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, a detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997.  The entire show is currently streaming on Youtube!

This week …. eh, I don’t know.  This is a messy episode.  Geraldo Rivera is in it for some reason.

Episode 1.13 “Payback”

(Dir by Reza Badiyi, originally aired on February 17th, 1996)

This episode was a mess.  It’s hard to know where to even start.

In a reminder that Baywatch Nights, during the second half of its first season, was trying to be more like the show it was spun off from, this episode begins with an extended sequence featuring a woman in a yellow bikini.  She swims.  She walks along the beach.  She washes the sand out of her hair in one of those beach showers.  And then an unseen person shoots her in the neck and the camera lingers on her body for an uncomfortable amount of time.  The mix of sex and violence doesn’t feel particularly appropriate for a show that, at its best, is essentially just a goofy detective show.

After this opening, we are presented with Ryan and Mitch at some sort of party.  Ryan has just come back from Catalina and, just as I would do, she took some Dramamine so she wouldn’t get car sick.  Unfortunately, she has a little bit too much champagne at the party and is soon in a daze.  Mitch takes her back to his place where Ryan demands to know why he’s never tried to “jump all over” her.  Ryan then strips down to her underwear and ends up in Mitch’s bed.

Mitch, it should be said, is a total gentleman and sleeps on the couch.  But, the next morning, he decides that it would be fun to keep Ryan in suspense as to whether or not they had sex the night before.

To any men reading: DO NOT DO THIS!

Seriously, this joke is totally out of character for Mitch.  For that matter, it’s a bit out of character for Ryan as well.  (Everything we’ve learned about Ryan would suggest that she would be smart enough to know better than to mix Dramamine and champagne.)  David Hasselhoff and Angie Harmon did have a likable chemistry.  It’s a shame that the show tried to rush things with stuff like this instead of letting it develop naturally.

As for the show’s plot, there are actually two cases.  The lesser of the two features Garner helping out a young photographer named Griff Walker (Eddie Cibrian).  Griff accidentally got a picture of a model’s murder and he’s worried that murderers are after him.  Garner confronts the model’s ex and tells him to back off on trying to intimidate Griff.  It’s a weird plotline that was obviously only included to introduce the character of Griff.  (This is the third episode to feature Cibrian in the opening credits but the first to actually feature his character.)

Meanwhile, a reporter named Albert Romero (Geraldo Rivera …. yes, the one and only) comes to Mitch after some mobsters kidnap his wife, Bobbie (Meilani Paul).  Bobbie was previously being used to smuggle drugs.  Now, they want to use her to smuggle a bomb.  Fortunately, the mobsters are pretty dumb and Mitch is easily able to thwart them.  Unfortunately, this storyline features a lot of Geraldo.  As anyone who has ever watched him do anything can tell you, Geraldo Rivera is a person who is incapable of sounding natural or sincere.  Everything about him is calculated and over-rehearsed and that certainly comes through in his performance here.  Only Geraldo Rivera could make overacting boring.

As I said, this was a messy and way too busy episode.  It’s also one that nearly sabotaged the most appealing part of the show, Ryan and Mitch’s friendship.  I can’t wait until the UFOs and the sea monsters and the Vikings show up during the second season.