CREEMEDIA

CREEMEDIA

COPS, COKE & CALL GIRLS

MIAMI VICE (NBC)

Cynthia Rose

He’s James “Sonny” Crockett, the cop who spends his working time in Cerruti silk suits, T-shirts and espadrilles (minus socks). Dumped by a comely ex-wife, he now parks his black Ferrari in front of a houseboat anchored in Miami’s most scenic marina, an accomodation he shares with an alligator named Elvis.

Sonny’s pal-in-a-pinch is Ricardo Tubbs—the expatriate New Yorker who likes to sport one diamond earring, face off opposition in an Armani trenchcoat, and uses a Jamaican patois for undercover disguise. Tubbs admires Crockett’s past as a football hero (pro hopes dashed by a stint in ’Nam). And Sonny knows he can trust Rico—after all, the first thing Tubbs did was bust Crockett’s previous partner for corruption.

For Crockett and Tubbs (played by Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas), corruption is the name of every game on Miami Vice, the hippest, wittiest, fastest TV series since Hill Street Blues or Cagney And Lacey. Rock stars, pop personalities, cult playwrights and alternative comedians are scrambling for even the tiniest involvement (guest players have included Coati Mundi, Brother From Another Planet Joe Morton, Glenn Frey, Richard [Stranger Than Paradise] Edson, and alternative comic Eric Bogosian). And between $50,000 and $70,000 per show goes on the rights to Top 100 tunes— which are incorporated (uncut) in and out of the action.

Like the guest stars, the songs are used ironically. Glamorous hookers patrol their prey to the jaunty strains of Dolly Parton’s “Great Balls Of Fire”; a slinky transvestite stalks and silently offs a stooge while Cyndi Lauper warbles “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” Often, says series producer Michael Mann, the music is needed “to give explicit themes more resonance.” And explicit themes on Miami Vice have been known to include Marxism-for-TV (“The bottom line? The bottom line is always money”) and anti-materialism (“So it all begins in the beauty shop... ”).

The series is usually cited as a mainstream successor to MTV; a show which “assimilates” music video techniques. It’s even spawned a new term in TV criticism: “Michael Mannerism.”

And Mann is the first to acknowledge his show’s aggressively hip intentions —the jive talk, showy neon, adrenalinpowered plotlines and immaculate compositions are, he admits, carefully stylized. Nothing, says Mann, gets in “by accident—not even a turquoise shirt in front of a peach colored wall.”

But credit for the show’s morality (taking drugs is a political act) has to be shared between mainman Mann, his seven principal stars, the show’s devoted crew, and its originator Anthony Yerkovich. A three-time Emmy winner for his work on Hill Street Blues, Yerkovich developed the characters of Crockett and Tubbs which Johnson and Thomas have nurtured—sharp-witted wiseacres dedicated to the eradication of drugs, and cool enough to disdain their use. Like their superior Lt. Castillo (played as a sop to Latino viewers by noted Hispanic actor Edward James Olmos), each uses work to fill a void in his personal life.

For Castillo, says Olmos, it’s a Casablanca-style renunciation of a rediscovered fiancee. For Crockett, it’s his broken marriage. For Tubbs, it’s his older brother gunned down by elusive coke czar Calderon. As on Hill Street Blues, self-possessed women cops work alongside the heroes of Miami Vice. The difference is that they spend more time undercover in fancy dress and undress.

Currently, NBC carries Miami Vice at a loss, just as it once did Hill Street Blues. But despite its mid-Friday programming slot, the show has garnered what Mann calls a “rabid following,” and its renewal for next season is already a fait accompli. The biggest surprise of all about this supposed MTV offshoot, however, is that no one seems to tape it at all. Most fans, it appears, now stay in Fridays long enough to get their thrills first-hand.

NOTHING IS REVEALED

THE PRISONER (Maljack Productions videocassettes)

J. Kordosh

The Prisoner was a 17-show TV series conceived by (and starring)

Patrick McGoohan that originally aired in 1968. Twelve of the episodes are now available on videocassette from Maljack Productions (15825 Rob Roy Drive, Oak Forest, IL 60452), the remaining five are reportedly soon-tobe-available.

