Alas, Poor Scrappy: Fans in general didn't care about Caitlin Davies or her rushed marriage to Crockett, but her tragic death of being shot and killed in his arms, was pretty sad, especially when he learns that she was pregnant and what it did to him.
Artist songs include "In the Air Tonight", "Long Long Way To Go", "Voices" and "Brothers In Arms". And then there's Jan Hammer's original music, including "Evan" and "Crockett's Theme". The soundtrack for the entire series remains one of the most memorable aspects of the show to this day.
Glenn Frey's single "Smuggler's Blues" became a first-season episode hit.
What other show could use Kate Bush's "Hello Earth" and make it work?
The first episode's iconic use of the aforementioned "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins as Crockett and Tubbs drive to a deal and the former stops to call his ex-wife. This was the first time pop music had been used on television.
Tommy Shaw's "Girls with Guns" during the episode "Glades" is particularly fantastic.
Godley & Creme's "Cry" underlies a singular ending montage in "Definitely Miami."
Bizarro Episode: "Missing Hours," in which Trudy is abducted by an alien played by James Brown while two government agents try to cover up his existence.
Broken Base: Season five saw Tim Truman replace Jan Hammer as the series' background music producer. This brought about a significant change in the show's sound, with Truman's harder-edged drum- and guitar-driven score replacing the smooth synth vibes of the previous four seasons. The change divided viewers — some compare Truman's work unfavorably to Hammer's, while others feel it fits the darker tone of the season.
Creator Displacement: Many fans, particularly younger ones who may be more familiar with the 2006 movie, incorrectly believe that Michael Mann created the show. While he is a huge factor in its production, he's the executive producer; Anthony Yerkovich is its creator.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Castillo. Being played by Edward James Olmos helped. Henry Jenkins, in the book Textual Poachers wrote at length about how strange it was that the character got so much attention from fan commentators and fanfic writers.
Fair for Its Day: The episode "Evan" deals with Crockett's ex-academy buddy having committed Suicide by Cop (or crook in this case) due to the harassment he received as a gay police officer. Crockett is devastated by this fact and wishes he'd supported the man more even if it indulges in Bury Your Gays and has no living ones in the episode. "God's Work" is a similarly fair for the time story involving AIDS and homophobic murder.
Hilarious in Hindsight: A young undercover agent in "Miami Squeeze" uses the name Joey Chandler, a full five years before Friends. The response from his dealer contact is just as drink-spittingly funny.
Ricky DeMaria: That name supposed to mean something to me?
Crockett and Tubbs. There's a sizeable amount of slash about them.
Crockett and Castillo, too.
Switek and Zito. Even though they had plenty of relationships with women (including a hilarious storyline where the latter's girlfriend left him for the former), their strongest chemistry was with each other to the point where they were joined at the hip.
Just Here for Godzilla: The show had some really interesting comments about the criminal justice system in 1980s America. It also had Don Johnson, the sleekest clothes and cars, and copious car chases and shootouts.
Once Original, Now Common: It's hard for a younger audience to appreciate just how much one scene in the pilot episode said this show was going to be different from anything that had come before. The film-like editing and camera work, all set to a hit pop song, was completely unlike what anybody had seen in a television show at that point. Now it is common for shows to use full-length versions of contemporary pop songs, and edit and compose their shots more like cinema.
One-Scene Wonder: Julian Beck appears in "Prodigal Son" as a sinister crooked banker who informs Crockett and Tubbs who really has the power. Sadly, his death meant that he couldn't be used again, but good lord does he make his one scene in the show count.
Padding: The episode "Florence Italy" is 48 minutes long, and about 10 of them are taken up by endless car races that don't advance the plot at all.
Paranoia Fuel: "Lend Me An Ear" had a surveillance expert getting hired by the Vice crew AND a prominent drug lord the squad wanted to arrest at the same time. The expert proceeds to manipulate both sides by using his own eavesdropping devices, partly to keep the increasingly paranoid drug lord from killing him, and partly because he enjoys mocking both sides.
Questionable Casting: There are several examples throughout the show's run, but special notice has to be given to casting James Brown as an extraterrestrial alien during one of the show's more...bizarre episodes.
Giancarlo Esposito as a junkie in "Little Prince", an enforcer in "Nobody Lives Forever" and drug dealer in "The Dutch Oven", over thirty years before his famous role on Breaking Bad.
