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.
It’s not much of a showdown.
Episode 3.6 “Showdown at Malibu Beach High”
(Dir by Douglas Schwartz, originally aired on October 19th, 1992)
A new school year has begun, and Summer, Matt, and Slade are all attending Malibu Beach High!
Oh, there’s a lot going on in this episode, and a good deal of it features characters whom we will never see or hear about again. For instance, Summer has a crush on Slade but is upset when she sees that he’s hanging out with Courtney Bremmer (Elizabeth Berkley), a rich girl who claims that her father is willing to sponsor Slade in all of his surfing endeavors. Slade needs the sponsorship because his own father (Bill McKinney) is a hardass army officer who shows up long enough to break Slade’s surfboard in half. This episode opens not with Summer, Matt, or Slade but instead with Courtney riding a horse on the beach. That’s a big deal for a character who will never appear in another episode.
Matt’s friend, Bear Sutter (Zahn McClarnon), is upset when he discovers that the school is going to be selling what he says is tribal land to a developer. He chains himself to a flagpole outside the school. He draws a giant flower on the sidewalk. Every time Bear says anything about the land, an eagle flies overhead. The high school principal (David Spielberg) follows the eagle and finds an ancient arrowhead on the land. It’s the proof that Bear needs to save the land. This was Bear’s only appearance on Baywatch.
The high school needs a new volleyball coach, so they hire… CJ Parker!? Pamela Anderson shows up on campus and flirts with Matt. Matt flirts back and invites her to a party at his house. Hey, wait a minute. Matt’s a student and CJ’s a teacher. Umm….
Despite the ethical considerations, it’s a good thing that CJ goes to Matt’s party because she’s able to save the lives of two twenty-something high school students who try to go swimming after huffing an inhalant.
Meanwhile, Garner and Mitch appear in a handful of scenes but they don’t do much beyond trying to figure out who has been racing a dune buggy on the beach. Guess what? It was Matt!
This episode felt so cheap. There’s really no other way to describe it. It was obviously meant to serve as a backdoor pilot for a Malibu High show, one that presumably would have followed characters like Courtney and Bear, along with Matt, Summer, Slade, and their high school’s half-naked volleyball coach. I guess it would have been like Baywatch Nights, but without the detective agency or the supernatural creatures. The pilot was not picked up, and instead we have an episode that introduces a lot of characters who will never be seen again and introduces a lot of plotlines that will never be resolved.
It’s probably all for the best.
