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!
Mitch does not want to believe.
Episode 2.17 “The Servant”
(Dir by Georg Fenady, originally aired on April 12th, 1997)
There’s something strange happening at a warehouse that stores ancient artifacts. The wealthy woman (Renee Suran) who owns the warehouse claims that someone wrapped in bandages killed both a security guard and her chauffeur. She goes to Daimont Teague and, of course, Teague takes her to Ryan and Mitch.
“I want you to solve my murder,” the woman says, convinced that she’s destined to be killed by whatever it was that she saw in the warehouse.
The killer was wrapped in bandages and Mitch is stunned to discover that the killer apparently took four bullets without even slowing down. In fact, one of the bullets is found on the ground and it doesn’t have a bit of blood or bodily tissue on it. What could be going on?
Ryan and Teague suggest that the killer could be a mummy.
Mitch gets angry, saying that there’s no way a mummy has come back to life and is killing people and stealing artifacts from the warehouse. Even when Ryan tells him about an ancient curse that may have been activated by the removal of the artifacts from a tomb, Mitch says that he doesn’t believe in mummies. He’s a skeptic!
Okay, I’ve done this before but let’s do it begin. Here are just a few things that have happened to Mitch since the start of season 2.
- Mitch has dealt with a huge number of sea monsters.
- Mitch has dealt with space spores that caused animals to explode.
- Mitch has witnessed Donna get possessed by the spirit of a serial killer.
- Mitch has been transported through time and has been chased by an axe-wielding maniac from the turn of the century.
- Mitch has battled a werewolf.
- Mitch has battled a vampire.
- Mitch has discovered that the world is secretly controlled by the Knights Templar.
- Mitch has witnessed two 800 year-old Vikings come back to life and immediately resume their blood feud.
And that’s just scratching the surface! After seeing all of that, Mitch somehow cannot bring himself to believe that there is a mummy wandering around a warehouse that appears to only house cursed Egyptian artifacts. Myself, I think just the stuff with the Vikings would have convinced me to believe just about anything.
My personal theory is that, much like the protagonist of a Lovecraft short story, Mitch does believe in the mummy but he’s insisting that he doesn’t because he know that accepting it as reality will lead to him losing his mind.
Fortunately, Ryan is not as skeptical as Mitch and she’s able to discover that the mummy and the missing artifacts are all a part of a plot to open up a mystical portal. Fortunately, she and Mitch are able to thwart the plans of Dr. Kasan (Erick Avari). Seriously, if everyone had listened to Mitch, Malibu would have been invaded by hundreds of mummies.
This episode was dull. The cast was noticeably small, with regulars Griff and Donna noticeably absent from the proceedings, the warehouse and the mummy looked cheap, and the only think creating any atmosphere was an overuse of Dutch angles. Angie Harmon was great as usual but, surprisingly considering that his signature brand is overwhelming earnestness, David Hasselhoff seemed bored with the whole thing. This mummy should have been kept under wraps.
Through the Shattered Lens 