Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 2.22 “A Thousand Words”

Posted on December 10, 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, we wrap up Baywatch Nights.

Episode 2.22 “A Thousand Words”

(Dir by Tracy Lynch Britton, originally aired on May 16th, 1997)

After two seasons of gangsters and monsters, Baywatch Nights ends with yet another haunted house story.

Well, technically, it’s actually a haunted restaurant. Diamont drags Ryan and Mitch to an abandoned restaurant that is said to be haunted. Accompanying them is a researcher into the paranormal, Sarah (Kathy Tragesar). Sarah explains that the restaurant has a long history of strange occurrences. Diamont explains that, recently, two women have been killed and a man left in a coma after entering the restaurant. Diamont thinks that it’s a poltergeist. Mitch, as usual, is skeptical.

*sigh*

Seriously, why is Mitch still a skeptic? I’ve gone into this before but it continues to bother me. After everything that Mitch had seen and experienced over this season, why does he still refuse to believe in the supernatural? Even Agent Scully eventually admitted that Mulder had a point.

Anyway, Ryan vanishes and finds herself in another dimension where she’s menaced by the knife-wielding murderer (John Snyder). The murderer is driven by his relationship with his mother, whose portrait hang around the restaurant and whose painted facial expression changes depending on how determined her son is to kill. (That was actually a nice touch.) Mitch puts a call into his old friend (and season one co-star), Garner Ellerbee. Garner shows up with psychic named Kira (Jazmin Lewis) and soon, Kira is in the other dimension as well….

Long story short, the poltergeist is eventually defeated. Kira and Ryan come back to our world. Mitch says that he loves Ryan. He and Ryan share an embrace and start in on some really passionate kissing. (Woo hoo!) The show ends.

The main problem with this episode is that Mitch and Ryan didn’t really get to do that much. For the most part, Kira did all the work and the episode so focused on her that I wouldn’t be surprised if it was meant to be a sort of backdoor pilot for a proposed series about Kira. As well, the killer poltergeist is scary when he first appears but he becomes progressively less scary as the episode goes on. By the end of the episode, he’s just kind of whiny. As a series finale, this was definitely a bit underwhelming.

That said — hey, Mitch and Ryan kissed! Seriously, I’ve been waiting for that moment ever since I first started reviewing this show. No matter what else one might say about Baywatch Nights, David Hasselhoff and Angie Harmon had great chemistry together. I won’t necessarily miss reviewing this show but I will miss seeing the two of them together.

In the end, Baywatch Nights was a pretty uneven show but it was definitely fun. I think it had potential but I’m going to guess it was doomed by being a part of the Baywatch franchise. People who didn’t like Baywatch weren’t going to watch a version of the show that took place at night. People who did like Baywatch were undoubtedly disappointed by the lack of red swimsuits. The ratings went down. Judging from the final few episodes, the production budget got seriously cut. The Hoff and Harmon were fun to watch but their chemistry couldn’t save the show.

Well, that completes Baywatch Nights! Retro Television Reviews is going on a holiday break but, on January 7th, I will start reviewing a new show in this timeslot! Until then, happy holidays to all the lifeguards out there.

Retro Television Reviews: Miami Vice 1.14 “Golden Triangle: Part One”

Posted on December 11, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, Castillo opens up!

Episode 1.14 “Golden Triangle: Part One”

(Dir by George Stanford Brown, originally aired on January 11th, 1985)

Okay, things are going to get a little complicated here. This is one convoluted episode.

Crockett and Tubbs’s latest assignment has them pretending to be the head of security for a Miami hotel. Castillo wants them to catch two crooked cops who are shaking down the prostitutes who use the hotel as their office. Tubbs and Crockett aren’t happy about it because it makes them feel like they’re working for Internal Affairs but Castillo makes it clear that he has no patience for any dirty cops.

Unfortunately, they’re not having much success with the security gig. The episode opens with Crockett and Tubbs subduing a guest who is freaking out on Angel Dust. “Attack the whack!” as the Disco Godfather once put it.

Crockett decides to put on a pair of thick glasses and a pocket protector and sit by the pool. He’s approached by Candy James (Robin Johnson), a high-class escort who asks Crockett if he wants to party. Crockett promptly arrests her.

