Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 2.11 “Possessed”

Posted on September 24, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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

This week, Donna’s got a knife!

Episode 2.11 “Possessed”

(Dir by David W. Hagar, originally aired on February 2nd, 1997)

A notorious serial killer dies when a prison bus is struck by several cars. His blood gets on several of the people present at the accident and, as a result, he starts possessing them person-by-person. He inhabits a body, commits several murders, and, once his current body expires, he moves on to the next person.

For instance, lifeguard Donna DiMarco was on the scene of the accident and soon, she finds herself putting on sexy lingerie, grabbing a knife, and driving around in search of young hitchhikers to seduce and kill. Oh no! That’s not the Donna that we all know. Fortunately, Mitch and Ryan realize what’s happening and Mitch is able to track Donna down before she kills her first hitchhiker. The killer’s spirit flees Donna’s spirt and possesses its next victim.

Ray Reegun (Robert Ginty) is a cop who was one of the first people on the scene of the accident. When he becomes possessed by the killer, he immediately heads down to Mitch’s office and kidnaps Ryan. While Mitch tries to find them, Ray takes Ryan to an abandoned movie theater and tells her about all of the great movies that have premiered at the theater.

“Is this you or is this the killer?” Ryan asks.

It seems like a strange question to ask. I mean, does it really matter? Ray is possessed by a serial killer and is holding Ryan prisoner. So, whether it’s Ray or the killer who is into the movies really doesn’t seem that important. Bad people can like movies too, after all. And Ray’s married so if he’s the one flirting with Ryan at the theater, that’s not a good thing.

Fear not, though. Mitch is able to save both Ryan and Ray. It’s left ambiguous as to whether or not the evil spirit has truly been defeated after it leaves Ray’s body. The episode actually ends with Ryan and Mitch leaving to check on another person who was at the accident so who know? We know that Mitch went back to being a lifeguard after the end of this season but we don’t know what happened to Ryan. Maybe she’s still running around the country, trying to track down that spirit.

It’s an interesting idea. I liked the idea of the spirit jumping from person-to-person and the idea of the spirit moving in the order of the people who arrived at the scene of the accident predates the Final Destination films. The first half of the show, which featured Donna trying to kill that hitchhiker, was enjoyably absurd, But the stuff with Ray and Ryan got bogged down with Ray giving that endless monologue in the theater. Watching this, one gets the feeling that whoever wrote the episode lost intrest about halfway through. Not even the presence of Robert Ginty can liven things up.

Oh well. Next week — two Vikings come back to life and they’re mad! Woo hoo!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 2.8 “Last Breath”

Posted on September 3, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Some people stand in the darkness …. let’s get back to reviewing Baywatch Nights! I’ve missed talking about this silly show.

Episode 2.8 “Last Breath”

(Dir by Gregory J. Bonnan, originally aired on November 17th, 1996)

Lifeguards are disappearing!

After hearing the sounds of someone shouting for help in the distance, three lifeguards — including Donna — vanish while investigating. It’s assumed that they’ve drowned but Mitch has his doubts. And it turns out that Mitch is correct! This is an evil haunting the sea and yes, it’s stalking lifeguards.

What type of evil is it?

Is it a sea monster?

Is it a ghost?

Is it an alien creature?

How about a mutant octopus?

Maybe a dinosaur of some sort?

Could it be an unfrozen Viking or a vampire or a time traveler or a….

Well, you get the idea. And really, it should have been one of those things. The second season of Baywatch Nights was all about David Hasselhoff and Angie Harmon investigating supernatural ocean stuff. It was specifically designed to be X-Files on the beach. We’ve all heard the urban legend of the weeping woman who haunts lakes. As soon as the lifeguards heard those shouts, I assumed this episode would feature an ocean version of La Llorona.

Well, it turns out I was wrong. Instead, the lifeguard are being kidnapped by a man who blames them for the death of his family in a car accident. The madman (Brett Baxter Clark), who is not at all supernatural, is keeping the lifeguards trapped in a cage. (How do random madmen always manage to have a super-strong cage just lying around?) He wants to recreate the accident that led to the death of his family. Can Mitch track the cage down and rescue his lifeguards?

