![]() It was some kind of function of your brain and its interaction with alcohol and drugs." "We really worked on the notion that it wasn't a weakness of personality, it wasn't a lack of willpower. "That hadn't been done with a main character, a lead character, showing that he wasn't a bad person or evil," says Baer of the storyline, which became a landmark moment in the show's sixth season. He knew the head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse was passionate about ideas that addiction could be a brain disease. John Carter, a popular character played by Noah Wyle on NBC's hit medical drama ER, would develop an addiction to painkillers, get caught and go into rehab.īaer, a Harvard-trained doctor, was working as a co-executive producer on the show. In the late 1990s, TV producer Neal Baer pitched a bold storyline to NBC executives: Dr. The addicted protagonist humanized drug users Perhaps not coincidentally, a Gallup poll in 1989 found 63% of Americans saw drug abuse as America's number one problem, reflecting a rising hysteria about crack cocaine and drugs from Mexico (by 2014, that number would be down to 1%). These shows presented the drug trade as a global danger imported from outside America, often from south of the Mexican border. who do this global work to try and disassemble a very complex, transnational, organized criminal activity." And our miniseries drove deep into the heart of many people. By 1990, the year Miami Vice ended, that passion would lead Mann to craft an Emmy-winning miniseries on the murder of federal agent Kiki Camarena in Mexico, Drug Wars: The Camarena Story. Instead, he was inspired by the global scope of the drug trade. Now that's sexy."īut Mann insists Miami Vice wasn't intended to glorify drug traffickers or the cops hunting them. (The audience) can also enjoy the glamour and the perks of having outsider figures who can dress better than the average cop, have nicer cars and better soundtracks. that's the American narrative, that we're fighting our best against this tide. just this gorgeous, Caribbean twilight zone in which anything seemed possible."Ĭultural critic Nelson George says Miami Vice combined the story of the cool outlaw and stalwart law enforcement officer into one mesmerizing tale. ![]() "It was the northern banking capitol for the whole of the South American drug trade. "Miami was really Casablanca," says Mann. Mann says the show, initially called Gold Coast, had storylines based on scuttlebutt they heard while hanging out in Miami clubs with actual criminals. Toss in telegenic stars Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas as James "Sonny" Crockett and Ricardo "Rico" Tubbs, a throbbing theme song from Jan Hammer and a setting in the sexy, mysterious world of Miami's underworld, and you had a TV classic. Oscar-nominated director Michael Mann, who served as executive producer of Miami Vice, said the iconic show's premise was inspired by forfeiture laws allowing police to use any assets seized in drug arrests. ![]() It wasn't until 1984, when NBC unveiled a little series called Miami Vice, that TV's war on drugs got a serious makeover. (For fun, search for "Dragnet drug episodes" on YouTube to detectives Joe Friday and Bill Gannon, played by star/creator Jack Webb and Harry Morgan, stiffly explaining different street drugs to clueless, middle-aged parents.)ĭrug war blues and Miami hues made a hit combo Exhibit A: 1950s and '60s-era series like Dragnet, which lionized straitlaced detectives lecturing young people that a hit of marijuana would inevitably lead to an out-of-control heroin habit. TV's early police procedurals set the pattern: a whitewashed vision supporting the status quo focused on middle class sensibilities. ![]() "For normative America, for the America that isn't vulnerable to these policies. it's just too much fun," Simon says, ruefully. And as any good producer can tell you, where you place the camera is where the audience will empathize. Secondly, Simon adds, such shows are almost always written from the perspective of law enforcement. He calls that "The Thin Blue Line" narrative. First, he says, they depict situations where cops - however flawed or troubled - are society's stalwart defense against lawless drug dealers and addicts. As a longtime, outspoken opponent of the aggressive arrest and imprisonment efforts central to the War on Drugs, the Emmy-winning TV producer David Simon sees two big problems with typical police dramas. ![]()
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