Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión
Miami Vice: "Free Verse"
Geez, you can tell a TV show is old when director Michael Bay appears in one episode as a bit player so unimportant that he's only listed as Goon #3.
It's even more embarrassing to realize how old a certain show is when you're old enough to remember when this same show was the subject of magazine cover stories and endless hype about how said show was the way of the future. Oh, well...Time does have a perverse way of putting artistic pretensions into perspective. However, I must admit that I can't help wondering how much of director Bay's current directing style was inspired by what he witnessed while working on the set of director Michael Mann's Miami Vice TV series.
In any event, the episode in question concerned an assignment by the Miami Vice Squad to safeguard a visiting Latin American poet. Why was the Vice Squad being assigned to play bodyguard to a poet? The story never really explained why but then few people back in the day ever watched Miami Vice for the story.
One of the funniest bits in the episode occured early on when the appearance of two pretty female Vice Squad detectives provoked the visiting poet to ask whether all the police in Miami were as attractive. Then scar-faced Edward James Olmos' Lt. Martin Castillo character showed up and the poet noted that his question just got answered.
The rest of the episode was a cat and mouse game between the Miami Vice detectives (especially Don Johnson's Crockett and Philip Michael Thomas' Tubbs) and the various assassins sent out to kill the poet. Crockett proved especially disillusioned to learn that the poet was not only the target of a right-wing death squad but of left-wing assassins as well. And of course, one of the assassins proved to be working with an inside man whose identity wasn't revealed, natch, until the last minute.
The episode also went out of its way to note the poet himself was not as squeaky clean as his would-be martyr status would indicate. His own daughter was disgusted by some of his past actions and it wasn't until the very end of the episode that father and daughter experienced anything close to reconciliation.
Not that happy endings last long in Michael Mann world. But then one shouldn't really expect much cheerfulness on a show called Miami Vice.
Miami Vice: "Free Verse"
Geez, you can tell a TV show is old when director Michael Bay appears in one episode as a bit player so unimportant that he's only listed as Goon #3.
It's even more embarrassing to realize how old a certain show is when you're old enough to remember when this same show was the subject of magazine cover stories and endless hype about how said show was the way of the future. Oh, well...Time does have a perverse way of putting artistic pretensions into perspective. However, I must admit that I can't help wondering how much of director Bay's current directing style was inspired by what he witnessed while working on the set of director Michael Mann's Miami Vice TV series.
In any event, the episode in question concerned an assignment by the Miami Vice Squad to safeguard a visiting Latin American poet. Why was the Vice Squad being assigned to play bodyguard to a poet? The story never really explained why but then few people back in the day ever watched Miami Vice for the story.
One of the funniest bits in the episode occured early on when the appearance of two pretty female Vice Squad detectives provoked the visiting poet to ask whether all the police in Miami were as attractive. Then scar-faced Edward James Olmos' Lt. Martin Castillo character showed up and the poet noted that his question just got answered.
The rest of the episode was a cat and mouse game between the Miami Vice detectives (especially Don Johnson's Crockett and Philip Michael Thomas' Tubbs) and the various assassins sent out to kill the poet. Crockett proved especially disillusioned to learn that the poet was not only the target of a right-wing death squad but of left-wing assassins as well. And of course, one of the assassins proved to be working with an inside man whose identity wasn't revealed, natch, until the last minute.
The episode also went out of its way to note the poet himself was not as squeaky clean as his would-be martyr status would indicate. His own daughter was disgusted by some of his past actions and it wasn't until the very end of the episode that father and daughter experienced anything close to reconciliation.
Not that happy endings last long in Michael Mann world. But then one shouldn't really expect much cheerfulness on a show called Miami Vice.
Labels: Edward James Olmos, Michael Bay, Michael Mann, Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión VIII, Series de Televisión Latinas III, Vicio en Miami
posted by Tonio Kruger at 12:44 AM
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