This episode was disappointing on many levels, with the main problem being that there was really nothing to distinguish it from a typical episode of Baywatch. All it needed was to open with that Some People Stand In The Darkness song for it to be an episode of Baywatch. When you watch the second season of Baywatch Nights, you’re watching because you want to see David Hasselhoff and Angie Harmon pretending to be Mulder and Scully. You watch it because you want to see a combination of swimsuits and supernatural phenomena. Once you take away the supernatural, you take away this show’s main appeal.

That said, if you were a fan of the original Baywatch, you may enjoy certain parts of this episode. Newmie shows up! At first, I was like, “Don’t you dare kidnap Newmie!” but, fortunately, Newmie was too clever to fall for any traps.

Next week, the supernatural will return to the beach!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 2.7 “Curse of the Mirrored Box”

Posted on July 2, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, it’s all about the voodoo!

Episode 2.7 “Curse of the Mirrored Box”

(Dir by Jon Cassar, originally aired on November 10th, 1996)

Mitch is contacted by Celia (Tracey Ross), the mother of a girl named Annie who Mitch once saved from drowning. (Ryan is a bit dumbfounded that Mitch apparently keeps in contract with the people that he has saved as a lifeguard and, to be honest, so am I. I mean, I bing watched Baywatch two years ago and Mitch saved a lot of people!) Annie (Maria Celedonio) is now a rebellious teenager and has apparently joined a Voodoo cult!

(Seriously, Annie, way to repay Mitch for saving you from the ocean!)

Mitch and Ryan’s attempts to free Annie from the cult bring them into conflict with the leader of the cult, Papa Doc (Adam Lazarre-White). Papa Doc puts a voodoo curse on Mitch and, as a result, the episode is full of moments in which Mitch goes into a glassy-eyed trance.

For the most part, not much happens in this episode. It doesn’t take Mitch and Ryan that long to track down the cult and it also doesn’t take them that long to track down a voodoo priestess (Kiki Shepard) who can help them battle Papa Doc. It’s a bit of slow episode and it’s portrayal of voodoo and its practitioners reaches back to every cliche and stereotype imaginable. There’s a lot of dancing. There’s a lot of altars. There’s a lot of close-ups of Papa Doc chanting. Basically, it’s Live and Let Die in Malibu, without the swagger of Yaphet Kotto, the charm of Roger Moore, or the otherworldly beauty of Jane Seymour.

But no matter! The episode works because you haven’t lived until you’ve seen David Hasselhoff pretend to be possessed by a voodoo priest. The Hoff has never been a particularly subtle actor. That’s always been a part of his charm. When you combine his natural style with scenes of him shaking, bugging out his eyes, and trying to shake the evil spirts out of his head, you have a Hasselhoff performance for the ages.

It makes for an entertaining episode, even if it’s not one of the show’s more memorable ones. Hasselhoff’s possessed performance saves the day. It’s amazing what a little magic and a voodoo doll can do.

One final note: After being absent for the last few episodes (albeit still listed in the opening credits), both Donna D’Errico and Eddie Cibrian appear in this episode. Neither really gets to do much, reminding us once again that the show’s writers were never really sure what to do with either Donna or Griff. Dorian Gregory (who played Daimont) does not appear, which is odd as it seems like Daimont would have been the first person that Ryan would have called once it become obvious that Mitch was cursed. Seriously, what’s the point of being friends with a mysterious occult expert if you can’t find him when you need him?

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 2.3 “The Rig”

Posted on May 7, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Mitch and Ryan head out to an abandoned ocean oil rig. Do they find love or do they find a glowing green slime monster? Read on to find out!

Episode 2.3 “The Rig”

(Dir by Jon Cassar, originally aired on October 13th, 1996)

Donna is super-excited because she’s saved her first person as a lifeguard. (Apparently, the nightclub is no longer a thing and Donna is no longer a cynical and tough-minded businesswoman.) She tracks down Griff and she tells him about it. Griff is impressed. Donna wants to tell Mitch but he’s not on the beach!

