What I'm about to mention is the least of the outrages committed by the average Miami Vice episode -- the one I'm watching right now, thanks to my DVR, features Billy Ocean on the soundtrack; guest shots by Gene Simmons, Luis Guzman, Penn of Penn and Teller, Pam Grier, and Charles S. Dutton; and Crockett and Tubbs on an undercover field trip to New York City, with all the tired performance-artist sight gags that that implies. 

But I seriously cannot believe how much ammunition is discharged during the average firefight on this show.  First of all, criminals have zero compunction about shooting at cops -- to kill.  Using approximately seventeen thousand machine-gun rounds.  Second of all, the cops have the same lack of compunction, and their guns seem to hold several dozen rounds each (even though Tubbs's weapon is clearly a six-shooter, even to my untrained eye).

Contrast that with The Wire, which doesn't have all that many gun battles considering the subject matter of the show; it sort of depends on the season, but even in S3 where you see like five murders an episode, they're not spraying ammo around like a demented sprinkler like they are on MV.  Police officers are, I'm pretty sure, required to keep their firearms certification up to date -- can't these guys shoot straight?  How about firing two or three times and actually hitting the bad guy instead of discharging 42,945 rounds?

Tags: miami vice, roc, the wire