Talk:Miami Vice

just a noticed. typo

On the overview, I noticed that they talk about a noticeable episod3 called, where the busses don’t run, it notes the year as 1997 and im sure they must have meant 1987... Drewpdogg22 (talk) 22:51, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Genre discrepancy & cats

I really can't believe this is necessary - but in efforts to avoid an edit war - I am opening dialogue here to discuss the genre of the show. I went through the archives already and it has not been discussed previously.

A recent edit by User:SnapSnap changed a categorization from Thriller TV Series to American Thriller TV Series. In hindsight I somewhat wrongly reverted that edit - and in reality I should have just deleted the category outright, as I do not believe that either case applies or fits the show. I will qualify that more in a moment. In a subsequent reversion of that - SnapSnap referenced the Infobox genre as supporting the classification (Mystery thriller). My oversight there as I had not even noticed it, prior. But - after reading both the page that links to and also Thriller (genre) - I have to say that very cearly MV does not fall into any of those 2 cats or the genre.

The basic premise of both Thriller and Mystery thriller/fiction is that the commissioner of the crime is not known until the end, and that viewers are "kept on the edge of their seats with high suspense and anxiety", and Alfred Hitchcock style of story telling is frequently referenced in both of these articles. This simply is not the case for pretty much any episode of MV. The commissioner of the crime is almost always revealed before the opening credits roll - or at the very latest by the first commercial break. The bulk of the show's premise is based upon how to either apprehend the known villain, catch them in the act (usually via under-cover setup) or otherwise thwart their plans. In reality it is almost a polar opposite of a thriller or whodunit type of story. I therefor think that any Thriller catting of this show should be removed, and that Mystery Thriller should be struck from the genre list in the infobox. But I am of course open to suggestion and argument - as long as we can reach a consensus on proper genre and catting of this. Picard's Facepalm (talk) 20:13, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Simply put, genres are one of the least informative and most useless things we can edit war over. But what's important is to go by the sources--no genre should be listed for a piece of media that isn't sourced and discussed in the article's prose. Infoboxes and categories are not meant to contain unique information and need to summarise the content of an article, and so if any given genre isn't explicitly spelt out and sourced reliably in running prose, it doesn't belong in either the infobox or in a category (cf. MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE: "the purpose of an infobox: to summarize (and not supplant) key facts that appear in the article") Gʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ^ˣ 20:20, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

I completely agree with you on this, and on that basis do not find the infobox genre identification of Mystery thriller as a remotely fitting summary of the facts in the article. Picard's Facepalm (talk) 21:24, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't have a dog in the category fight, but you are incorrect about your statement regarding "pretty much any episode of MV." There were a number of episodes where the perpetrator was in fact not known until near the end of the episode (Out Where the Busses Don't Run, Shadows in the Dark, the much-maligned Missing Hours, God's Work, Amen, Send Money, half of the arc presented in Definitely Miami...I could go on). Vice has always been difficult to categorize. Intothatdarkness 20:30, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Ok - I will certainly admit there were some episodes that didn't fully fit the stereotype I indicated above - but do you think even the episodes you have listed fall into the scope of the 2 referenced articles for Thriller and Mystery? Both of those are pretty clearly summed up in each of their opening paragraphs - but I still do not see those encompassing MV as a whole - anymore than I would encompass it being identified as a comedy by presence of Izzy, Noogy or even the interactions with Elvis. Picard's Facepalm (talk) 21:24, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

As I said, those are examples. And you're wrong about at least two of those episodes being summed up in the opening (very wrong in the case of Out Where the Busses Don't Run). As for the "Kept on the edge of their seats" quote you cite...Shadows in the Dark certainly has that intent. So does Little Miss Dangerous, Florence Italy, and in its own way Nobody Lives Forever. As I said before, Vice is very difficult to categorize. Perhaps the most sound categorization I've seen is found in Sanders' book "Miami Vice", where he calls it "television crime drama and film noir coalesce[ing]" and one of the first examples of TV Noir in the '80s and beyond. And in that context I would even question the use of "Neo-Noir" in the genre infobox, as Sanders (a major RS when dealing with Miami Vice in a contextual sense) doesn't use the term. Intothatdarkness 01:39, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