Instead, Mitch and Ryan are investigating a deserted oil rig. A few weeks ago, the crew of the oil rig died under mysterious circumstances. The official story is that they fell victim to cabin fever or maybe a mass delusion. But Diamont thinks that maybe something paranormal has happened and he has asked Mitch and Ryan to check it out. Despite the fact that this is the third “paranormal” mystery that Mitch has investigated in as many episodes, he remains a skeptic. Ryan, however, thinks that it is possible that the rig was attacked by some sort of prehistoric one-celled organism.

And it turns out that Ryan is right! Ryan and Mitch find themselves being threatened by a green gelatinous goo that eats away at everything from metal to skin. Joining Ryan and Mitch is Claire (Jennifer Campbell), whose boat was earlier attacked by the goo. Claire does very little in this episode and there’s really no point to her being there, beyond the fact that the show’s producers needed someone to wear a bikini and to scream.

Featuring an absolutely ludicrous monster and a finale that involves a self-destruct mechanism slowly counting down, The Rig is actually a lot of fun. It’s totally ludicrous and silly and everything that an episode of something like Baywatch Nights should be. Mitch and Ryan make for an entertaining team. Angie Harmon’s naturally sarcastic delivery contrasts nicely with David Hasselhoff’s most earnest style. The Rig is at its best when it just follows Mitch and Ryan as they flirtatiously argue about the paranormal while walking around the abandoned rig.

And fear not! Mitch survives his meeting with goo, jumping off the rig at the same moment that it explodes. We get a little bit of slow motion, followed by a short of an obvious dummy crashing into the water. When Hasselhoff jumps off the rig, the night sky is pitch black. When he emerges from the ocean, the sun is shining. That’s type of easily avoidable continuity error that makes Baywatch Nights so much fun!

This was a fun episode. Next week, Mitch gets involved with a UFO!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 2.2 “The Creature”

Posted on April 30, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Mitch, Griff, and Ryan search for an amphibian hybrid.

Episode 2.2 “The Creature”

(Dir by David W. Hagar, originally aired on October 6th, 1996)

The Creature of the title is a young blonde woman (played by Shelli Lether) who has spent her entire life locked away in a secret lab. One night, a security guard decides that he wants to get to know The Creature better. The Creature responds by killing both him and his co-worker. She escapes from the lab, running into the California night.

Mitch and Ryan are brought to the lab by the mysterious Diamont Teague, who explains that he’s not sure what was going on at the lab but whatever was housed in the building has escaped. Mitch leaves to track down the Creature. (He recruits Griff to help him out.) Meanwhile, Ryan stays at the lab and looks through magnifying scopes and studies slides and computer read-outs and eventually, she figures out that the lab was the focus of a DNA experiment. The creature is half-amphibian and half-human.

“Can we do that?” Mitch asks when Ryan calls him.

“Apparently so,” Ryan calmly replies.

(Seriously, Ryan’s so cool.)

It also turns out that Mitch and Griff are not the only people who are searching for the Creature. There are also a group of soldiers that are determined to track down the Creature, destroy it, and cover up the fact that it was created in the first place. Mitch, needless to say, is not happy about that. Mitch is a lifeguard and, as a lifeguard, he believes in guarding every life, even the life of a humanoid amphibian who murders anyone who approaches her.

And, if this was Baywatch, Mitch probably would have saved the Creature. But this is Baywatch Nights and the night is darker than the day. The Creature gets blown up in a tunnel but it appears that all of the soldiers get blown up with her. Take that, Feds! As for Mitch, he gets out of the tunnel just in time and makes a slow motion jump as the explosion erupts behind him. A chastened and mournful Mitch then announces that he’s going home as the sun rises over the horizon. Hey, Mitch — don’t forget to call Ryan and let her know that she can leave the lab.

After last week’s disappointing second season premiere, The Creature is the first classic episode of Baywatch Nights‘s supernatural season. The action moves quickly and through multiple locations. (The Creature may not know much about the world but she’s still drawn to a club.) The story is ludicrous enough to be entertaining. Shelli Lether is surprisingly sympathetic as the murderous Creature. Even Hasselhoff throws his heart into his attempts to convince the soldiers not to destroy the Creature. This episode was fun and dumb in a very likable way.

Next week, Mitch battles another sea monster!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 2.1 “Terror of the Deep”

Posted on April 23, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight, we start the second season of Baywatch Nights! It’s like an entirely new show!

