Miami Vice Season 2 Episode 12
Bertoldo Beyer
The film crew on the show was 95% local to the Miami area.[2] Various filming locations on the show included: Downtown Miami, Old Miamarina (Bayside Market Place), Opa Locka Airport, Biscayne Boulevard, Key Biscayne, Florida, Venetian Causeway, Coconut Grove, South Beach, North Miami Beach, St. Croix, McArthur Causeway, Ocean Drive, and Tamiami Trail.[2]
Episodes were produced at an average cost of $1.3 million, much higher than the typical cop-show episode of $1 million.[1] The show went to unusual lengths to get the right settings and props for each episode.
Music was an integral part of the show. Unlike other television shows at the time, Miami Vice would buy the rights to original versions rather than covers. The show would spend up to $10,000 per episode for original recordings by artists like Todd Rundgren, U2, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood.[1] Jan Hammer, the show's musical composer, would create the rest of the show's musical score. For most of the early work on the show, he prominently used both the Memorymoog and the Fairlight CMI IIx, as well as later including the Yamaha DX-7 and the Roland Jupiter-8. Jan would work out of his state-of-the-art studio in his home in Brewster, New York composing the score for each episode.[1]
(Miami) Vice Squad detective James "Sonny" Crockett has just lost his partner, Eddie Rivera (Jimmy Smits), in a car bombing. Crockett was investigating Esteban Calderone (Miguel Pinero), a Colombian cocaine dealer, when he meets a New York City narcotics detective, Rafael Tubbs. Since they are having difficulties approaching Calderone, Crockett and Tubbs are forced to work together. Crockett later confronts "Rafael" and discovers that he is actually Ricardo, Rafael's younger brother and a New York detective, who is seeking revenge on Calderone for killing his brother. They agree to work together and Calderone is collared, but he pays $2 million bail and escapes. In the end, Crockett persuades Tubbs to enter a career in "Southern law enforcement".
Crockett and Tubbs go to New York City to assist the DEA in hunting down a gang of Colombian drug dealers responsible for killing several undercover agents who were posing as dealers in Miami. Meanwhile, Tubbs reunites with his old flame Valerie (Pam Grier).
A retired Vice detective (Bruce McGill) offers to assist Crockett and Tubbs with their latest case. The only problem? The man the former detective claims is running the drug ring they are investigating supposedly died years ago.
Season three of Miami Vice premiered on September 26, 1986, with the episode "When Irish Eyes Are Crying". The third season concluded on May 8, 1987, after 24 episodes. Season three regular cast members included Don Johnson, Philip Michael Thomas, Saundra Santiago, Michael Talbott, John Diehl, Olivia Brown and Edward James Olmos. Changes in season three included Dick Wolf joining the crew as executive producer working with Michael Mann, different style and fashion looks, the introduction of the Ferrari Testarossa, Sonny Crockett's new car and the death of Larry Zito (Diehl).
Season four of Miami Vice premiered on September 25, 1987, with the episode "Contempt of Court". The fourth season concluded on May 6, 1988, after 22 episodes. Season four regular cast members included Don Johnson, Philip Michael Thomas, Saundra Santiago, Michael Talbott, Olivia Brown and Edward James Olmos. The episodes "The Big Thaw", "Missing Hours" and "The Cows of October" are considered among fans to be the worst in the series.
In the two-hour series finale, Crockett and Tubbs are recruited to protect Gen. Manuel Borbon (Ian McShane), a dictator of a ravaged Latin American country, who has information on major players in the drug underworld. It is later revealed that Borbon knew dirt on a very high-ranking US government officials, which was the reason for the whole mission. By the end of the episode, Crockett and Tubbs shoot down Borbon's seaplane as he tries to escape the authorities, killing the General and several government operatives, and the pair quit the police force in disgust. In the final scene, Crockett has sold his boat, released his pet alligator Elvis, and is moving further south, hoping to get away from his life in Miami, while Tubbs has decided to move back to New York City. Crockett offers to give Tubbs a ride to the airport in his "stolen" Ferrari, and the duo drive away together.
Miami Vice is an American crime drama television series created by Anthony Yerkovich and produced by Michael Mann for NBC.[1] The series stars Don Johnson as James "Sonny" Crockett and Philip Michael Thomas as Ricardo "Rico" Tubbs, two Metro-Dade Police Department detectives working undercover in Miami. The series ran for five seasons on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The USA Network began airing reruns in 1988 and broadcast a previously unaired episode during its syndication run of the series on January 25, 1990.