The Prisoner was also—and not incidentally—the best-crafted, most intriguing series ever seen on television. It transcended the medium, becoming a thing unto itself, a drama of immeasurable worth simply because there was—and is—no yardstick to measure it against. If the entirety of The Prisoner saga didn’t constitute A Statement, it sure seemed like it did...which, ultimately, is just as good.

The premise was classically simple: McGoohan (whose “real” name is never—not once— revealed) is an agent of the British Secret Service. He resigns for reasons unknown. He is drugged by persons unknown and spirited off to the Village, where people are assigned numbers in lieu of names. (McGoohan is Number Six.) The entire series is devoted to Number Six’s efforts to escape the Village and/or discover who is running his prison... ostensibly, the mysterious, never-seen Number One. In the meantime, the powers of the Village attempt to crack or convert Number Six. It’s as simple as that.

An intellectual Gilligan’s Island? Not quite. The Prisoner is, in fact, resolved in the final two episodes— both written and directed by McGoohan—but resolved in so perplexing a fashion that even the most dedicated Prisonerologist can only theorize as to the “actual’rconclusion. (The final episode, “Fall Out,” is almost without a doubt the single most bizarre episode in a continuing series ever presented on TVmore about that later.)

As the Prisoner, McGoohan honed and amplified on his previous role of John Drake (initially Danger Man, later Secret Agent)—the spy Johnny Rivers sang of (“They’ve given you a number and taken ‘way your name”). Like John Drake, Number Six is a man of steel and incredible honor—like John Drake, Number Six is stubbornly individualistic and steadfastly nonhomicidal. In other words, the perfect humanistic spy, albeit a bit of a problem for his superiors.

But the Prisoner is also an ideal everyman (unsurprisingly, the show was produced by Everyman Films, Ltd.), and an everyman who’s held up well over the years. Number Six is a stripped-down, perfected John Drake caught up in a situation generally described as Orwellian, but more aptly described as Kafkaesque in the extreme. Why has this man resigned? Why is he being held against his will in a prison he can neither escape nor understand? Who are his captors? Why is nothing explained to the viewer, who must painstakingly piece together clues that may or

may not be meaningful in this exceptional milieu?

Careful study of the series—and here’s reason aplenty to buy a VCR, by the way—leads to the inescapable conclusion that the concept was very well thought-out and presented with a ruthless sort of continuity. (It’s the only show I’ve ever seen credit a Director Of Continuity.) The Prisoner may frustrate and confuse the viewer, but it never cheats him. For example, in the seventh episode—“Many Happy Returns”—Number Six actually escapes, confirming that the Village is on a small island, and returns to London, where he convinces his former colleagues that the ominous Village does indeed exist. The British help him pinpoint the Village’s location—which refutes the theory that the British are, in fact, running the Village. Or does it? At episode’s end, Number Six is ejected from a British jet and parachuted back into the Village. Was this the work of the Service he deserted or of Village infiltrators? We are left uncertain.

It is at the culmination and denouement of The Prisoner—the final two installments—that answers are offered while hitherto unthought-of questions are raised. Whatever McGoohan’s vision of The Prisoner was, he didn’t let it slip away... on the contrary, he managed to elevate his concept to a psychological level surpassing its admirable literal (and visual) value.

In “Once Upon A Time,” Number Six battles and defeats Number Two in a crisisprecipitated ultimate brainwash session. This sets up “Fall Out,” where Number Six finally learns something of the Village’s inner workings— and confronts Number One face-to-face. “Fall Out” is a twisted maze of psychedelic images (one of the weirdest being McGoohan leading a wholesale slaughter of Village luminaries while the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” cheerfully blares), tantalizing the viewer and almost defying interpretation. Ultimately, the indomitable Prisoner destroys the Village and escapes to London. He is finally free.

