Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Saturdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch, which ran on NBC and then in syndication from 1989 to 2001.  The entire show can be viewed on Tubi.

This week, Mitch rescues a dog and Shauni and Eddie rescue an outsider.

Episode 2.8 “Thin or Die”

(Dir by Douglas Schwartz, originally aired on November 4th, 1991)

Mitch rescues an adorable dog that is swimming in the middle of the ocean!  Awwww!

The dog is so cute!  But Mitch has a date that night and the dog seems to be determined to ruin it.  Can Mitch adopt the dog?  Actually, didn’t Mitch already adopt a dog?  Didn’t almost this exact same thing happen during the first season?  Seriously, whatever happened to the first dog!?

Fortunately, the dog helps Mitch track down its owner.  It turns out that she’s being held hostage on her own boat.  This, of course, allows for a minor action sequence.  One thing that I always find interesting about Baywatch is that the lifeguards were apparently also cops.  Garner Ellerbee may have been actual badge-carrying cop but he still didn’t do anything without asking a lifeguard to accompany him.

While Mitch is dealing with the dog situation, Eddie and Shauni are having relationship issues.  When Shauni claims that she and Eddie don’t have anything in common, Eddie decides to ask out Nicole, the woman who works at his message service.  (Apparently, message services were an early 90s thing.)  Eddie has never met Nicole.  He just knows that he digs her sultry voice and apparently, he’s sick of Shauni always yelling at him.  Hey, remember when Eddie and Shauni got engaged?  The show just kind of forgot about that.

Nicole (Melinda Reimer) shows up on the beach and she’s fat!  I don’t include the exclamation mark to be cruel.  I include it because that’s how the show presents her weight issue.  Not only is Eddie kind of cheating on Shauni but he’s also doing it with a fat girl!  Feeling insecure on the beach, Nicole later tries to walk into the ocean.  Can Eddie and Shauni help her realize that she shouldn’t give up hope?  Of course, they can!  That said, it’s pretty safe to say that Nicole will never show up on another episode of Baywatch.  You do have to feel a bit sorry for actress Melinda Reimer, who gives about as good a performance as anyone could with a Baywatch script.  That said, the show definitely makes clear that the main lesson is that you should never judge anyone solely by their voice.  Because they might be fat.

This episode was basically two half-baked stories mashed together.  Yes, there was the hostage situation.  And there was Nicole’s weight problem.  But despite all of that, there really wasn’t any drama.  Everything played out a low-key, laid-back pace.  This was an episode that understood the assignment: Come up with just enough of a story to justify your existence but mostly just feature hot people on the beach.