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Definitely a memorable Family Guy episode, whether you enjoyed it or not. I liked it because it was so different, a refreshing break from the usual, and you have to take your hat off to whoever thought up all the weird little creepy crawly details of what Brian experiences during his trip. In any case, I don't understand a lot of the hate that this episode has been getting. They went on a ride with it, granted, but that could have turned out far worse.

"Contempt of Court" for me was a disappointment. It was a harbinger of things to come in season 4, in that it became increasingly apparent that Miami Vice had been burning the candle at both ends and was just getting tired of itself.

A large portion of this episode simply deals with tedious courtroom procedural. All the things that had made Miami Vice great and a pop culture and critics darling were merely glimpsed at, and viewers were made to sit through many minutes of courtroom talk that rarely felt this much out of place on the show that was Miami Vice.

It is said that this episode was chosen as the season opener to start the season with a bang, since Crockett is sent to jail for not giving up an informant. Well, that was an intriguing premise the first time around in "Give a little, take a little" in season one, but it says a lot that the best shot they felt they had at drawing in viewers was a recycled season one story line.

Season three was a slight disappointment in that the lighter tone of seasons 1 and 2 was given up in favor of endlessly brooding, nihilistic story lines that spent more time offering social commentary than staying true to Vice's original premise. On the other hand, storytelling wise, it featured some of the greatest moments of TV film noir in the entire series.

But season 4 was when Miami Vice didn't just jump the shark, but as somebody has said, was also doing back flips and singing show tunes while doing it. Very probably, the producers would have just had to continue the winning formula of seasons 1 and 2 and perpetuate and evolve it very carefully, without most of the radical changes that this TV series saw repeatedly during its five-year run. But Instead, season three first of all alienated viewers who had been tuning in for the gorgeous light pastels and the portrayal of easy criminal living in the Sunshine State, and then season four came along and made it worse by sometimes appallingly poor storytelling, and story lines that would have been too daft even for the campest of its TV crime drama contemporaries. Miami Vice by that point had become a self-caricature of its own former glory, a flaky and incoherent pastiche of elements of its former popular success.

My verdict is: Don't watch "Contempt of Court". Don't watch season four at all, or anything that came after it. Watch the first two seasons for their captivating vibe and gripping story lines, and a careful selection of season three episodes to witness the zenith of Miami noir. That will still leave you with a body of some 50 very watchable episodes, without staring into the abyss of burnout and hapless self-reference that was Miami Vice's latter two seasons.

Love it or loathe it, ridicule it, or (like me) be a lifelong fan of "Miami Vice"... this is the show which defined the 80s like few other cultural phenomena of its time.

I am currently in the process of, well, binge-watching as they now call it, the five-season complete box set, from beginning to end. And I have to say that "Vice", even if you've seen practically every episode, is still always a time capsule of the good old days that is without comparison. Even after the tenth time that you've watched certain episodes, even if you've memorized most of the dialogues, you can't escape the pull of Miami Vice. It draws you in, into the world of 80s cool and chic, with all the clothes, cars, music, and (on- and off screen) high rollers of the day.

The 80s never looked this sleek, this glitzy and fancy before, and certainly never again. Many crime dramas and other types of TV fiction in the 80s deserve a rightful place in the chapter of pop culture that was the decade. From Magnum P.I. to the A Team, or even Dallas, even Dynasty by some measure. But none of them quite had what "Miami Vice" so groundbreakingly exploded onto TV screens with when it first aired in 1984. I wasn't even a teenager yet at the time, but I remember from watching the first few episodes (on a black and white 12-inch TV in my bedroom, no less) that this show was just in a class of its own. Even on a dinky black and white screen. Stunning scenery, a style of filming that was just unseen and unheard of on television, and actually, pretty terrific storytelling, although that is often considered a weak point of the show.

What's true enough is that the whole package began to come apart at the seams somewhere midway into season 3. Most TV shows have inevitably, and therefore forgivably used up most of their best story lines after the first few seasons and then gradually just stay in it to milk the franchise that has been created. But Miami Vice, once the greatest thing since color TV, really started taking a nosedive from that point. The gradual departure of the show's original personnel, including most unfortunately Michael Mann, was sorely felt. Initially, the darker, grittier feel of season 3 was not such a bad thing. Even in the absence of all the lightheartedness of seasons one and two, some episodes had quite outstanding story lines and were beautifully shot. And that even though a closed-cabin sports coupé like the Ferrari Testarossa never quite felt right as a replacement for a convertible like the Daytona... in tropical southern Florida.

Missing the point that viewers weren't turning away because of the earth tones used in the visuals of season three but by a deteriorating quality of the aforementioned whole package, season four saw a return to pastels, but a departure from everything else that had made the show such a success. Desperately attempting to regain its former splendor, season five wasn't all that bad, but on the bottom line, it was a different show done by different people. The saddest part was perhaps that production values were visibly cut back. From scrimpingly outfitted action scenes to scenes supposedly shot in third world countries but which just screamed Universal Studios back lot, and for which they didn't even, like before, bother sending a camera crew to some two-shed town in rural Florida anymore. A fate which similarly befell shows like Dallas in their latter years, by the way.

Saying that all this was Dick Wolf's fault for running the show into the ground when he took over creative control of Miami Vice would be looking back in anger. What is sad though is that quite likely, Miami Vice would have just had to stick with its self-invented formula from seasons one and two and could have perpetuated that "package" well into the 1990s, after all a decade during which hedonism and conspicuous and often illicit wealth only just began to go full throttle.

The bitter irony is that a show which had clothes fashion, as well as music, car, lifestyle an even gun and power boat fashions so deeply ingrained in its own DNA ultimately proved to be a fashion fad in and of itself.

Still, if you ask anybody what they remember most vividly about 80s culture, or what their image of 80s culture is, somewhere between the mention of (literally) brick sized cell phones, hedonistic yuppies, shoulder pads and hair metal, the words "Miami Vice" will come up as one of the defining moments of 80s pop culture. And that is something that can never be taken away. Not from the creators of the show, not from its actors, and certainly not from the fans who still worship 80s culture.