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 meet Mitch’s brother.
Episode 2.5 “The Fabulous Buchanan Boys”
(Dir by Gus Trikonis, originally aired on October 14th, 1991)
Mitch’s brother, Buzz (Tim Thomerson), shows up with his 12 year-old son, Kyle (Chance Michael Corbitt)! Mitch is reunited with Buzz and they both realize that they’re two old beach bums who are not getting any younger. That’s especially true in the case of Buzz. The show makes it clear that Buzz is Mitch’s older brother but we’re still left wondering just how much older. With his gray hair and his weathered features, Tim Thomerson looks like he’s nearly 70 while Hasselhoff appears to be in his late 30s.
And that’s pretty much it.
Okay, in all fairness to the show, there is a bit more of a plot than just Buzz showing up but none of it adds up to much. Mitch’s girlfriend, reporter Kaye Morgan (Pamela Bach), is pressured by her father to kill a story about a dangerous pier. Kyle has a bad attitude and has an accident while surfing at that pier. Luckily, the lifeguards are able to save him. Eduardo (Buzz Belmondo) sells bikinis on the beach but — ha ha — the bikinis dissolve when soaked in salt water. Eddie and Shauni have to help a lot of suddenly naked people get out of the water. “We’re in syndication!” the show loudly announces. Meanwhile, I’m left to wonder why you would buy a bikini from a stranger with a pencil-thin mustache.
For the most part, though, this was a montage episode. The plot was secondary to the music playing behind slickly edited montages of Buzz and Mitch bonding. Buzz and Kyle leave town at the end of the episode but, given how close Buzz and Mitch are, I’m sure that Buzz will return frequently in the future.
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 is pretty pointless.
Episosde 2.4 “Money, Honey”
(Dir by Monte Markham, originally aired on October 7th, 1991)
When Mitch and Eddie are hired to serve as lifeguards at a Hollywood party, film producer Dita (Leslie Easterbrook) is impressed when she sees Mitch respond to a boating accident. She decides to make Mitch into a movie star. Everyone knows that Mitch can swim and run in slow motion but can he deliver scripted lines? Dita doesn’t care. She just wants to sleep with him. That goes against Mitch’s ethics so his film career ends before it even begins. Meanwhile, Shauni puts together a benefit to protect a sea lion habitat. At first, it looks like Shauni won’t be able to raise the money but then Mitch donates his movie paycheck to the cause.
This was a montage episode of Baywatch. There really wasn’t much of a plot but there certainly were a lot of montages. Watch as Mitch nervously sits in the makeup chair. Watch as a bunch of bikini-clad beachgoers gather for Shauni’s benefit. Listen to the music. Watch the images. Don’t worry about a thing….
In short, this was a pretty pointless episode. That said, the sea lions were cute and the scene where Captain Thorpe tried to teach Mitch how to audition did make me smile. It’s interesting that it took only four episodes for the syndicated version of Baywatch to fall into the pattern that would definite it for the next ten years.
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)
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:
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.)
Hobie, Mitch’s son, is now played by Jeremy Jackson.
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.)
Cort may be gone but there’s a new money-hungry lifeguard named Harvey (Tim McTigue).
The second season premiere features even more musical montages than appeared in the first season.
The second season premiere features a lot of random shots of women in skimpy bikinis.
The red Baywatch one-piece swimsuits are back but now, they’re considerably tighter and more high-cut.
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.
Through the Shattered Lens 