Episode 2.1 “Terror Of The Deep”

(Dir by Gregory J. Bonnan, originally aired on September 29th, 1996)

The second season begins with a few changes.

The open titles are now dark and atmospheric, featuring David Hasselhoff walking through the fog. Lou Rawls’s theme song has been replaced by a creepy but very danceable instrumental track.

Mitch, Ryan, Eddie, and Donna are all back but Garner is no longer listed in the opening credit. Nor is he mentioned in tonight’s episode. Instead, Mitch’s new best friend is a world traveler named Diamont Teague (Dorian Gregory). Diamont is an expert on the paranormal. He believes that the truth is out there. Donna spots Diamont walking along the pier and immediately mentions how mysterious is.

No mention of Mitch being a private detective is made during the second season premiere. Instead, this episode open with Mitch doing lifeguard things. He rescues a woman who is discovered floating in the ocean. The woman screams in terror after she’s resuscitated. Diamont thinks that the woman might be a survivor of a freighter that sunk a few days previously. Diamont also thinks that the freighter was taken down by a tentacled monster that lives in the ocean.

Largely to prove his friend wrong, Mitch recruits Eddie and Ryan to help him track down and explore the freighter. While Ryan remains on their boat and stays in communication via radio, Eddie and Mitch dive into the ocean and explore the freighter. Guess what? Diamont was right! There is a tentacled monster living inside the freighter and now, it’s after Eddie and Mitch!

With this episode, Baywatch Nights totally changed directions, going from being a detective show to a somewhat goofy rip-off of The X-Files. For the most part, the second season of Baywatch Nights was a lot of fun but you wouldn’t necessarily know it from this episode. Terror of the Deep takes place almost entirely underwater, with Mitch and Eddie spending most of their time in wet suits that make it very difficult to figure out which one is which. The underwater scenes are also rather darkly lit, which I assume was done to both create atmosphere and also disguise the fact that the tentacled monster wasn’t really that impressive. However, the scenes are often so dark that it becomes difficult to tell what is actually happening on screen. This was an episode with a simple plot that often felt incoherent because I was never quite sure where Mitch and Eddie were in the freighter or if they were even still together.

This episode also overlooks the fact that one of the best things about the first season was the playful chemistry between David Hasselhoff and Angie Harmon. Instead, we get Mitch swimming with Eddie while Ryan stays on board the boat and is reduced to saying, “Copy that,” over and over again. This episode really did end up feeling like a lost opportunity.

But no worries! The rest of the second season is going to be a lot of fun. For instance, next week, Mitch faces off against a killer mermaid! It should be entertaining.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 1.22 “Heat Rays”

Posted on April 16, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, season one comes to a close.

Episode 1.22 “Heat Rays”

(Dir by Peter Roger Hunt, originally aired on May 18th, 1996)

The first season wraps up with an episode that doesn’t really add up too much.

As was typical of the latter half of this show’s first season, this episode actually tells two separate stories. In the first one, Donna is stopped while driving at night by three panicked people on a bridge. They say that their friend is in the water below. Donna jumps into the ocean, just to discover that it was all a trick to steal her car.

Donna floats around for a while. She passes the time by talking to herself. To be honest, she holds up surprisingly well for someone who is stranded in the middle of the ocean. Eventually, a boat stops to help her. Unfortunately, the two men on the boat are drug dealers and, when they’re both shot by a bunch of guys on a bigger boat, it’s up to Donna to save them and get them to dry land.

That may sound like an intriguing storyline but, oddly enough, it gets abandoned fairly quickly. I kept waiting for Donna’s storyline to somehow intersect with the other storyline but it never did. No one even thought to say, “Hey, where’s Donna?” If I was Donna, I would be pretty mad about that.

As for the other storyline, it features Mitch, Garner, and Ryan investigating a series of murders and attempted murders that all involve the members of an old surf band called The Heat Rays. It ultimately turns out that they’re being targeted by the daughter (Christa Sauls) of a woman (played by Judy Geeson) who was raped by several members of the band.

