Melissa Reigel | 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, a detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997. The entire show is currently streaming on You tube!

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!

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.