Unlike standard police procedurals, the show drew heavily upon 1980s New Wave culture and is noted for its integration of contemporary pop and rock music and stylish or stylized visuals. People magazine states that Miami Vice was the "first show to look really new and different since color TV was invented".[2]
The conception of the show is unclear. One version of events states that the head of NBC's Entertainment Division, Brandon Tartikoff, wrote a brainstorming memo that simply read "MTV cops",[2][3][4][5] and later presented it to series creator Anthony Yerkovich, formerly a writer and producer for Hill Street Blues.[4] Yerkovich, however, has indicated he devised the concept after learning about asset forfeiture statutes allowing law enforcement agencies to confiscate the property of drug dealers for official use.[6] The initial idea was for a movie about a pair of vice cops in Miami.[4] Yerkovich then wrote a script for a two-hour pilot, titled Gold Coast, but later renamed it Miami Vice.[2][4] Yerkovich was immediately drawn to South Florida as a setting for his new-style police show.[4]
In keeping with the show's title, most episodes focus on combating drug trafficking and prostitution. Episodes often end in an intense gun battle, claiming the lives of several criminals before they can be apprehended. An undercurrent of cynicism and futility underlies the entire series. The detectives repeatedly refer to the "Whac-A-Mole" nature of drug interdiction,[citation needed] with its parade of drug cartels quickly replacing those that are apprehended. Co-executive producer Yerkovich explained:
The choice of music and cinematography borrowed heavily from the emerging New Wave culture of the 1980s. As such, segments of Miami Vice sometimes used music-based stanzas, a technique later featured in Baywatch. As Lee H. Katzin, one of the show's directors, remarked, "The show is written for an MTV audience, which is more interested in images, emotions and energy than plot and character and words."[4] These elements made the series into an instant hit, and in its first season saw an unprecedented fifteen Emmy Award nominations.[4][7] While the first few episodes contain elements of a standard police procedural, the producers soon abandoned them in favor of a more distinctive style. Influenced by an Art Deco revival, no "earth tones" were allowed to be used in the production by executive producer Michael Mann.[4] A director of Miami Vice, Bobby Roth, recalled:
There are certain colors you are not allowed to shoot, such as red and brown. If the script says "A Mercedes pulls up here," the car people will show you three or four different Mercedes. One will be white, one will be black, one will be silver. You will not get a red or brown one. Michael knows how things are going to look on camera.[4]
Nick Nolte and Jeff Bridges[10][11] were considered for the role of Sonny Crockett, but since it was not lucrative for film stars to venture into television at the time, other candidates were considered.[12] Mickey Rourke was also considered for the role, but he turned down the offer.[13] Larry Wilcox, of CHiPs, was also a candidate for the role of Crockett, but the producers felt going from one police officer role to another would not be a good fit.[14] After dozens of candidates and a twice-delayed pilot shooting, Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas were chosen as the vice cops.[4] For Johnson, who was by then 34 years old, NBC had particular doubts about the several earlier unsuccessful pilots in which he starred.[4] Jimmy Smits played Eddie Rivera, Crockett's ill-fated partner, in the pilot episode.
After two seasons, Don Johnson threatened to walk from the series as part of a highly publicized contract dispute. The network was ready to replace him with Mark Harmon, who had recently departed St. Elsewhere, but the network and Johnson were able to resolve their differences and he continued with the series until its end.[15]
Despite the Miami setting, the producers initially planned to film the series in Los Angeles[citation needed]. However, by the time production began, the decision had been made to shoot in Miami itself. Many episodes of Miami Vice were filmed in the South Beach[16] section of Miami Beach, an area which, at the time, was blighted by poverty and crime, with its demographic so deteriorated that there "simply weren't many people on the street. Ocean Drive's hotels were filled with elderly, mostly Jewish retirees, many of them frail, subsisting on meager Social Security payments. ... They were filming all over Miami Beach. ... They could film in the middle of the street. There was literally nobody there. There were no cars parked in the street".[17] In early episodes in particular, local elderly residents were frequently cast as extras.
Some street corners of South Beach were so run down that the production crew actually decided to repaint the exterior walls of some buildings before filming. The crew went to great lengths to find the correct settings and props. Bobby Roth recalled, "I found this house that was really perfect, but the color was sort of beige. The art department instantly paints the house gray for me. Even on feature films people try to deliver what is necessary but no more. At Miami Vice they start with what's necessary and go beyond it."[18]
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