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, you can do anything in a montage!

Episode 2.3 “The One That Got Away”

(Dir by Gus Trikonis, originally aired on September 30th, 1991)

After Megan (Vanessa Angel), a lifeguard who we’ve never seen before, is attacked by a maniac (Rick Dean), she has to conquer her fears of being attacked again so that she can lure him out of hiding so that he can be arrested.

Meanwhile, Shauni is burned out on being a lifeguard so she and Eddie spend a weekend just enjoying the beach and presumably ignoring anyone who might be drowning.

This is pretty much the epitome of a syndicated episode of Baywatch and it’s interesting to see that the formula was pretty much determined and locked in even this early into the show’s syndicated run.  There’s a serious storyline about a maniac attacking women on the beach but the cameraman spends as much time leering at Vanesa Angel as the man stalking her.  Shauni is tired of doing her job and instead of telling her to find a new job, it’s suggested that she just spend a weekend looking at the sunset with her boyfriend.

But the most important thing is that, regardless of the beach maniac and Shauni’s depression, there’s plenty of time for endless musical montages.  That’s what this episode is really all about.  Shauni gets a frustration montage.  She gets a happy montage.  Lifeguard Harvey gets an acting like a jackass montage.  Each montage takes up about five minutes of screentime so that probably definitely helped when it came to writing the script for this episode.

David Hasselhoff, oddly enough, is barely in this episode.  It’s only the second episode of the show’s syndicated run and the Hoff was already taking the week off?  I guess you can do that when you’re syndicated.