Julia Roberts as a drug dealer's girlfriend in "Mirror Image".
Melissa Leo as a waitress taken hostage in "Bad Timing".
Vincent D'Onofrio plays a convict helping Calderone in "The Afternoon Plane".
Michael Chiklis as a bent NYPD detective and art aficionado in "The Lost Madonna".
Lisa Vidal portrayed Crockett's near-assassin in "A Bullet For Crockett".
Seasonal Rot: Season four is considered to be the worst season, due to the Lighter and Softer approach, with some of the lighter episodes veering wildly into science-fiction and comedy, most infamously the seventh episode "Missing Hours", which is often cited as the show's worst episode. The disparity between dark episodes and light episodes (such as the widely-reviled "The Cows of October") leads to a decidedly uneven season. There's also Tubbs being Out of Focus and Jan Hammer's musical contribution noticeably reduced, with many of his cues from earlier seasons simply being recycled, and Crockett falling in love and marrying Caitlin Davies, played by guest star Sheena Easton.
So Bad, It's Good: Purely in writing terms, "Viking Bikers from Hell" ranks as one of the show's worst episodes, with Miami being terrorized by a gang that appears to consist of just three bikers, a bunch of filler scenes that go nowhere, and Tubbs being shot point-blank in the head for the Commercial Break Cliffhanger, only to be revealed immediately afterwards to have somehow survived with nothing more than a mild concussion to show for it. Finally, the episode in general shows the beginning signs of the increasingly absurd approach that the next season suffered from. However, thanks to the greater emphasis than usual on action sequences, and Reb Brown's hilariously over-the-top performance as the episode's Big Bad, the end result actually manages to be a lot more entertaining than it has any right to be.
In the pilot episode, the explosion that kills Crockett's partner has a cheesy looking ragdoll in the place of Jimmy Smits' character. In the shot where the car explodes, the ragdoll flies straight up in the air, as if being yanked by someone offscreen.
In "Phil the Shill", an informant is seen being shot multiple times as he hangs upside down. However, since there was apparently no money in the budget for blood or gore effects, the man shakes around violently while being shot, and doesn't have any wounds or bloodstains when the gunmen leave.
In "Milk Run", the final action sequence has Tubbs chase a gunman through an airport, just before taking cover behind a pillar as the villain unloads several shotgun rounds at him. Despite the gunman having just killed someone by firing through a pane of glass, no bullet holes or marks are seen on the pillar Tubbs is standing behind, and the sound of the shots is incorrectly timed.
The season two premiere "The Prodigal Son" climaxes with Crockett shooting down a helicopter with his pistol. It's really obvious that they didn't have the budget to pull it off, so the crash occurs offscreen while the debris is depicted as bits of paper.
When Frank Mosca is killed by Gina and falls down the conveyor chute in the fourth-season episode "Blood and Roses", it's an obvious model dummy whose head falls off in the last few frames of the shot.
The final-season episode "Victims of Circumstance" has a shot seen through a car as Crockett and Tubbs investigate a murder scene. The "car" is just a cut-out photo of a car interior that has been overlaid on the shot through matte work.
The scene in "Evan" where Crockett talks about his fellow officer who was gay and how he failed to help him.
The murder of Caitlin Davies. Made all the sadder when it was revealed that she was pregnant with Crockett's child.
Unintentional Period Piece: The series exemplified some of the most prevalent trends of the era (and created several of them), including a heavy focus on synth-rock and popular songs of the time, the usage of pastel colors in their clothing and many instances of Technology Marches On. One could likely fill an entire page detailing all the dated examples found throughout the series.
The second season opener, "The Prodigal Son", is of particular note. Among other things, it has music from Billy Ocean and Huey Lewis and the News, a woman wearing a dress with massive shoulder pads and a climax that takes place at the World Trade Center.
However, the tone of the show averts the trope. Most cop shows of the era had a light tone, villain of the week, flat characters, always get their guy, etc. Miami Vice had some very slow pacing for the time, story arcs which could last all or part of a season, lots of Character Development, and often bittersweet or downer endings. Its grim tone was much more in line with current shows like Breaking Bad, The Closer, etc.
