I watched the first episode of the new Knight Rider this morning. (Home sick today so I am getting caught up on DVD’s and tv episodes.) The show has some good spots and some corny, kinda like the original. It’s gonna take a few episodes I think for it to grow on me, or else I’ll dismiss it outright like I did with the remake of Bionic Woman. (I called that one early on… too bad it took the network a few weeks to realize the show sucked and the star couldn’t act her way out of a carboard box.)
In case you missed the pilot, I’ll summarize.
(Warning – spoilers ahead.)
The pilot movie that aired a few months ago had two things going for it – first, it doesn’t “reinvent” the original (a la Battlestar Galactica), rather it picks up where the original left off as a kind of a sequel. Second, it doesn’t acknowledge the movie “Knight Rider 2000” ever happened. On the off-chance you weren’t able to sit through that one: Michael Knight tried to retire, the Foundation fell upon hard times and had to sell the original K.I.T.T. for parts, and Devon Miles gets killed. (Spookiness alert – Edward Mulhare died shortly afterwards, kinda like Desmond Llewelyn died right after introducing John Cleese as the replacement “Q”.) Michael returns to what’s left of the Foundation for Law And Government, installs K.I.T.T.’s CPU into the prototype for the Knight Industries Four Thousand (which was a dumb name – K.I.F.T.?) and takes out the bad guys. I am pretty sure I read someplace that KR2000 was supposed to be a pilot in its own right, reviving the series but using a female driver (a cop who has one of K.I.T.T.’s microchips inside her brain) and the new supercar was a bright red Pontiac Banshee. The show was not widely received, probably because of the stupid James Doohan cameo.
Fast forward to 2008. Knight Rider, the New and Improved Movie, introduces Mike Traceur, an ex-Special Forces guy, fresh out of Iraq, womanizer, and all around slacker. He owes money to some loan sharks, and they are gonna kill his friend if they don’t get it soon. Meanwhile, a million miles away, some techno-thugs are breaking into the mansion of Charles Graiman, who we find out was the guy who built the first K.I.T.T. (and thus, one might assume, K.A.R.R., but it remains to be seen if THAT will come back as a future plot point.) During the camera pans through Charles’ workshop, we see the original Trans-Am version of K.I.T.T. under a tarp, along with various parts (the signature steering wheel and the KNIGHT license place hanging from a wall) which disprove the events in KR2000. KITT (okay so I am getting tired of hitting the . key) was apparently “decommissioned” and a new one was being built. Once KITT (Knight Industries Three Thousand) realizes the men are after him, he takes off to pick up Charles’ daughter, Sarah (a failsafe built into his programming.) Once she is in safe hands (seats?) KITT heads for Mike Traceur, whom he was also told to find in case of emergency.
As with any secret weapon, it’s not a secret for long. The techno-thugs are after KITT because the CPU is able to access government computers, weapon systems, etc (SkyNet, anyone?) so naturally, they start hacking into it. (It’s a computer, so natually they’re going to hack it.) After another hour of dialog and watching KITT drive itself and talk to Sarah and Mike about human frailties, they finally manage to stop the bad guys by – you guess it – slamming into them. Forgetting a few basic laws of physics, Mike puts KITT sideways in the road so the bad guys can ram into the indestructable car – never mind that, invulnerable or not, KITT still would have gone flying off the road after being hit broadside by an SUV – killing or maiming the bad guys in the process.
While the pilot was interesting, it did have a few fundamental things “wrong” with it. First off, it seemed like a 2-hour commercial for Ford. Granted, the original made no secret of their exclusive use of Pontiac vehicles, but they didn’t go out of their way to act as a shill for General Motors. The pilot, however, took every opportunity to flash the Cobra logo, show off the smooth lines in the Mustang Shelby, and otherwise make good on their promise to Ford to show off the new model car as much as possible. Secondly, there weren’t a whole lot of tie-ins with the original to connect the dots. Sure they showed off the original KITT so people weren’t left wondering, but the rest took the form of throwaway lines, like “there was an old urban legend about a super car built by Wilton Knight” and a conversation between Charles and Mike’s mother, “KITT isn’t another Trans-Am, is he?” “No no. Mustang.” The new KITT doesn’t seem to have any of the old KITT’s memories, otherwise he might have spoiled the big plot surprise – Michael Knight is Traceur’s father. Not all that improbable, as Michael did sleep with just about every woman he rescued (as was the trend in the 80’s) and it does give a good reason for Mike Traceur to take up where daddy left off. (There is even a cameo at the end by Hasselhoff, where he tells his son that he once believed the whole “one man can make a difference” line, but it’s obvious he burnt out somewhere along the way.) It also suffers from the “oops we ran out of time” issue, where they spend so much time introducing the characters that they have to wrap everything up in the last ten minutes. Charles is going to revive the Foundation, he wants Mike to be the new Knight Rider, etc etc… Oh, and the money he owed to the loan sharks? All resolved after a quick phone call. Good thing Sarah happened to have a couple thousand dollars lying around. The biggest complaint was that KITT didn’t really DO anything. Yeah, it drives itself, and it’s bullet-proof, but that was about it. Also, to update the show into the New Millennium (which means “we gotta come up with some new buzzwords”) instead of a molecular bonded shell, KITT is now self-repairing through the use of nanotechnology. The original KITT was still bullet-proof, even without the CPU, but shut down the new KITT’s computer and the car is about as invincible as a foil baking pan.
