Vice was mentioned, but it deserved to be. I was 14 when it came out, and it was easily the coolest thing on TV. I genuinely didn’t remember it lasted all the way to 1989, because by the time they blew up the first car, my friends and I were pretty bored with it.
For me, it wasn’t so much a point of the writing or plots getting worse, but that all of the sudden it was so two years ago.
I think Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is the best Miami Vice follow-on media, even if it is an homage, not official. I have vague recollections of playing the actual Miami Vice video game at one point, but perhaps that is just a false memory.
It was bizarre how long it lasted. 1989 was decades away from 1984, culturally. The show was almost stuck in a time bubble of the early eighties, and to realize that grunge was revving up by the time it wrapped is just odd.
“Davis” I assume (spellcheck strikes again).
IIRC James Brown played some sort of cult leader in another ep.
I actually thought it got better before it got worse. Remember the first lieutenant, before Castillo? Don’t worry, no one does.
The worst parts started with Tubbs. PMT was a terrible actor. His style was better suited to the stage. He’s always either over acting, or wooden. And his story arc with the drug lord was just a drag. Why did they think we cared?
They tried to give Gina and Trudy some equal storylines, which mostly they did, but as noted above Switek and Zito seemed to have transported in from a different series. In the beginning they couldn’t decide if they were bad cops or just weird cops. And then…they killed of Zito in an undercover operation.
I remember I watched most of the series, but don’t really remember many of the episodes. But one scene from season one has always stuck in my mind. It was a very different take (at the time) on the “lone hero confronts villain who threatens to shoot the hostage if he doesn’t lay his weapon down”. NCIS later did an eerily similar scene, but that was much later.
Trivia notes:
The blonde in the polka dot bikini in the opening credits is actually credited in one episode–which is odd, because she (Nancy Jo Mseis) has no lines, and it’s a distance shot in which she can hardly be recognized.
Plumber extraordinaire G. Gordon Liddy’s “Capt. Real Estate” was one of the few bad guys that got away. Hmmm. . .
(Side note about Liddy. John Dean said, "Liddy thought he was James Bond, but he wasn’t even Maxwell Smart.)
My dad ran a hotel on Miami Beach in the 1980s, and I can absolutely attest to the fact that it had a definite impact on the city. Miami Vice made Miami cool at a time when it had become grimy and rundown, and tourism flourished.
Miami Vice presented an image of Miami that was cool, sexy, and chic. Oftentimes, this was done by actually renovating locations.
https://amp.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article2266518.html
Miami’s renaissance followed the production of the show. It’s rare to find a television program that has such an impact on a community as this one did on Miami.
gregory sierra