Episode 1 ‘Brother’s Keeper’

Director Thomas Carter
Starring Don Johnson, Philip Michael Thomas, Saundra Santiago
Rated M
Score 5/6

Miami detective Sonny Crockett reluctantly teams with New York City cop Rico Tubbs when both of them end up pursuing a drug dealer who killed their respective partners.

Okay, the reason why I decided to check this out was after seeing the ‘In the Air Tonight’ scene and I was struck by how intense the scene was and how little dialogue there was particularly between Crockett and Tubbs and how chilling some sound effects can be. And for the record, yes I might have watched a few other clips from other episodes before setting about watching this one.

For those of you who might not know Miami Vice is an American crime drama series from the 80’s that ran for 5 seasons from September of 1984 to January of 1990 was created by Anthony Yerkovich and starred Don Johnson as James “Sonny” Crockett and Philip Michael Thomas as Ricardo “Rico” Tubbs. Michael Mann directed a film adaptation of the series, which was released July 28, 2006.
On a slight side note Sonny Crockett’s backstory of college football prowess and being a Vietnam War veteran were transferred onto the character Bobby Bridges on Don Johnson’s other cop show Nash Bridges. I have to wonder how much of Johnson’s performance of Crockett influenced his performance as Nash Bridges.

The Pilot episode ‘Brother’s Keeper’ was originally a two-hour pilot movie though now its shown as two one hour episodes. Now its awfully easy to dismiss this as being an awfully outdated television series because in a lot of ways it is, especially if you look at the fashion, the cars and even some of the action sequences (particularly the action sequence that introduced Tubbs in New York) and they might have had some of the flair that you might associate with The A-Team but it did go to darker places particularly with Jimmy Smits’ character Eddie Rivera . Johnson and Thomas where great together and I am definitely going to have to check out a few more episodes of Miami Vice (to explore the origins of the partnership of Crockett and Tubbs) because yes I have watched other episodes on free-to-air television but I usually always caught the episode half way through. But what I really loved about this episode where the performances of Jossie DeGuzman as Maria Rivera and Belinda Montgomery as Caroline Crockett.