I was bored today, so I watched Miami Vice on TNN.
I never cared for the show when it originally aired, and I don’t really think much of it now, either. One thing did strike me as amusing though…
In the opening montage, the Miami Vice theme song plays, and random shots of whatever fly by… there’s a part of the music that sounds like congas pounding… The first time the “pum-pumpumpa pum pum pum” sound plays, they show major cleavage jiggling away. That was the best part of the show. lol what timing! That had to be deliberately done that way. hehe
Anyway, I never “got” why the show was so popular then, and I still don’t. FWIW, I do think it was one of the first shows to use REAL soundtrack music by the original artists, instead of cheap generic covers. Everytime I hear “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins, I get MV flashbacks.
Hey, what’s not to like? As an elementary school student, those jiggling bongos were what caught me and kept me stuck to the TV screen every Friday night for two years.
Miami Vice was a series designed to be eye candy. (And to think those clothes inspired a fashion trend. And I’ll be damned if Don Johnson doesn’t still dress like that in Nash Bridges.)
It was seriously flawed as a drama. It harkened back to the old Warner Brothers detective shows i.e. 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, Surfside Six, Bourbon Street Beat, etc. The stories were insipid at best.
However, I watched it at the time.
First, as you mentioned, the music was usually excellent, from Jan Hammer’s theme to songs like Russ Ballard’s “Voices”. They did push the envelope here.
Another reason we tuned in was the guest stars. Phil Collins as a game show host (so it wasn’t a stretch) to Ted Nugent, Emo Phillips (I think I remember) and Frank Zappa pushing “weasel dust.” There were many more I can’t recall at the moment.
While we didn’t take it seriously as a drama, we watched it regularly, eventually making up a game which we could never complete. It was “Count The Guns”, wherein we would try to count how many different guns appeared. You had to be careful not to count the same gun more than once. By the time the last 15 minutes rolled around, we could no longer keep up. Try it some time.
I remember it as the first slick ‘MTV’ style cop show.
…the pastel suits. The shoes without socks.
…Synth music.
…Pet alligator.
…thinking “How the hell did they afford those cars?”
…Sheena Easton and Glen Frey as guest stars.
…spawning a whole new generation of hip cop shows - like ‘Hawaiian Heat’, ‘Hollywood Beat’, 21 Jumpstreet and ‘Silk Stalkings’
And I might be wrong, but as far as I can remember, it was the first cop show to have a minority actor (Edward James Olmos)portray an authority figure.
I thoroughly enjoyed Miami Vice: fast, silly plots, great clothes and music, the best cinematography on teevee. I was working at an ad agency when it was on the air, and once we had Don Johnson Day: everyone came to work in shades, T-shirt, pastel jacket, linen pants and no socks. The creepy thing was, we all HAD the outfits at the ready!
It also contained the WORST line of dialogue I have ever seen on TV: Don Johnson was in a hotel room with a vaguely foreign bimbo. She glares at him in a sultry way and intones, “When I meet the man for me, I geeve heem everything he wants. I geeve heem everything he needs. I geeve heem everything he wants to need, and everything he needs to want.”
Before Miami Vice, television cops were slow-paced & jokey. Miami Vice was cinematic. Yes, it was pulpy. But it was great. The pacing, the visuals, the use of music, the tone. It was a revolution.