I dunno about "genre discrepancy", but I can shed some light on the article's mention of asset forfeiture... When people talk now about That F*cking Guy, the former President, they like to say, correctly, that Al Capone only went to prison for tax evasion. The claim is made that that was the only Federal law violation they could "get" him on. But, that claim, while true, can't be applied to now because of two Federal laws that came into being in the 1970's.... The Racketeer Influenced, Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act of 1970 and, several years later, IGG (Ill-Gotten Gains)/asset forfeiture. RICO made just about everything a mafia does illegal, not just evading taxes. It made keeping two sets of books, a favorite ploy that mafias used to use to avoid criminal sanction, illegal. It made money laundering illegal, as well. But, after RICO was passed, Congress found out quickly that, without some sort of law where the ill-gotten gains of the mafia could be seized, the mafias would still prosper financially until its members went to Federal prison on RICO charges.... Before RICO and IGG, law enforcement agencies were having trouble with trying to break up mafias. In the HBO series "The Sopranos", several mentions and scenes addressed RICO and how it had complicated the lives of mafia members. In fact, there's even a scene where Tony Soprano (the late James Gandolfini) digs up several hundred thousand dollars in plastic cases that he'd buried and had to bury because the FBI could track his ill-gotten gains through bank transactions. Therefore, what Miami Vice did was to detail the stories of going after drug dealers. However, since Crockett and Tubbs were Miami cops instead of FBI agents, there wasn't too much mention about RICO and IGG. Finally: a little more than two years ago, the Supreme Court upheld a long-standing precedent known as "separate sovereigns", which was in force during the time that Miami Vice was on the air. There's a Constitutional Amendment that states that a defendant can't be tried twice for the same crime. However, about a century ago, the Supreme Court determined that, as "separate sovereigns", both the state or local authorities AND the Feds can go after defendants for committing the same essential crimes. That meant, for example, if Crockett and Tubbs couldn't get the bad guys on local/state (Florida) charges, the Feds could indict, arrest and prosecute the perpetrators. The legal premise behind the show is sound, even if some of the scenes of the show are a bit much to take, in re, having to suspend disbelief. 2601:1C0:5201:BEA0:3540:9475:8A68:6B9D (talk) 18:28, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

You should probably take a moment to review WP:TPG, WP:NOTFORUM and WP:POLD Picard's Facepalm (talk) 15:43, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Verb tense

OK, I'm not going to get into an edit war over this but I spent a lot of time editing the tense in the article because it's all wrong and now it's been reverted. Can we please get some discussion on this to figure out what should be done? --Kevin W. - Talk 05:17, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

As I mentioned in my edit summary in that reversion - you should look at the edit summaries in the 2 edits here and here.

In the first one, editor User:Binabik80 changed the past-tense of over a dozen words, and then stated in his edit summary:

" the sentences in this section that were discussing miami vice as a text were inconsistently flipping back and forth between past tense and present; i opted to go with present rather than past,".

I thought this to be a bit odd, but I went and read very carefully through MOS:TENSE, and it seemed to support articles of this type being written in the present tense in the descriptors. I did that reading because like you - I didn't like the changing of the tense either. But the more I read the MOS and the more I read the changes made the more I saw that it seemed to line up... very begrudgingly.

The problem is - in his edit of doing that - it literally introduced more problems than it fixed by mixing tenses all through the article even more than they already were. Honestly - he would have had a shorter path in just putting them all to past vs. changing some of the past to presents. I gave it some thought and figured if I reverted it - it may cause a war, and if the MOS:TENSE gets cited then I don't have much of a leg to stand on.

So then *I* spent the next 3 and a half hours going through the entire article and evaluating every one of the tense instances I could find, and changing the ones that were applicable in order to line up with what Binabik did. That was a lot of work, indeed - so I do feel your pain. As I stated in the edit summary for that work which I did:

"previous editor changing the tense on several items actually broke tense for the rest of the article. :( cleaned it all up the best that I can. Probably could use another pass."

I really don't care, either way... so whatever is decided by consensus that ALSO aligns with MOS:TENSE I am fine with. But believe me that I was as appalled as you were to find so many hours of my hard work which resulted in my eyes bugging out of my head - getting undone in one, fell swoop. But - either way - whatever is decided upon - it then needs to be LEFT ALONE by everyone.

So - if people have an opinion, and they've carefully read the MOS for tense AND they have read the article... everyone weigh in and let's get a consensus. Picard's Facepalm (talk) 05:41, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Well...signing your posts is a thing. And having just skimmed the article I found a number of tense discrepancies...some in the same sentence. MOS:TENSE isn't 100% helpful, but does indicate, for example, that this sentence should read "Nick Nolte and Jeff Bridges[13][14] were considered for the role of Sonny Crockett, but since it was not lucrative for film stars to venture into television at the time, other candidates were considered." instead of "Nick Nolte and Jeff Bridges[13][14] were considered for the role of Sonny Crockett, but since it was not lucrative for film stars to venture into television at the time, other candidates are considered." The way MOS:TENSE uses this, references to Miami Vice as a show in general would be present tense (is) because the show still exists, but references to things that happened during creation/production should be past tense (was) because they happened in the past. The examples provided in the MOS make that clear. Intothatdarkness 16:51, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Sorry - it was very late and I was on my way to bed when I caught this discussion topic and replied to it... and was also a bit peeved. Apologies for that. I have no bout that there are discrepancies in the tense now - especially with how many people have indeed messed with it. As I also stated above - I only made the one pass, and quite possibly missed or even incorrectly assigned some of them. At that time I openly welcomed someone else to take another look, and I still do - so thank you for catching that one. I think your closing point above in that it should be in the present tense is precisely what drove Binabik to make the edits he did in the first place, but again - it then broke the rest of the article, as most of it was in past tense. That is what prompted my original edit... and it was against my better wishes... lol. Picard's Facepalm (talk) 05:56, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

