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 Tubi!

The year was 1995 and Baywatch, a show about lifeguards, was the most popular in the world.  Even though the critics never cared for the show, it got monster ratings.  Having played head lifeguard Mitch Buchanan for 6 years, star David Hasselhoff was growing tired with Baywatch’s format.  He wanted to try something new and that new thing was Baywatch Nights.  During the two years that Baywatch Nights aired, Mitch would spend his days as a lifeguard and his nights as a private investigator!

Baywatch Nights ran for two seasons.  The second season is remembered for featuring Mitch battling aliens, ghosts, and vampires.  The first season featured Mitch dealing with more traditional villains.  For our latest Late Night Retro Television Review, we’ll be looking at both seasons of Baywatch Nights!

Episode 1.1 “Pursuit”

(Dir by Gus Trikonis, originally aired on September 30th, 1995)

The very first episode of Baywatch Nights opens with Mitch Buchanan (played, of course, by David Hasselhoff) speaking directly to the audience.  He’s standing at his lifeguard stand, wearing his signature red Baywatch swim trunks.

“Some people,” Mitch says straight to the camera, “think that the beach closes when the sun goes down.  Uh-uh.  That’s when it really starts to heat up.”  Mitch goes on to explain that he’s working a second job as a private investigator.  His old friend, Garner Ellerbee (Gregory Alan Williams), is a partner in a detective agency with Ryan McBride (Angie Harmon), who was born in Texas, became a detective in New York, and recently moved to California.  Mitch is working with them.  Suddenly, Mitch says that he hopes those watching will enjoy this “new show.”

This brings up an interesting question.  Are we listening to Mitch or are we listening to David Hasselhoff?  If it’s David Hasselhoff talking directly to the audience, his monologue would seem to suggest that he thinks that Baywatch is real life, even though it’s a TV show.  He talks about Garner and Ryan as if they’re real people.  If we’re listening to Mitch Buchanan, that means that he has somehow become aware that he’s a character on a television show.  Has Mitch become self-aware?  Or has he realized that he’s living in some sort of Truman Show-style situation?

These are all questions that will probably never be answered.

As for the episode, it jumps right into things.  Mitch, Garner, and Ryan have their private detective offices located right above a nightclub called — wait for it — “Nights.”  Occasionally, they are helped by Destiny Desimone (Lisa Stahl), a perky blonde who spends her days doing Tarot card readings on the beach and her nights hanging out around the office.  When Ryan can’t figure out how to use a computer, Destiny is there to help  When Mitch and Garner can’t figure out how to have multiple landlines in one office, Destiny figures it all out!  It’s all very 90s, with boxy computers and long telephone cords.

Mitch’s first case involves serving as a bodyguard for a model named Cassidy (Carol Alt).  Cassidy says that someone is stalking her and she’s especially worried because another model has recently been murdered.  (“Her name was Alexa,” Mitch muses as he looks at the murdered model’s body, “This was her last photo session.”)  Mitch protects Cassidy and, of course, he falls for her but, in the end, he realizes that Cassidy has actually been stalking herself and was responsible for the other model’s death.  Mitch is shaken by his discovery of Cassidy’s guilt, even though the exact same thing previously happened to him during the first season of Baywatch, when he fell in love with a woman who turned out to be a black widow murderer.  Mitch muses that he knows how to be a lifeguard but he’s still learning how to be a private eye.

(Mitch, seriously, just watch reruns of Baywatch!  I mean, you’re only one episode into Baywatch Nights and you’re already recycling old plots so I imagine you should just keep doing what you did the first time.)

This episode’s plot is pretty predictable but, for a pilot, it’s likable.  Angie Harmon, Gregory Alan Williams, and David Hasselhoff all have a likable chemistry and, as a Texas girl, I appreciated the fact that Angie Harmon’s accent was authentic.  Mitch narrates the episode in a hard-boiled, private eye manner and David Hasselhoff’s earnest delivery is so at odds with his words that it becomes rather charming.  As a friend of mine once said when we watched him in Starcrash, “Every country should have a Hoff!”

As far as first episodes go, Pursuit does everything it needs to do.  It introduces us to the characters and their personalities.  Ryan is supercool and has really pretty hair.  Destiny is quirky.  Garner is determined.  And Mitch …. well, Mitch is David Hasselhoff.  Wisely, the first episode didn’t spend too much time trying to rationalize the idea of Mitch working all day as a lifeguard and then all night as a private eye.  Realistically, it seems like he would end up too exhausted to be good at either job.  Instead, the first episode simply tells the audience that Mitch is now a detective and that the audience better be willing to accept it.

(Unfortunately, most of the audience didn’t accept it, which is why the second episode featured Mitch dealing with sea monsters and resurrected Vikings.  We’ll get to that in a while.)

Next week, Mitch battles a group of thieves on skates!  Seriously, you know that’s going to be fun!