The central element of the series is civil asset forfeiture; cops using stuff seized from rich criminals to justify them wearing expensive suits and driving expensive cars. This is extremely uncomfortable in The New '10s, with cops nationwide having come under fire for seizing anything they feel like from anyone they feel like and telling their victims, "you'll burn up the value in attorney fees trying to get it back, so shut up and get lost." Even worse, the assets sometimes aren't even used for police work, but for luxuries like alcohol for office parties, new houses for administrators, etc.
Pornography, as shown in "Heart of Darkness", is something done by sleazy exploitative companies with underage actresses and distributed through quasi-legal networks across state lines. The normalization of porn due to the internet has dramatically changed how it is produced as well as received.
Crockett's on-the-job flirting with Gina would almost certainly not fly today, ex-girlfriend or not, and could land him in some serious disciplinary trouble — at best, it hasn't been considered appropriate in the workplace for a long time.
Values Resonance: Surprisingly, for a show about The War on Drugs, the show consistently makes it clear that it is largely a failure and our heroes' efforts may well be meaningless. The finale of the show ends with Crockett and Tubbs quitting the Miami PD in disgust at the innocents caught in the crossfire as well as the overall failure of their efforts.
Gina, in spades. Throughout the series, she either falls for men who turn out to be amoral at best, sees her friends abused or raped by villainous boyfriends, or is forced to sleep with mobsters to maintain her cover during sting operations. It's also revealed in the third season that her mother was shot to death when she was a child, and the killer tries to murder Gina 26 years later.
Zito, particularly in his final episode. His police officer father was killed in the line of duty when he was a child, his only brother struggled with addiction and then died of a heroin overdose (giving him a lasting fear of needles), he himself struggled with alcoholism until getting sober, he attempted to guide an up-and-coming boxer and solve his trainer's murder and eventually paid for it with his own life, and the law enforcement higher ups initially refuses to bury him with honors or investigate his murder due to being set up to look like he overdosed himself, which caused distress to his left-behind friends and colleagues, especially Switek.
Even Crockett himself gets this. Despite the fact that he's the main character and is often seen with a parade of women, none of his relationships work out because he's Married to the Job, not to mention that several of his past/present girlfriends are either injured or killed as a result of being around him. His wife and son are almost killed in their own home by the hitman sent by Esteban Calderone to kill Crockett, and it is this incident that provides the death knell to their marriage. Several of his friends and former acquaintances come back to Miami, only to either lose their sanity as a result of his actions or die in messy ways. His plans to get out of Vice and live with his new wife Caitlin are scuttled when a villain (who he inadvertently got off Death Row) comes back and shoots her during a concert, leading Crockett to lose his sanity and resort to his alter ego. By the end of the series, he's so burned out by his work (and seeing villains get away while his friends die) that he throws down his badge in disgust and quits the force.
The iconic Jan Hammer theme from the show does not appear in the film. Some fans were disappointed at this, believing that they sacrificed an iconic theme for contemporary music that wouldn't age well. Others were fine with this since the movie already tries to distinguish itself from the show, and felt that John Murphy's score was good enough on its own.
Is the romance between Crockett and Isabela a Romantic Plot Tumor, or is it the real heart of the movie?
Which version is better, the theatrical cut or the Unrated Director's Edition? Some fans prefer the Unrated Director's Edition for its stronger character development, more exciting opening, and "In The Air Tonight" playing during the final battle as opposed to the end credits. But most fans believe that these changes ruin the atmosphere of the movie. (The fact that the Unrated Director's Edition was the only version on Blu-Ray in North America until 2021 caused further headaches)
Cult Classic: As time goes on, it's become a major cultural touchstone among Millenial and Generation Z film critics and cinephiles. Harmony Korine cited it as a major influence on Spring Breakers.
Memetic Mutation: The phrase "I'm a fiend for mojitos" tends to show up in discussions of the film.
Gong Li plays a Chinese-Cuban woman. Somehow, it works.
Ciarán Hinds, an Irishman, plays an FBI agent with a Japanese surname.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: When the news broke that Jan Hammer's theme wasn't going to be in the movie, 1,000 fans signed a petition to put it back in. It didn't work, but it's still a sore spot among older fans.
Vindicated by History: While it was successful at the box office, the response from critics and audiences was lukewarm due to its unusual style and drastic changes from the source material. As time has gone by, many have called it one of Michael Mann's best movies for its poetic visual style and atmosphere.
is a similarly fair for the time story involving AIDS and homophobic murder.