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

This week, we discover how it all began!

Episode 1.8 “Balancing Act”

(Dir by Gus Trikonis, originally aired on November 18th, 1995)

The eighth episode of Baywatch Nights opens with Ryan and Garner on a stakeout.  It’s the middle of the day and they’re waiting for someone carrying an envelope full of evidence.  Mitch is nowhere to be seen, which actually makes sense.  I mean, Mitch is still working as a lifeguard.  Over the past seven episodes, I’ve often wondered how Mitch can work full-time as both a detective and a lifeguard captain.  This episode finally acknowledges that Mitch actually does have another job.

Garner and Ryan start talking about the first that they met and how they came to be partners in a detective firm.  It’s flashback time!  The flashbacks are to the show’s previously unaired pilot.  What’s funny is that, even though Garner is the one who is telling the story, the flashbacks are all narrated by Mitch.  I know that Garner and Mitch were extremely close friends during the early seasons of Baywatch but I didn’t realize they could actually hear each other’s thoughts.

Flashback Mitch explains that both he and Garner were wondering if there was anything more to life than their jobs.  Garner wanted to be more than just a beach cop.  Mitch was wondering if maybe there was something more out there than just being a lifeguard.  One day, when Mitch on vacation from his lifeguarding job, Mitch decided to accompany Garner to investigate a mysterious boat that had been showing up around the marina.  It was during the investigation that Mitch and Garner first met Ryan.  Ryan had paid $25,000 for a private detective agency in California, just to discover that the agency was not the high class operation that the previous owner, Nicky Pine (Philip Bruns), claimed it was.  However, before Ryan could confront him, Nicky was apparently killed by a group of criminals who wanted a valuable bracelet that Nicky owned.  Except the bracelet, which he gave to Ryan, was actually a fake and Nicky wasn’t actually dead and….

Ugh, this is complicated.  Seriously. I hate to admit that I couldn’t follow the plot of an episode of Baywatch Nights but this plot had so many nonsensical twists and turns that I pretty much gave up on trying to make sense of it all.  The important thing is that Garner got fed up with the police and quit, Mitch realized that he wanted to be a private eye, and Ryan got to be totally awesome as usual.  At one point, Ryan explained to Mitch that she was tough because she was from Dallas.  Woo hoo!  You tell him, Ryan!

Because this was a pilot, there were a few examples of early installment weirdness.  Troy Evans showed up as a police detective and one got the feeling that he was originally envisioned as being a recurring character.  Lisa Stahl’s Destiny was nowhere to be seen but there was a character named Andy (Linda Hoffman) was acted quite similarly to Destiny.  Even Nicky and his girlfriend, Rose (Jeanette O’Connor), seemed to be set up to become semi-regular characters.  Obviously, there was some retooling done after this pilot was produced.

Anyway, this episode’s plot is impossible to follow but the California scenery is lovely, which I think is the most that anyone could realistically demand from any show from the Baywatch universe.  Having now watched the pilot, I’m glad that the show went forward with just Mitch, Garner, and Ryan as regulars.  They’re a good team.