Of course, the show has the requisite T&A. The original was set in California, so there was ample reason to show off beaches and scantily clad women. The pilot doesn’t disappoint here – within the first 20 minutes we’re treated to eye candy in the form of FBI agent Carrie Rivai taking a shower, only to find out that she’s batting for the other team when she gets dressed for work and has a conversation with a young beach bunny she picked up the night before. See, the new series is more modern, more progressive when it comes to the sexual preferences of its characters. (It also gives a quick knee-shot to the mental groin by saying “yeah she’s hot but she’s not gonna be a sex toy for Mike!”)
Okay, so now on to the first episode. Mike and KITT are sent to retrieve a “package” which we are forced to assume is a briefcase being carried by a guy the camera keeps focusing on. Sarah is also working the scene, wearing the required low-cut dress (she even sticks a secret files disk down her cleavage – zing!) The operation goes terribly wrong, they barely escape using one of KITT’s new special moves (which they just happened to invent for this episode – thanks Bonnie!) KITT transforms into a Ford pickup truck and they hop into the bed (yeah yeah there’s a joke there someplace) because there’s conveniently no time for KITT to stop. KITT transforms back into Mustang form around them, and off they go. Mike immediately starts looking for someone to blame, while a helicopter nails them with some sort of napalm missile, setting the car on fire. Apparently KITT hasn’t been programmed to change into a fire truck, because he has no way to put out the fire. It never occurred to anyone to find a swimming pool or a lake, probably because it would have made the next scene unnecessary. The inside of the car is getting hotter, which presents the excuse for everyone to get undressed to stay cooler. KITT tells them that they’re going to die from heat exposure and/or oxygen deprivation anyway, and you can almost imagine Sarah saying “shaddap KITT, I’m suppose to show off my lacy underwear in this scene” (thus meeting this week’s US RDA for T&A.) Not finding any solution to the problem, they decide to have KITT return to base, which allows them to utter one of the corniest lines in the show – “We’re bringing you in hot.”
Through a series of events, we find out that the “package” is not a thing, it’s a person who invented an unbreakable cypher and encoded the decryption key into his own DNA (the guy had a nice line – “what were you expecting, a briefcase?”) The people after it are former associates of Mike’s from Beruit, but he doesn’t remember any of them (so now we have government brainwashing and cover-ups added to the mix.) They are after him for some unknown reason that will no doubt play into future episodes. Agent Rivai realizes that what Mike has forgotten makes him dangerous as well as a target (especially if he ever remembers) so she shoots him in a subway. The media reports that he must have gone nuts, and the world now thinks he’s dead, giving him the reason to take on the name “Michael Knight.”
They stepped up the special effects in this one, giving KITT a new “Attack Mode” which seems to only have two purposes – create a smoke screen by spinning the rear tires, and use lifter jets to hover right over a roadblock. (This is the new Turbo Boost, and you know it’s the new Turbo Boost because the words “TURBO BOOST” appear in bright red letters on the windshield / Heads Up Display.) Every time the car changes form, I am reminded of the car in Men in Black, which flips panels around to reveal jet boosters in the trunk. So, now KITT can change into a hyper-steroids-on-crack form with blue lifter lights (what, no fuzzy dice and carpeted dash?) and a pickup truck (they tossed in the railroad track tires as an option.) So next I am figuring they will add a hover-mode, a boat / submarine mode (the original was able to hydro-plane across a lake, so why not?) and eventually, when the ratings start to drop, Robot Mode. Yeah, KITT’s gonna turn into a Transformer. And why not? The movie was popular, there’s a sequel in the works, why not capitalize on the public’s newfound obsession with Robots in Disguise? If only to hear Mike say, “KITT, transform and roll out!”
That will probably be the last episode.