Or is he? After studying the series as a whole and “Fall Out” in particular, one can make a case that the Village was established and maintained by extraterrestrials. Or that the mysterious Number One was actually Number Six himself! Or—and this is the most convincing and appropriate conclusion—that Number Six hasn’t escaped at all...that in this symmetry-and-symbolism-ridden series, he will always be a prisoner, forever fighting his incomprehensible fate.

REGIS PHILBIN EYES

Richard C. Walls

Lifetime, the cable station you love to ignore, has recently undergone a little overhauling. Still bearing the proud subtitle “fitness, fashion, relationships, and public affairs” and offering such scintillating fare as Stretch With Priscilla, Turn On To Food, and What Every Baby Knows, the station now centers its schedule around a gaggle of chat/interview/call-in/advice programs hosted by big name personalities. Of course, “big name” is a relative term and in the still burgeoning world of cable, well...

For example, you got your Regis Philbin, who achieved big namehood as the straight man on the old Joey Bishop show. The old JB show was a Tonight Show clone which epitomized unhipness in the fabulous ’60s—its legacy was explored in the famous Saturday Night Live skit wherein a couple of blanded-out bourgeois types waxed rhapsodically about the various Joey memorabilia they had collected over the years.

As no-talent schmucks go, Regis is rather likeable, projecting a little-boy gullibility with minimum smarm and his interview/chat show is non-offensively sunny— the only dark note is the odd aura of sadness that flits around Philbin’s anxious eyes, as though he were aware of his program’s subtext cum caveat: enter into show biz and this may be your fate too!

Then there’s Richard Simmons, who needs no introduction. Suffice it to say that if you tune into his Lifetime show, you’ll find that he’s much more irritable now than when he first appeared on the scene. This may reflect the usually unmentioned downside of endless dieting—it may slim your hips but you’ll turn into a real bitch in the process. Which is no segue to Lifetime’s next big catch, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the sexologist as benign alien. The great lesson here is that sex advice doesn’t sound dirty when it’s coming from ET’s mom. Dr. Ruth’s show is called Good Sex and features a lot of talk about something called “ejack-o-late,” as well as a bevy of guests who are surprisingly willing to tell us the worst. A cute show, but if you watch it every day and you don’t have any sex problems, then you’re probably a morbid sick-o.

Finally, there’s Lifetime’s ace-inthe-hole Richard Belzer. Belzer garnered some publicity recently when Hulk Hogan gave him a personal break, but it wasn’t necessarily the strangest development in Belz’s checkered career. This guy has been an “underground” favorite for over a decade, a comedian’s comedian, hip, obscene, vicious, funny, and likely to queer a bid for the big-time like his appearance on the Letterman show a few years back by making jokes about how Katherine Hepburn’s head shakes (“give that chick some dramamine!”). But sooner or later we all have to grow up and sell out and so the once incorrigible Belz showed up as a regular on the recently defunct and quite dreadful Thicke of the Night.

After the Thicke show atomized, Belz turned up on Cinemax with a semi-weekly half hour. Free to do the R-rated stuff, he performed some wonderfully nasty stand-up, though the show’s format, behind the scenes at a comedy club, was, as they say, uneven. With his appearance on Lifetime, Belzer is back in Thicke-land. His show, Hot Properties, is inane and halfhearted-part call-in, part talk show. With a muzaky fusion house band, it’s slightly up-dated Merv Griffin, right down to the fashion spots and the show biz happy babble (done, surprisingly, without worry). Having to perform in this rated atmosphere Belz seems emasculated, fey even—unable to say “fuck” and other worthy words, compelled to restrain his insults and then make “just joking” disclaimers, the bowdlerized Belz comes across as a little light in the loafers. The exceptions are the call-in bits, real this time, and a perfect antidote to all the other callin shows where any lame brain who can pay his phone bill is given an uninterrupted stretch of time to do his thing. A cogent reminder that most people could use a little insulting. All in good fun, of course.