Miami Vice (Seasons 1-5) Reissued DVD Sets, May 6th (1 Viewer)

[Kevin EK]

No it isn't!
I'm NOT THAT OLD!

 

[Wvtvguy]

I think I was 2 when it started. Yeah that's it. Pastel diapers & white booties for me. No socks of course.

 

[Coligion]

That's good these are all getting re-released in single disc form. I was able to hunt down the first revisions Universal released that were single-sided for the first two seasons. Those still came in the foldout/digipak packaging, though. Anyone think they will re-release the boxset with these new re-issues? Kind like what they did for Magnun, p.i.? The original complete series boxset for Miami Vice has long since been out of print...

 

[cart99]

Received my season 2 DVDs today. Just glanced a few episodes to check the picture quality. Very clean image but it would benefit from being HD. The best DVDs of older shows not shot on film look a bit better I think. In HD, Vice would look really good. Oh well...

The show looks great in HD - still some color loss but much improved. I'd purchase a bluray edition without hesitation.

 

[Wvtvguy]

My biggest complaint with the first 2 seasons is a really murky copy of "Smugglers Blues". It's not awful but darker than other episodes. I've seen better before. It's one of my favorite episodes so I wish it was a bit sharper. I'm enjoying the series a lot though.

 

[Wvtvguy]

I finished picking up this series & thought I'd skip ahead & watch an episode from season 5. At what point did they know that was the final season? There's just this cloud of doom hanging over series from the start. Watching tired characters isn't very entertaining.

I could deal with the gloom if we were a decade into the series but this was only season 5! Watching season 5, it feels like so much time has passed. I don't think MIAMI VICE was meant to have a NCIS or CSI type run but 5 years seems a bit short. Particularly, because it only had 2 or maybe 3 prime years.

 

[bronson]

I finished picking up this series & thought I'd skip ahead & watch an episode from season 5. At what point did they know that was the final season? There's just this cloud of doom hanging over series from the start. Watching tired characters isn't very entertaining.

I could deal with the gloom if we were a decade into the series but this was only season 5! Watching season 5, it feels like so much time has passed. I don't think MIAMI VICE was meant to have a NCIS or CSI type run but 5 years seems a bit short. Particularly, because it only had 2 or maybe 3 prime years.

But most of the Season 4 was bad as well. Strange stories about ufo´s etc.....


I love Season 1-3 but after that the downfall started.

 

[JayHink]

I seem to remember Dick Wolf took over as EP for Michael Mann in that final season, & people were done with the "MTV Cops" concept, much like new wave music & other circa-1984 popular culture. A shame; it's one of my favorite periods.

It's been a long time since I watched the whole series (I watched season 1 back when the updated feature movie came out in '06) ....time to pick up these reissued sets!

 

[Wvtvguy]

Yeah I watched the season 4 premiere "Contempt of Court" & while it was a decent episode, it felt nothing like MIAMI VICE. It could have been any other cop show. Tubbs had 3 lines I think.

 

[cart99]

According to TVShowsonDVD today, season 1 and 2 have been remastered to HD for a new release and possible bluray set. If you want Miami Vice on bluray it may help to email Mill Creek Entertainment at http://www.millcreekent.com/contact-us and let them know you'd want the show on bluray. I'm going to.

cheers

 

[bronson]

I won´t probably purchase the new hd remastered Season 1+2 because if they release it at the end of the year on blu-ray, it´ll be annoying to pay twice.

 

[bronson]

The new sets of Season 1+2 won´t have English subtitles, right?
Mill Creek never puts subtitles on the discs or am I wrong?

 

[Kevin EK]

I'm very curious about this new remastering.
Among other things, it should mean that several of the odd episode edits that happened with the earlier DVD sets may have now been corrected by default.

For example, "Hit List" aka "The Return of Calderone pt 1" has that odd edit during the Castranova surveillance. And there are several others that people have mentioned over time.

I would be very happy to see Blu-rays of Miami Vice, particularly of the 1st season. There's plenty of detail that could pop up and the sheer level of pastel color would be a joy to see in HD.


BTW - to answer Marc's question, it looks like it was clear to the cast and production that Vice was wrapping up by the time they got into the final stretch of episodes in the 5th season. I don't think they knew when they began the season, but the writing was certainly on the wall after the midpoint. The ratings had dropped and the bottom had fallen out of the show. The whole idea was tired by then, and the writing was frankly atrocious in the last year. Dick Wolf actually was not involved in the final season. He was heavy in the 3rd and 4th years. By the time they did the final year, he was already developing Law & Order and wasn't in the house anymore. From the look of it, Michael Mann wasn't really involved by the 5th year either.

"Contempt of Court" in the 4th season did have a lot of throwbacks to Season 1, including the notion of Crockett going to jail rather than name his informant. But yes, it was an "issue of the week" episode - this time dealing with jury tampering. That structure was Dick Wolf's thing (and still is). Whereas the 1st season was really doing film noir in neon - the initial episodes were ones where they would take various cop show ideas and play them out in completely unusual/unexpected directions.

As for why it did not and could not last, the answer may be found in a review I remember from the LA Weekly from around 1989. The piece was focused on Wiseguy, another show that had a great 1st year and then could never live up to it. At the beginning of the article, the reviewer noted that there may be an unspoken rule about great action series only having one really good season in them. And he went on to cite Miami Vice, The Equalizer, Moonlighting and then of course Wiseguy. It may be that the Miami Vice story pool really wasn't that deep, and they'd already hit their best marks early on. The number of quality episodes really drops off after the first season.

 

[bronson]

http://www.millcreekent.com/miami-vice-season-one.html

Mill Creek is going to release "Miami Vice" -Season 1 on only 4 discs.
Isn´t that odd?

That means they´re 5 or 6 episodes per disc. I can´t imagine that means we´ll get great picture quality despite their HD masters or am I wrong?