Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch Nights, an detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997. The entire show is currently streaming on Youtube!
This week, Ryan goes undercover!
Episode 1.6 “976 Ways To Say I Love You”
(Dir by Charles Bail, originally aired on November 4th, 1995)
The sixth episode of Baywatch Nights opens with Mitch and Garner doing a surveillance job on someone. They are sitting out in their car and watching their target and talking about how much they hate having to work surveillance.
One thing that I’ve noticed about the first few episodes of Baywatch Nights is that Mitch and Garner both seem to spend a lot of time complaining about their job. It’s a bit odd because it’s not like there’s any reason why they have to work as private detectives. Garner could rejoin the police department if he wanted to. Mitch actually has another full-time job as one of the top lifeguards in California. There’s nothing that says they have to spend their nights doing surveillance. (In fact, I’m not even sure how Mitch is balancing being a lifeguard with being a private eye.) I mean, if it’s such a bother being a private eye, just don’t do it anymore!
The surveillance subplot doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the episode. (It’s mostly just there so the episode can feature a joke about Garner and Mitch getting dusted by a crop duster that happens to fly over their convertible.) Instead, the majority of this episode deals with Mitch, Garner, and Ryan helping Addy (Heather Campbell), a former phone sex operator who was scammed by her boss and who is now apparently being stalked by someone who is trying to murder everyone who was involved with Addy’s former career. This is one of those cases that doesn’t really add up to much but it does provide Garner with a chance to do some real detective work and abandon his idea to abandon crime fighting and open a chicken franchise.
(Seriously, that’s what Garner was planning on doing.)
The investigation also leads to Ryan putting on a blonde wig and going undercover as a phone sex operator. Watching this episode, I got the feeling that the entire pitch was, “Angie Harmon says sexy things on the phone,” and the plot was basically developed around that one idea. It should be said that Angie Harmon actually does a pretty good job playing up Ryan’s irritation with having to go undercover. The way she rolled her eyes whenever some mouth-breather started to talk to her told us everything we needed to know about the experience. Unlike her whiny partner, Ryan did what she had to do to solve the case and good for her! Really, this entire series should have just been Ryan kicking ass and solving crimes. Garner and Mitch are just taking up space.
Along with Angie Harmon’s work as Ryan, this episode was also distinguished by the performance of Robert Ginty as the owner of the phone sex company. Ginty was wonderfully sleazy as a businessman who made no apologies for how he made his money. As well, Police Academy fans will probably be happy to see Michael Winslow, as a surveillance technician who imitates static.
The episode was not bad, even if it wasn’t particularly memorable. Ryan did a good job and again proved herself to be the best private eye in California. Seriously, though, Mitch and Garner need to stop crying so much. If you don’t want to do detective stuff, don’t become a detective!
Through the Shattered Lens 