George Fenady | Through the Shattered Lens

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!

You guys know the drill. Thanks to the Vicodin I took earlier, I spent Tuesday in a bit of a daze. So, I’m running late with my review of Baywatch Nights. Fear not! Here it is:

Episode 1.12 “Thin Blood”

(Dir by Georg Fenady, originally aired on February 10th, 1996)

Ryan’s sister has come to Los Angeles!

Charlie McBride (Laura Harring) claims that she’s just in town to see her sister but Ryan has her doubts. Charlie has always been the irresponsible member of the family and Ryan can only watch helplessly as Charlie and Mitch pursue a tentative romance. Since this is a Baywatch spin-off, that means that Charlie and Mitch spend a lot of time on jet skis. It’s not true love unless you get on the jet skis. Charlie also takes the time reveal that Ryan could have been a model and a pageant winner if she hadn’t abandoned everything to be a private eye. To that, I say, “Well, yeah. She’s Angie Harmon.”

However, it turns out that Ryan was correct. Some New York criminals are in town, searching for the money that they claim Charlie stole from them. They’re even willing to kidnap Ryan and hold her hostage until they get their money back. Once again, it’s up to Mitch and Garner to do their thing and rescue Ryan. Interestingly enough, they manage to do so pretty easily. This is one of those episodes where the bad guys are so incompetent that they are pretty much doomed from the start. David Hasselhoff may have captured them but Billy Warlock and Erika Eleniak probably could have done the job just as easily. Hell, I bet Parker Stevenson could have done it. Maybe even Kelly Ward.

Anyway, the emphasis here is on Ryan and her feelings of resentment towards her sister and her feelings for Mitch. Though it was pretty much abandoned once the show became an X-Files rip-off during the second season, the first season of Baywatch Nights really tried to play up the will they or won’t they aspect of Ryan and Mitch’s relationship. There really wasn’t much suspense about that. Angie Harmon and David Hasselhoff had a likable chemistry but it was a brother/sister type of relationship. There was nothing romantic about it, at least not in 49 of the 50 states. Ryan liked Mitch but she also knew she could do better. That was why Ryan was such a cool character.

This was a pretty forgettable episode, one that was really only interesting for a chance to see Laura Harring play the same type of role she would later play to far different effect in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. It’s late so I’m going to leave it at that. Baywatch Nights needs to hurry up and bring on the aliens and the vampires or the sea monsters!

This week, David Hasselhoff battles John O’Hurley on Baywatch Nights!

Episode 1.2 “Bad Blades”

(Dir by George Fenady, originally aired on October 7th, 1995)

Cosmetics mogul Frances Sandreen (Lois Nettleton) has hired Mitch, Garner, and Ryan to help her track down her wayward son, Todd (Jason Hervey). Like a lot of rich and spoiled kids, Todd has had his problems with the law. He’s a wanderer, someone who has spent most of his short life pursuing extreme sports and who dropped out of college after just a semester or two. Mitch and Garner think that the kid sounds like a spoiled brat but they need the money so they take the case.

(Why is Mitch so poor? He never seemed to be struggling financially on Baywatch.)

Unfortunately, Todd has fallen in with an even worse crowd than his old prep school friends. He’s joined a group of roller-skating burglars who rob apartments and delivery vans and then skate away into the darkness. One reason why they’re so good at their job is because they spend hours every day practicing. If you’ve ever wanted to spend 20 minutes of your life watching footage of people skating off of ramps in slow motion, this episode should be right up your alley.

Leading this gang of thieves is the impeccably-dressed Kemp. Kemp is played by John O’Hurley of Dancing With Stars, Family Feud, and Seinfeld fame. (O’Hurley also appeared in a few episodes of Baywatch, always playing a different character.) With his perfect haircut and his resonant voice, O’Hurley makes for an entertaining villain. There’s nothing about O’Hurley’s performance that suggests that he is in any way taking the role of Kemp particularly seriously. O’Hurley plays him like a comic book villain and that is definitely to the episode’s benefit.

As entertaining as O’Hurley and the skating scenes are, this episode reveals a huge problem with the first season of Baywatch Nights. Other than the fact that Hasselhoff is wearing a shirt for the entire runtime, there’s nothing about this episode to really distinguish it from a typical episode of Baywatch. Baywatch has its share of episodes about spoiled rich kids and their worried parents. Baywatch was always looking for an excuse to pad out an episode with some extreme sports footage. Even the scene where Garner and Mitch chase the thieves across the Los Angeles river felt like it was lifted from Baywatch or any other Los Angeles-based crime show for that matter.

As well, it’s impossible not to notice that, for an a show called Baywatch Nights, most of the action takes place during the day. I thought being a private eye was only supposed to be Mitch’s night job. Who is watching the beach while Mitch is investigating crimes? It really does seem like Mitch is violating some sort of lifeguard code here.

Next week: Mitch searches for the only witness to a murder!