Endless Blue We open with the kind of scorching fires that would have made Survivor wince. It's a hot day in Miami, maybe the hottest day of the year. This is the city that at its warmest tends to reach just under triple figures every summer without fail. A Porsche rides down a long empty road where the buses certainly don't go down. Ted Nugent's Angry Young Man is pumping out establishing as quickly as possible, as Miami Vice always does, that the dudes are rocking and by rocking we mean hard. We bear witness to a sketchy business deal being formed. Our buyer has hair longer than Mr Steely Dan and is none other than Ted Nugent himself. Another stellar cameo from this show. Already in this series we've seen the likes of Phil Collins, Miles Davis and Little Richard. Perfectly cast respectively as seedy talk show hosts, pimps and preachers. Desperately looking forward to when Leonard Cohen appears. Ted Nugent joins the greats with his contribution as a scam artist. Before the deal can be made, Nugent fires off his gun and takes the sorry son of a bitch's money. The nature of the business deal taking place is surrounded in mystery and the body (and car) burial under mountains of sand is nothing short of epic adding to that.
Cut straight in to the theme song and the memorable credits sequence. Future Sonny Crockett player, Colin Farrel, when asked what he recalled most from the show had just two words, "the flamingos". They undoubtedly dominate the screen and once seen can't be unseen. Only a few weeks back, Weng Weng and I went the zoo and upon seeing the flamingos, in an uncontrolled frenzy, I screamed, "It's Miami Vice, kid!". Being just 5 years of age, the reference was lost on him and he asked, "What's Miami Vice, is that a TV show?". Had to correct him by adding, "It's not a TV show, it's a god damn way of life, son!". And one quickly taking over me in a big, big way.
On top of the Flamingos, may I also mention the parrot that thinks he's bloody Rashford pointing to his head like that. Does that little birdy know something we don't? It's as if he's on the same wavelength as the producers here, a secret code between us and them that spells out, "we got you covered, dudes!". Well, they sure do with a flurry of credit sequence background images from boobies to boats. Give them credit, these guys know what we want to see each week. No-one could ever take that from them. Miami Vice is the perfect spectacle of the male fantasy and a solid satire of life under the Reagan administration. It has a stronger sense of style than pretty much every movie released today with producer Michael Mann's strict rules about colour schemes (the perceived boring colour red was completely banned from every episode with bright pastels being the favoured). Costumes and colour schemes are its main attraction. Truthfully, I've not been this wired in to particular rig outs since Scorsese's Casino when De Niro was rocking up every 5 minutes in a brand new suit. Gangster games such as the Grand Theft Auto series would all be inspired too. Style certainly takes prevalence over routine plots. After all, admittedly the plots do very little to expand on regular cop shows and the writing too is barely a grade above typical fare. Notably, suspense and mystery is often avoided as the game here is not for the viewer to work out the villain's identity. Audiences are invited to hang with the villains from the outset. However, these are all conventional means of storytelling. To criticise Miami Vice for prioritising plot as probably about the 5th most important thing on the show is to miss everything else it does uniquely.
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