"It's better to burn out than to fade away." -Neil Young

If I didn't know any better, i'd think Neil wrote that line after being subjected to the fifth and final season of Miami Vice. Heck, i'm sure these twenty-one episodes helped finish off hammering whatever nails were remaining in Vice's coffin. The utter contempt that everyone from Michael Mann to Don Johnson to NBC had for the show was apparent on the screen. And man, was it painful. Though the show was in a slow downward spiral since the third season, by the time season five rolled around, it was a shell of its former self - Mann was replaced by future Law & Order creator Dick Wolf, Jan Hammer was replaced by someone named Tim Truman (not the comic book artist) and Crockett and Tubbs were together as a team in just about a quarter of the episodes.

That last thing was the most troubling for me. Since this did prove to be the final season of Vice, it's a damn shame that Crockett and Tubbs spent more time apart than they did together. For most of the fifth season, they either had separate errands to run and would only "bookend" the episode (making a brief appearance only at the beginning and the end) or one would work a case while the other one had personal issues to tend to. I'm sure it didn't bother Michael Talbott though, as his character, Stan Switek, was called upon to fill the vacant shoes of whichever detective sat out that particular episode. Edward James Olmos' Lieutenant Martin Castillo is thrown a bone and given one episode to shine, before joining Saundra Santiago and Olivia Brown, who are MIA for most of the season, only putting in brief "blink-and-you'll-miss-'em" appearances (save for one episode, "Asian Cut").

Another signature element missing from this season of Vice was the music. Jan Hammer scored nine episodes of season four, before being replaced by Tim Truman for season five. In addition, the usage of contemporary pop songs, to either heighten the tension or add some atmosphere to a scene, was kept to bare minimum. Now that I think about it, there wasn't much of either during this season - most of the episodes were strangely silent. Though, to be fair, when Truman's music was used, it wasn't that bad - but it definitely wasn't Jan Hammer.

As for the writing, well, James Brown doesn't make a return appearance, but I found myself wishing he would, if only to take away the crop of writers for this season. I have to admit that the season started off strong (well, as strong as an episode of Vice could be), but I found most of the episodes derivative of previous seasons. Each one seemed seemed to feature some badly dressed, anonymous drug dealer whose downfall was to be ignorant of Miami's worst-kept secret: Cooper and Burnett were actually cops. The writers did, however, work in some slight "should we hang it up?/why are we still doing this?" foreshadowing every-so-often, which kinda sorta helped make the events in the season finale not totally come out of left field...just poorly executed and deserving of so much more.

Here's the episode listing:

Video: Miami Vice: Season Five is spread across five single sided discs and is presented in a full frame 1.33:1 ratio. As with the previous volumes, there were the usual occasional flaws scattered throughout the set - dirt, grain, etc. However, with most of these episodes, the picture quality flaws were the least of the problem.

Audio: The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix for Miami Vice: Season Five really didn't get as much of a workout as it did during previous volumes. Though, with Jan Hammer gone and the use pop songs that were of place, it didn't matter much to me.

Supplements: The only acceptable supplement would've been a letter of apology from everyone responsible for this mess of a season.

Conclusion: You may not have the impression from this review, but I am a big fan of Miami Vice. It could be nostalgia, it could be the knowledge that many contemporary dramas owe so much to Vice as far as style is concerned. Whatever it is, I am proud to own the first four seasons of Vice. However, during the fifth season, it seemed like a hollow shell of its former self, which left me feeling both anger and depression. Depression, because I realized this would be the final twenty-one (well, twenty) times i'd be able to follow the exploits of James "Sonny" Crockett and Ricardo "Rico" Tubbs; and anger because, if this were any other police drama, there's no way in heck would I willingly choose to endure twenty hours of such campy cheese.

During an episode of E! True Hollywood Story devoted to Miami Vice back in 2001, Dick Wolf commented that, after the fifth season, the show was just sort of "over" and that it had "run its course". It's a shame that it seems they gave up on the show during the fifth season because this ground-breaking drama and its fans deserved so much better. Therefore, I can't recommend this to anyone. I'm sure some fans are completists, so there's nothing I could say that would dissuade them from buying this to complete their collections. However, you might want to wait and buy the megaset that Universal is releasing at the end of the year. For everyone else, it's a no-brainer - Skip It.

I will end this review on a positive note by saying, as a fan of "TV On DVD", Universal deserves all the kudos in the world for releasing five seasons of Miami Vice with its original music intact. From major contributions to the show which helped with the tone and atmosphere such as Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" and Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush's "Don't Give Up" to songs that were simply background noise and barely noticeable unless you were a music fan, like Pink Floyd's "Dogs". (Hear that, MTM/FOX?) I'm sure music rights for this series were a bitch, but there were no original songs omitted and the MSRP was a reasonable price. So, a hearty "Thank You" to Universal.