I think the challenge is exactly as described...initial points about the show itself should be in present tense because the show as a physical (or recorded) artifact still exists, but points about events connected to the show (like the example I used in my first post) should be in what's essentially past tense because they happened, but are not happening. The MOS examples are pretty clear, even if the explanation in the MOS isn't necessarily so. I'll try to take a sweep through in the next day or so and make some corrections. Intothatdarkness 18:00, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Intothatdarkness is correct here in that there will be a mix of tenses used. Describing the series should be done in the current tense (it is a series, it stars its cast, etc) but actual events surrounding it will require the past tense. If in doubt, try to think how you would write about a piece of physical art; the Mona Lisa is a painting which depicts its subject, but it was painted in the past, it was acquired by its owner in the past, etc. So a mix of tenses throughout is to be expected but the context of why each tense is used will be uniform. ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 18:43, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

I made some changes in the article to try to bring this into line. Don't know that I caught everything, but I think it flows better now. Additional eyes welcome, of course, but keep in mind events relating to the actual production of the series and contemporary reaction to it (NOT current reactions) will be in past tense. Intothatdarkness 21:19, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Re: Fashion

The influence of Miami Vice's fashions continued into the early 1990s and, to some extent, has had a lasting impact.

I think this can be clarified. The lasting impact was in 1) giving men the option to wear pastels and teaching them color coordination; 2) and in bringing Italian fashion to the masses of Americans. Viriditas (talk) 00:06, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

I think that is unnecessarily granular and overly specific. Far more fashion influences stemmed from the show than simply Italian fashions. The impact is far broader than that. It is fine as worded. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 03:55, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

I would tend to disagree. Being specific about whatever the "lasting impact" has tends to be house style. On Wikipedia, if something is written in a general manner like this, it tends to come off as stylistic rather than informative. Obviously, if you are not writing for Wikipedia, the style would differ, and it might indeed favor the general rather than the particular. However, lead sections are allowed to engage in this kind of style, so it would be appropriate there, but not in the body. In other words, readers turn to Wikipedia for hard information, not for its stylistic composition. When I put my reader hat on, the first thing I ask is, what is the lasting impact? I think it's a safe bet other readers are asking the same thing. Therefore, Wikipedia serves a specific kind of need. I can point you to several articles that take general information and convert it into specificity in a remarkable, yet professional manner. One that comes to mind is our Good Article on "Whitey on the Moon". It's practically a perfect article, engaging the reader in general information where it is needed, and getting quite specific when required. And it's incredibly short and concise. In point of fact, this comparison tells me something instructive. This article, which is only a B-Class article at the moment, suffers from incredible bloat due to page size. One wonder if this is because the primary contributors focus too much on the general and not enough on the particular. Viriditas (talk) 08:54, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Note, I will not be pursuing this, but the article page size is a continuing problem. Good luck with it. Viriditas (talk) 08:57, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, it occurs to me that the problem could easily be solved by splitting out the topic into a new article, which would allow for a more narrow treatment. I will consider this in the future, as it would also address the page size issue. Viriditas (talk) 09:07, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

I tend to agree this idea is too granular and over-specific. Also, I question the statement about "the masses." Vice had an impact to be sure, but it wasn't the only thing going on in the '80s (no matter what fans of the show seem to think). Intothatdarkness 11:59, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

I get the strange impression that you both thought the two points I added up above were intended as literal quotes? They were not, not in the slightest. They are rough sketches for how to go about expanding the section. I can now see there's some strong confusion about what I wrote, so I will consider this subject for a future addition to a split page instead, not for here. Viriditas (talk) 22:01, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

You shouldn't expand the section based on incorrect or debatable statements. I think what's there now is fine, especially since Vice's impact on the wearing of pastels is still debated (and the show itself starting moving away from that scheme by Season 3). Intothatdarkness 12:20, 20 August 2024 (UTC)