Again, that may sound like a storyline that has the potential to be intriguing. And there is an interesting subtext to the story, as Mitch and Garner are forced to admit that their favorite band wasn’t as innocent and wholesome as they chose to remember. But, in typical Baywatch Nights fashion, the story was a bit too predictable to really work. It was easy to figure out who the murderer was because there was really only one suspect from the start.

This episode had a violent streak just felt out of place. Baywatch Nights, in both its first season and its supernatural-themed second season, was essentially a goofy detective show starring David Hasselhoff. Having multiple people die over the course of one episode just didn’t feel right for such a lightweight show. Some shows are meant to be violent. Some shows are at their best when they embrace their inherent silliness. Baywatch Nights is the latter type of show.

So much for the first season. Unfortunately, the show never really found a consistent identity or style during the first season. However, that would change with the second season.

We’ll find out how next week!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 1.21 “A Closer Look”

Posted on April 9, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Mitch has yet another old friend who needs help!

Episode 1.21 “A Closer Look”

(Dir by Bernard L. Kowalski, originally aired on May 11th, 1996)

Another old friend of Mitch’s had a problem.

Seriously, how many old friends does Mitch have and why are all of them always getting involved in something dangerous? And why is it always Mitch’s responsibility to help them out? I mean, doesn’t Mitch ever just want to tell them to take care of their own problems? Mitch isn’t Superman, after all. He’s a middle-aged guy who is already struggling to balance his day job with his night job. STAND UP FOR YOURSELF, MITCH!

Anyway, Dewey Morgan (Gary Collins, looking like Robert Redford in All Is Lost) is worried that his model wife, McKenna (Lisa Schad), has been replaced by an imposter. As he explains it, she’s been different ever since she returned from a health spa. She looks the same but there’s just all sorts of little differences. It’s the type of things that only an intimate acquaintance — like a husband, for instance — would notice.

Mitch is skeptical. He thinks that maybe Dewey is just upset because McKenna has recently left him and is now finding success as a model. Still, Mitch decides to investigate because Dewey is an old friend. It’s never really made clear how Mitch and Dewey became friends in the first place but Dewey does spend a lot of time in a wet suit and on a surf board. So, I guess having a shared love of having a mid-life crisis on a beach is the bond that holds Mitch and Dewey together.

Personally, I think it would have been interesting if Mitch and Ryan had discovered that McKenna actually was McKenna and Dewey really was some sort of unbalanced stalker. That would have been a nicely unexpected twist and it would also have forced Mitch to reconsider his loyalty to all of his old friends. It would have given the show a chance to say something about the dangers of a beach bum having a mid-life crisis. But that’s just not the Baywatch Nights way. It turns out that the real McKenna is dead and the woman claiming to be Dewey’s wife is an imposter.

Usually, I enjoy melodramatic nonsense like this but this episode featured both a murder and an attempted murder and all of that violence felt somewhat out-of-place. Baywatch Nights works best as goofy fun. Having people actually die kind of takes away from the goofiness and it makes me wonder how Mitch is holding up mentally. I mean, he just wanted to make some extra money as a private investigator. Instead, he’s being regularly exposed to the worst that humanity has to offer.

The first season is nearly over and that’s good because, as this rambling review might indicate to the careful reader, I’m getting kind of bored with it. The second season is a lot of fun because Mitch and Ryan spend 22 episodes dealing with aliens, vampires, and Vikings! But, before we can get to all that, there’s one more first season episode to go.

We’ll deal with it next week.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 1.20 “Rendezvous”

Posted on April 2, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Mitch and the Gang screw up another easy case.

Episode 1.20 “Rendezvous”

(Dir by Georg Fenady, originally aired on May 4th, 1996)

Mitch, Ryan, and Garner are hired to track down Bradley Thurman (John Sanderford), a former top executive who embezzled over twenty million dollars and then, with the help of plastic surgery, went into hiding. Thurman has come to California to track down his wife and child, both of whom are in the witness protection program. They are told that, if they help to capture Bradley, they will be entitled to 20% of whatever money is recovered.

“20% of 20,000,000,” Mitch says, dreamily.

“Or 20% of nothing,” Ryan adds, revealing that she at least understands that both this show and presumably Baywatch would be over if Mitch ever became independently wealthy.

