MacGyver is still completely watchable. As is the A-Team. Of course, Air Wolf just keeps getting better with age. Except for that gay cruise boat episode with no helicopter.
Miami Vice… Not so much. Tried to watch an episode recently and it just wasn’t happening. To be fair, it was the long haired Crockett period.
But the real champion of “Shows I once watched and now can’t believe I sat through” is The Fall Guy.
My wife’s first reaction to this was: “You know who they should have gotten to play the Edward James Olmos part, right? Edward James Olmos.”
I kinda had to agree with her. His badass-ishness hasn’t faded over the years.
It’d be cool to atleast have him in as a cameo.
The…the math in your post just doesn’t add up, Ben. There is simply no way the A-Team is watchable. Sure, the exploits of a renegade band of engineers is groovy and all, but stil. I mean, you saw the episode where, in order to get B.A. on a plane, they hypnotized him to fall unconscious at the code word “eclipse,” and then during a mad bloodless firefight Faceman sez:
“B.A.! I’m out of ammo. Give me the clips!”
“What, foo’?” (okay, he probably didn’t fay “foo’” here)
“ThE CLIPS!”
THUD.
I wish MacGuyver was still watchable for me. It was my favorite show and because of its fruity Monday night time slot, it got me into football. I had the pocketknife. I ran around outside, pretending to be a special agent (except I, you know, liked to shoot people). But, I’ve caught the reruns on TNT or wherever. Hideous.
I just remember the episode when like his fiancee or wife or long lost love or some shit was into some deep shit, and it was the Edward James Olmos Hour of Ass Kicking. That was a great episode.
I think.
I remember catching the first episode without knowing anything about it-- like Bill remembers, the pre-credit sequences were just like nothing that had come before. There’s this hitman who is insanely fast and deadly with firearms. This cop is going to arrest him, is yelling “hands up in the air!!!” and the hitman has his hands up, but, not all the way up, and suddenly he’s drawn his pistol from a shoulder holster, smoked the cop, and reholstered the gun before you could blink. He was wearing yellow shooting glasses too. I was stunned because it seemed to break all the rules of cop shows I had seen up to then. And the credit sequence rocked. Jai-lai!!!
Plus Phil Collins’ episode. In the Air Tonight, baby.
I think those were two separate episodes. The Phil Collins episode was “Phil the Shill” where he played a game show host (?), but the one that made “In the Air Tonight” famous I think was the one where Crockett was flashing back to his old partner that turned out to be gay and how he was dealing with his guilt over abandoning him.
Miami Vice was Mann’s own show, right? I mean, why the hell would anyone begrudge him wanting to do new material with it?!
Looks decent to me. You can’t gather too much from that teaser. The actor choices are good.
–Dave
Crime Story, season one, was fantastic. In '86-'87 my freshman year of college, everyone would get together to watch Miami Vice, I showed up at the end of 'Vice one evening, and pshaw’d everyone who was leaving, about missing the “real deal” cop show. Having Dennis Farina go John Woo style, with two pistols blazing, and defuse a hostage situation the “direct way” sure won a few converts. Also, Paulie and Frank were the stupidest, and by that I mean most brilliant, henchmen of all time.
After season one…what a let down. Dennis Farina romancing blondes somehow didn’t work for me.
For a laugh, go rent this for an hilarious failed-pilot-cum-feature-film owing its heritage squarely to Miami Vice. The clothes, the logo, the gun fetish, the Mr. Mister track, some early roles for Laurence Fishburne and Lauren Holly - it’s all there (and it’s sort of amusing).
I remember as a teenager seeing the movie back in the 80s and loving it. Thanks for reminding it to me.
And it’s directed by Paul “Starsky” Glaser, no less, who also gave the world another guilty 80s pleasure - The Running Man.
Heh! I was remembering just that sequence. I recall him drawing it from the front of his pants though, as he wasn’t wearing a jacket. He dropped his hands fast and fired a few quick shots from the waist before the cop (who had drawn a bead on him) could blink.
Another striking one I remember had some punk kid breaking the window on a car, stepping lithely through it, taking the radio, and letting himself out the other door – all in the time it took his buddy to spray paint “No Radio” on the side.
The music I remember most was “Smuggler’s Blues”, and in general just kicked ass. I’d love to see a movie done with it.
Michael Mann is good, and even though Miami Vice looks like everything we hate about the 80s when viewed through the lens of hisotry, that show was AWESOME when it was first on.
It was freakin’ HARDCORE, man. Real-looking gunfights, people died instead of micraculously survive to wind up behind bars, awesome cars and boats and stuff, two cool (at the time!) actors delivering some fairly serious dialgoue (for the time!). I mean, compare it to any other crime drama of the period. MV was sweet.
Today, it looks absolutely silly, of course. It’s very much stuck in a period.
I saw the trailer before Kong and as soon as it started I’m like “WTF? Is this Miami Vice or something? With Micheal Mann? And Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell? Has hollywood lost its freaking MIND?” Then the actual “Miami Vice” title popped up on the screen and I said:
“Oh. I guess it has. You know, that didn’t really look that bad.”
