Just wanted to revisit this topic briefly and add a couple more reasons why I keep maintaining Alias is a 20 year update of Miami Vice. (I was reminded when a character on Alias actually praised Miami Vice as his favorite thing about American television.)
1. Both shows heavily feature famous guest stars, from Quentin Tarantino to G. Gordon Liddy. In the case of Miami Vice, a lot of the episodes feature then unknown actors who later turned out to be more famous than anybody actually starring on the show, like "Larry" Fishburne and Bruce Willis.
2. The distinctive use of color, bright primary colors on Alias in contrast to Miami Vice's pastels, like the green lit alley where Vaughn debriefed Sydney when she was undercover, and Lt. Castillo's pale green office.
3. Very prominent use of a wide range of popular music from, often going back to the same eras. And occasionally the same song: in "Definitely Miami" a woman lures Crockett into a trap by cavorting around in a royal blue bathing suit, in "Double Agent", Sydney saunters out of the pool in her royal blue bathing suit to lure a somebody into a trap, both times to the same Ted Nugent song.
4. Michael Vartan's permanent 5 o'clock shadow is a clear homage to Sonny Crockett.
5. On Alias, Dixon's undercover roles were always Jamaican or African, and really hammered it home by having him ostentatiously dress the part. On Miami Vice, when Tubbs went undercover he was usually Jamaican, but made the occasional foray into South African revolutionary.
6. At least through the first couple seasons of Alias (and I've only seen the first two and a half), Sydney was living 24-7 undercover and constantly dealt with the resulting strain on her life. Crockett went home at night to his 24-7 cover as drug dealer "Sonny Burnett", who lived on a sailboat and drove a ferrari. On both shows, this situation strained credibility, as for instance nobody ever noticed that Sonny Burnett, who had a Florida Gators mascot living on his boat, looked a lot like college football star James "Sonny" Crockett, and he arrested like 1,000 people without blowing his cover in Miami.
7. Vaughn and Crockett both had a chubby guy they called in for back-up (Weiss and Switek).
8. The mystery surrounding Sydney's parents (and her surrogate parents the Sloanes) and their involvement with the KGB, CIA, Covenant, Alliance, etc, mirror Lt. Castillo's hazy past in the DEA and CIA and his connections to every single federal agency.
9. Sonny loses his attempt at reconciliation with his first wife when the villain of the pilot, Calderone, comes back and tries to kill his family, while Sydney loses her fiance in the pilot to Arvin Sloane. Rico's brother, the mother of his child, and possibly his infant son are also murdered by another member of the Calderone family (special guest star John Leguizamo). Sonny's second wife is murdered by somebody he let off of death row, and the only person who didn't lie to Sydney at every turn growing up (Emily Sloane) is murdered by the guy who keeps getting away, Sark. These are definitely people you don't want to get too close to.
10. At the end of season 4 and beginning of season 5, Miami Vice went through the "Dark Crockett" episodes, where Sonny Crockett, reeling emotionally from losing is wife (and his premeditated revenge on her murderer), is knocked unconscious by an explosion and is revived by drug dealers he was pursuing, who know him as his alter ego Sonny Burnett. Crockett has amnesia, and everything around him says he's drug dealer Sonny Burnett, so he adopts that persona, and commits several murders and buys a panther for his girlfriend during his rise to the top of a drug cartel. At the end of season 2 and beginning of season 3 of Alias, Sydney deals with the aftermath of amnesia and the loss of her lover, having lived 2 years as the assassin Julia Thorn. Neither made a whole lot of sense, and both wrap up a little too neatly. However, the tragic lack of a "That's the closet where I keep my man-eating panther" scene really hurt the Sydney's amnesia arc on Alias.
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