Donna and and Griff help out with the case, despite the fact that neither one of them is a detective and they both already have jobs that should presumably keep them busy. I mean, Donna owns a bar and it seems like that would require a lot of work on her part. Instead, she’s always either training to become a life guard, pursuing a modeling career, and trying to help Mitch solve a case. If I was Donna, I would be concerned about the fact that I’m always being told to go flirt with the bad guys. It seems like a dangerous assignment to give to someone who isn’t actually a detective. Griff, as a professional photographer, at least has a skill that is regularly used in actual detective work.

Even though this episode’s story felt like a return to the type of plots that Baywatch Nights featured when it first premiered, it was still a rather inconsequential episode. Bradley Thurman was hardly a clever or even a menacing villain and the fact that he got as close to his wife and his child as he did had less to do with any skill on Thurman’s part and everything to do with Mitch just not being very good at his job.

Actually, why are Mitch, Ryan, and Garner such terrible detectives? Mitch’s problem is that he never seems to focus on the case at hand. Instead, he’s always trying to flirt with Ryan or looking out at the ocean to see if anyone’s drowning. Being a detective requires concentration and that seems to be something that Mitch struggles with. Garner, meanwhile, is a bit too cocky for someone who, despite appearing in the open credits, hardly ever actually appears on the show. But still, Ryan seems like she should have everything that it takes to be a good detective but, every show, she makes the same mistakes as Mitch and Garner. I think Ryan actually is a good detective. She’s just being dragged down by Mitch’s incompetence. I think if Ryan went off on her own, she’d have a lot more success.

Next week, Mitch helps an old friend who thinks his wife is an imposter!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 1.19 “Epilogue”

Posted on March 26, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Griff gets a storyline! Who? Oh yeah, Griff! He’s like the photographer who hangs out at the detective agency sometimes. He was played by Eddie Cibrian and he was listed in the opening credits so I guess he was supposed to be a major character, despite never doing or even saying anything.

Anyway, on to this week’s episode….

Episode 1.19 “Epilogue”

(Dir by Reza Badiyi, originally aired on April 27th, 1996)

Griff is concerned about his old friends, RJ (Jared Murphy) and Rene O’Gill (Julianne Morrs). Their mother has just recently died and Rene suspects that she was murdered by their stepfather, Robert Houston (Ben Murphy). RJ, meanwhile, is a junky for both adrenaline and amphetamines and his girlfriend, Candy (Carmen Electra), seems like she might be a bad influence. Both RJ and Rene are due to receive a good deal of money from their trust funds and, if anything happened to them, that money would go to Robert.

Wanting to learn the truth about her mother’s death, Rene hires Mitch and Ryan to investigate. Because Mitch is a terrible private eye, he decides to have Donna go undercover to discover if Robert is hiding anything. Keep in mind that Donna does not work for the detective agency, has got a club to run, is already training to become a lifeguard, and has absolutely no investigative experience. And, of course, it turns out that there really wasn’t any need to have Donna go undercover because, just as Mitch is terrible at investigating stuff, Robert is terrible at covering up the fact that he’s a murderer.

How does Mitch solve this case? When he discovers that someone has been calling Rene’s answering machine and getting her messages without her knowledge, Mitch says, “Dial Star 69.” That’s the extent of Mitch’s detective work in this episode.

(Answering machines and Star 69, could this show be any more of a product of the 90s?)

The main problem here is that the episode revolves around Griff and his romantic feelings for Rene but since Griff is a character who has only appeared in a handful of episodes and never really made much of an impression, it’s hard to really get either emotionally or mentally involved with his story. When RJ is killed during a jet ski race, Griff gets upset and blames Robert but again, we don’t know Griff, we don’t know RJ, and we don’t know Robert.

The best that can be said about this episode is that it features some fun flirtation between David Hasselhoff and Angie Harmon, though not nearly enough. Probably the most interesting thing about this episode is that it tries to be noticeably more racy than previous episodes and the editing often feels so abrupt that it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that there was a more explicit version of the episode made for Europe. Carmen Electra plays a femme fatale here and she does do a good job of being playfully evil. Later, she would join the cast of regular Baywatch, playing a different character who didn’t murder anyone.

Next week …. oh, who knows? I just want to get to the second season already. That’s when all the aliens and undead Vikings start to show up.