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, we start season 2 of Baywatch.  Canceled by NBC, Baywatch found a new home in syndication.  The show was re-launched with a special two-hour premiere.  (For subsequent re-airings, the premiere was split into two episodes.)

Episode 2.1 and 2.2 “Nightmare Cove”

(Dir by Gregory J. Bonnan, originally aired on September 23rd, 1991)

A year and half after the final episode of Bayside’s network run, the show returns to the beach.

On the one hand, the basic idea is the same.  David Hasselhoff plays Mitch Buchanan, a divorced father who loves nothing more than being a lifeguard.  Eddie (Billy Warlock) and Shauni (Erika Eleniak) are two young lifeguards who are in love (though their engagement from the previous season is not mentioned).  Don Thorpe (Monte Markham) is Mitch’s no-nonsense boss. The sunsets are still beautiful.  The beaches are still inviting.

And yet, there are a few differences:

1. Craig, Cort, Gina, Garner, and Trevor are nowhere to be seen.  (Craig, Cort, and Garner will all eventually return.  Gina and Trevor will never be mentioned again.)
2. Hobie, Mitch’s son, is now played by Jeremy Jackson.
3. Richard Jaeckel, who played doomed life guard Al Edwards in the pilot film, is now playing Ben Edwards, who apparently is meant to be the same character as Al.  (Mitch specifically mentions that Ben broke his leg when the pier collapsed, retconning Al’s heroic death into a mere injury.)
4. Cort may be gone but there’s a new money-hungry lifeguard named Harvey (Tim McTigue).
5. The second season premiere features even more musical montages than appeared in the first season.
6. The second season premiere features a lot of random shots of women in skimpy bikinis.
7. The red Baywatch one-piece swimsuits are back but now, they’re considerably tighter and more high-cut.
8. The new Baywatch was airing in syndication.

I get the feeling that the Baywatch cameraman probably got together and all chanted, “Syndication, baby!” before running out onto the beach.  Even though the second season premiere is still far from what Baywatch would eventually become, one can already see the development of the aesthetic that led to it becoming the number one show for 90s frat boys and dads suffering from a midlife crisis.

As for this episode, there are rumors of an underwater monster and everyone wants in on the action.  Mitch saves an underwater photographer and falls in love for an episode.  Hasslehoff’s then-wife, Pamela Bach, plays a reporter whose editor wants sensationalized stories about the “beast of the bay.”  Of course, the beast of the bay is actually just the creation of an offshore oil company who wants to drill and ruin the environment because why not?  Luckily, one of the lifeguard, Devon (Andrea Thompson), is also an environmental activist.  Of course, Andrea Thompson is not listed in the opening credits so I imagine we’ll never see Devon again.

While Mitch is investigating the monster, Shauni rescues a little girl from drowning and then gets involved in the family’s life.  The family is black and the little girl’s brother is being recruited by a street gang so the very white Shauni arranges from him to join the junior lifeguards instead.  Shauni’s critical father (Albert Stratton) is impressed but I have to admit that I found the storyline to be a bit condescending.  Like a lot of 90s shows, Baywatch was at its weakest when it tried to deal with real-life issues.  It’s hard not to notice that whenever a guest actor who wasn’t white showed up on episode of Baywatch, they were always either being tempted or pressured to join a gang or they were trying to get out of the gang lifestyle.

In this episode, there’s an odd moment when Hobie decides to go into a storm drain and pretend to be the monster, which leads to a panic on the beach and monster hunters showing up with guns.  Mitch shows up and ends the situation before it gets too out-of-hand but you really do have to wonder if maybe Hobie would be better off with his mother.  I mean, seriously, Mitch — what are you doing here?  Your son is apparently an idiot who never learned anything from the dozen or so times his life was put in danger during the first season.

Finally, Thorpe gets promoted and he wants Mitch to take his place as chief.  Mitch argues that the new chief should be Ben Edwards.  Since apparently Ben has the power to come back from the dead, I can see Mitch’s logic.  In the end, Thorpe agrees.

And that’s it for this episode.  It’s definitely Baywatch but it’s still not quite as fun as the show would eventually become once it fully embraced just how ludicrous things could get in syndication.  This episode — and I imagine the rest of this season — feels like a show that is still making the transition from network television to anything-goes syndication.  Eventually, the show will get David Charvet, Pamela Anderson, and David “The Bulge” Chokachi.  During season 2, it was still just Billy Warlock and Erika Eleniak.