After Candy agrees to help Crockett and Tubbs (in return for her criminal record being wiped out of the system), Crockett and Tubbs decide to go undercover as pimps while still pretending to be hotel security guards. When a guest named Albert Szarbo (John Snyder) and his unnamed Thai associate see Tubbs setting Gina up with her date (who is actually Zito), they decide that Crockett and Tubbs must be using the hotel as a front for their own prostitution operation. Szarbo approaches Crockett and explains that he wants to rob all of the hotel’s safe deposit boxes.

With Candy’s help, Crockett and Tubbs discover that the crooked detectives are Herb Ross (Paul Austin) and Dan Garcia (Gary Jellum). Ross and Garcia are arrested but are released just a few hours later. Because they were not actually arrested by Crockett and Tubbs, they assume that Crockett and Tubbs are still just the hotel security guys but they also assume that Crockett must have snitched on them to the police and….

Wait? What? Seriously, how does everyone in Miami not know, at this point, that Crockett and Tubbs are cops? They make no effort to hide the fact that they’re cops. Even when they’re undercover, they refer to each other by their real names and spend half of their time talking about what’s going on back at the station. Even if the criminals don’t know that Crockett and Tubbs are working undercover, you would at least expect their fellow police officers to know.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Candy. Candy said she would leave Miami after Ross and Garcia were busted but, instead, she shows up back at the hotel. Crockett is not happy about this but then he finds himself being confronted by Szarbo and Ross, who claims that Crockett is a snitch. Candy steps up and announces that she’s the snitch, saving Crockett and Tubbs’s case.

However, it turns out that Szarbo was lying to Crockett about wanting Crockett and Tubbs to be present when he robbed the safety deposit boxes. Instead, he was just using Crockett so that he could get a look at the vault before breaking in. Szarbo and his associate pull off the robbery and are then murdered by whoever hired them.

Castillo takes one look at the body of Szarbo’s Thai associate and realizes that he was tortured to death by associates of Chinese General Lao Li, a drug lord who Castillo tangled with before he joined the Miami PD. The normally stoic and unemotional Castillo opens up a little and reveals that he spend three years working undercover in Thailand for the DEA. Castillo says that they need to discover why Lao Li wanted whatever was in the safety deposit boxes.

Leaving his office and helping Tubbs and Crockett with their investigation, Castillo stuns everyone by revealing that he’s actually a total badass who speaks Thai, knows martial arts, and can handle himself in a fight. A search of all of Miami’s Thai restaurants eventually leads Castillo to Lao Li’s assassin. After an exciting fight with Castillo, the assassin purposefully commits suicide by swallowing his own tongue.

Back at police headquarters, Castillo, Crockett, Tubbs, Zito, and Switek takes a look at some of the items that were recovered from Szarbo’s hotel room. Castillo has deduced that Lao Li has come to the United States and his immigration visa was probably in one of the safety deposit boxes. He then looks at a picture of an attractive Chinese woman. (Some viewers will recognize her as being actress Joan Chen.) When asked who the woman is, Castillo replies, “My wife.”

This was a great episode, with a wonderfully twisty plot and a great fight scene between Edward James Olmos and Paul Tenn. After spending the past few episodes as a glowering figure who spent most of his time standing in his office and glaring at Crockett, Castillo revealed a bit about himself and it was fun to discover that this stoic figure was actually a total badass.

Next week: Part two of Golden Triangle!

Retro Television Reviews: We’re Fighting Back (dir by Lou Antonio)

Posted on May 7, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1981’s We’re Fighting Back! It can be viewed on YouTube!

We’re Fighting Back opens with a title card informing the viewer that the film that they are about to see is based on a true story and that the characters are based on the Guardian Angels, a group of New Yorkers who took it upon themselves to patrol neighborhoods and the subways. However, the film’s plot is fictionalized and all of the names have been changed and basically, the entire story is made up. It gets the film off to a strange start. This film is based on a true story, except that it’s not.