Also: Tubbs is the shit.
I just saw this trailer before Kong as well… Fucking Colin Farrel? I assume he is the white character (who was the white guy - Crockett or Tubbs?)
Anyway, why didn’t they just get a midget to play that character, it looks almost as ridiculous.
All this talk of MV being such a cool 80s cop show and I keep thinking to myself that Hill Street Blues walked all over it. Fuck MV.
Both were important and great for diametrically opposite reasons. HSB was a gritty, accurate reflection of cops, whereas MV railed against those things (while still embracing them in certain aspects) and/or escalated the plot/story/character elements to tell a larger-than-life (as opposed to HSB’s “Life Shown Actual Size” life) story.
Both had their impact. HSB began Steven Bochco’s endless life quest to create the ultimate cop show (the What was he thinking? misadventure that was Cop Rock notwithstanding). MV is ridiculed now for being so aggressively 80’s, meanwhile it essentially helped invent the quote-unquote “80s” Americana for which the decade is so readily identified by. Has any TV show before (for sure) or since (MTV excluded) had such a profound effect on fashion? I don’t recall a Cosmo Kramer fashion wave. Friends readily mocked 80’s, but it’s probably the closest second primarily because of Jennifer Aniston’s hair.
A hip soundtrack for a feature film was still pretty rare in them days, forget about a TV show. I have to reiterate: no matter how dumb you think MV is now, TV in the 80s was mother effin’ awful, and that’s by comparison to MV alone, never mind TV as an entertainment medium over time. Prime time network TV in the 80’s can be summarized by ABC’s Friday night line up: Dukes of Hazzard, followed by Dallas. Insipid schlock followed by soap opera. Don’t believe me? Falcon Crest. Knight Rider. Dynasty. The A-Team. Need I go on? All the good 70s stuff (MASH, Barney Miller, etc) was dying off, and the resurgence of the sitcom as a ratings juggernaut was in a lull. MV annihilated that lull. MV was the show that got people to start putting on parties for an original airing, like they used to for The X-Files. My mom threw one. It was the episode where they blew up Crockett’s Porsche. I shit you not, one of the dudes there starting crying and it was like MNF when they announced John Lennon had been shot in there.
MV falls victim to being marginalized for its emphasis on style over substance, except the problem is that it merely made style equivalent to substance. All the idiot clones made that tactical error, MV did not. It was tightly written, viscerally violent, and took place in the A-#1 place to be for flamboyant wild crime in that time period, Miami during the daunting 80’s cocaine boom and Cuban exodus. The show was pure fantasy spun out of hard truths: crime and drug trafficking are out of fucking control and we have no viable means to staunch it, so how cool would this be? And it simultaneously vilified and idolized big-league criminals, taking a note from Scarface. But it did the same with cops, all at the same time, which is crazy.
The Fall Guy reruns are(were?) great for two reasons:
1 - Lee Majors singing the theme song. I remember him on Solid Gold singing it (I didn’t know that they were lipsyncing at the time).
2 - Markie Post
Looking forward to seeing Miami Vice. I’m not super thrilled with the leads, but I didn’t buy Tom “Yo Homie” Cruise as a white haired assassin until I actually sat down at the movie.
…or music?
Falcon Crest. Knight Rider. Dynasty. The A-Team. Need I go on?
Dude, yes. Air Wolf. Blue Thunder. Moonlighting – wait, that was actually good, I think.
MV was the show that got people to start putting on parties for an original airing, like they used to for The X-Files.
I remember that baseball would occasionally cut into my MV Friday night slots and that is almost entirely responsible for my hatred of baseball to this very day.
My mom threw one. It was the episode where they blew up Crockett’s Porsche.
Porsche? Porsche? Oh no you din’t.
All the idiot clones made that tactical error, MV did not.
I can’t even remember any of the idiot clones.
And it simultaneously vilified and idolized big-league criminals, taking a note from Scarface. But it did the same with cops, all at the same time, which is crazy.
Early Bruce Willis as a wife-beating drug lord.
Is it just me or did like every three episodes end with Crockett or Tubbs screaming “NOOOO!” with a fade to black and a gunshot?
Crime Story, season one, was fantastic. In '86-'87 my freshman year of college, everyone would get together to watch Miami Vice, I showed up at the end of 'Vice one evening, and pshaw’d everyone who was leaving, about missing the “real deal” cop show. Having Dennis Farina go John Woo style, with two pistols blazing, and defuse a hostage situation the “direct way” sure won a few converts. Also, Paulie and Frank were the stupidest, and by that I mean most brilliant, henchmen of all time.
After season one…what a let down. Dennis Farina romancing blondes somehow didn’t work for me.[/quote]
True. Season Two had numerous bits of awfulness to it. Mostly because they had no idea it was going to be renewed, and weren’t prepared. But once they revved the Ray Luca storyline back up, the season ended spectacularly.
And, hey, I watched Miami Vice from beginning to end, and lurved it. And I know that it’s Michael Mann doing the new one. But still. I don’t get it.