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Why Was the Miami Vice Pilot So Good?
When the pastel-soaked, cocaine-coated cop show aired 40 years ago, contemporary TV was born.
Hannibal Lector’s screen debut), but Harris sent him the script anyway, and Mann agreed to sign on as producer because “the content was so good, it was so current.” He and Yerkovich shared an obsession with undercover officers devising “criminal” identities and using asset forfeiture to sell the lie by showing off seized cash, drugs, cars, boats, houses, and the like. The sequence freeze-frames on the thwarted Tubbs standing alone in a dark alley, then hard-cuts to the credits, a feature-film-like opener that matches documentary-like footage of circa-1984 Miami to Hammer’s buzzy, pounding theme and lists Vice ’s main actors without showing their faces (TV’s norm at the time). Miles Davis, Frank Zappa, G. Gordon Liddy, Sheena Easton, Vanity, Captain Lou Albano, Chrysler boss Lee Iacocca, Leonard Cohen, and Thief co-star Willie Nelson all took turns charming, tormenting, or baffling Crockett and Tubbs.
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