Morgan “Case” Casey (Kevin Mahon) is a young man living in New York with his father. When his father is mugged in the subway and ends up in the hospital, Case decides to take it upon himself to patrol the trains. He recruits his co-workers at the local hamburger place. Benny (Ramon Franco) says he is streetwise. Ling (Brian Tochi) claims that he’s good at fighting. Preacher (Paul McCrane) …. well, I’m not sure what Preacher’s special skill is but he’s recently moved to New York from Alabama. Case and his friends lose their first big fight against a gang of muggers, which leads to Case yelling at all of them and announcing that they need to recruit more members and get trained up on how to fight. Preacher thinks that Case is putting everyone’s life in danger but Case is determined to clean up the neighborhood.

Teaming up with some former gang members, Case forms the organization that will become the Guardian Angels. Among those who join are a tough waitress named Chris Capoletti (a young Ellen Barkin) and a Hungarian immigrant named Janos (an equally young Stephen Lang). At first, attorney Elgin Jones (Joe Morton) thinks that Case and his organization are going to be a bunch of lawless vigilantes but, after meeting Case and seeing Case refuse to allow an obvious psychopath to join the group, Elgin decides to become a part of Case’s anti-crime crusade.

And …. well, that’s pretty much it. There’s not much of a plot here. Case and Preacher are briefly estranged but they are friends again by the end of the movie. Eventually, Case faces off with Tony (John Snyder), the gang leader who mugged his father. For the most part, though, this is a film without much real conflict. In this film’s portrayal of urban crime, it turns out to be remarkably easy to clean up a neighborhood. Apparently, you just need to get a bunch of people to give a damn. One watches the movie and wonders why no one ever came up with this extremely simple solution in the past. The film goes out of its way to tell us that Case is not some sort of Charles Bronson-style vigilante but Case never has to face any muggers as dangerous as The Giggler. If Case lived in the Death Wish 3 neighborhood, who knows what type of approach he would have gone with.

Under the best of circumstances, this film would seem simplistic. Watching this film after the past few years, in which we’ve seen an increasing number of unarmed people getting hurt and killed by self-appointed vigilantes who felt that they shouldn’t have been in their neighborhood or train car, it’s hard not to feel that We’re Fighting Back is incredibly naïve and rather irresponsible. (The Death Wish films are so shameless and over the top that they’re difficult to take seriously as any sort of manifesto. We’re Fighting Back plays out with all the earnestness of a call to action.) Need to clean up your neighborhood? Just do it yourself! Just fight back! Obviously, that’s an idea that appeals to a lot of people but, in reality, it rarely seems to work out the way that it should.

Horror on TV: Baywatch Nights 2.22 “A Thousand Words” (dir by Tracy Lynch Britton)

Posted on October 21, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For tonight’s journey into the world of televised horror, we present to you the last ever episode of Baywatch Nights. In this episode, David Hasselhoff and Angie Harmon investigate a haunted restraunt. Then Angie disappears and the Hoff has to rescue her!

I have to say that Baywatch Nights was a silly show but I kind of liked it. I mean, you’ve got David Hasselhoff doing the full Hoff in every episode and I think that he and Angie Harmon had kind of a fun chemistry. I’m kind of sad that this is the last episode. Tomorrow, we’ll start a new show. Hopefully, I can find one. YouTube is so weird nowadays.

But, anyway, here’s the final episode of Baywatch Nights!

Horror on TV: Baywatch Nights 2.22 “A Thousand Words”

Posted on October 28, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

And you know what?

If you’ll remember, the only reason I started posting these episodes of Baywatch Nights was because Hulu went back on their word as far as free episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer were concerned. If not for Jeff and his amazing memory, I wouldn’t have even know that Baywatch Nights had ever existed. But, even if Baywatch Nights was not exactly my first choice of shows to highlight this Halloween season, it’s really not that bad of a show. From the episodes that I’ve seen, it definitely had a goofy charm and anything involving David Hasselhoff doing the full Hoff will always have some definite curiosity value. Plus, I think he and Angie Harmon had a likable chemistry.

So, I have to admit, there’s a part of me that’s sad knowing that this was the last ever episode of Baywatch Nights. As silly as the show may have been and despite the fact that the cameraman was always drunk, it was a fun show. Who knows? Maybe, someday in the future, I’ll do an in depth series of reviews on this series.

Hmmmm….maybe. Actually, right now, I’m just looking forward to finishing up 2015.

But, anyway, here’s the final episode of Baywatch Nights!