Michael Newman | 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 Youtube!

Yep, it’s another late review. Sorry, I was exhausted last night.

Episode 1.16 “The Curator”

(Dir by Georg Fenady, originally aired on March 9th, 1996)

When Garth Youngblood (Steven Culp) threatens to shoot himself in her lifeguard tower, Caroline Holdren (Yasmine Bleeth) begs him not to and tells him that he not only has a lot to live but his name isn’t half as stupid as he thinks that it is. Deciding that Caroline is in love with him, Garth turns into a full-on psycho, the type of guy who chases Caroline across the beach, puts Lifeguard Newman (Michael Newman) in the hospital, flirts with Donna, and ultimately ends up locking Caroline in a cage made to resemble an apartment, much as what happened to Billy Pilgrim in Slaughter-House Five.

Caroline turns to Mitch and his detective agency for protection. Of course, as head lifeguard, Mitch is already Caroline’s boss so he already should be looking out for her. Unfortunately, even after Garth is arrested, he’s released after he explains that he forgot to take his Prozac. (That’s the actual excuse that they give! Never mind that everyone’s favorite lifeguard, Newmie!, is in the hospital because Garth smashed his head through a window.) Garth is given a restraining but, because Caroline works on the beach, it’s easy for Garth to watch her while standing 100 feet away.

Now, on the plus side, Steven Culp was believably creepy as Garth and this episode had no fear of embracing the storyline for all of the macabre melodrama that it could. Yasmine Bleeth also does a good job portraying Caroline’s growing fear as Garth grows more and more unstable. As an actress on Baywatch, I’m sure she had to deal with a lot of real-life Garths and, speaking as someone who has been stalked, I appreciated that both Bleeth and the show itself took her fears seriously. The scene in which Caroline runs across the beach with Garth in pursuit was far more effective and scary than you would ever expect to find on an episode of Baywatch Nights.

That said, this episode highlighted one of the big problems with the second half of Baywatch Night‘s debut season. This was essentially just an episode of Baywatch, with the extra addition of Angie Harmon flirting with Mitch and Eddie Cibrian’s Griff standing the background. (I guess Griff is a part of the detective agency now.) Baywatch Nights originally started as a show about Mitch spending his nights as a private investigator but this episode took place largely during the day and featured Mitch as a lifeguard. Baywatch Nights without the nights is just Baywatch.

Fear not, though! We’re just a few episodes away from one of the most radical reboots in television history!

This week, Eddie Kramer returns!

Episode 1.14 “Backup”

(Dir by Charles Bail, originally aired on February 24th, 1996)

Visiting his former home for re-certification, former Baywatch lifeguard Eddie Kramer (Billy Warlock) is patrolling the ocean when he comes across a boat that’s on fire and sinking. Two people on a dinghy yell that someone is still on the boat. Eddie boards the boat and doesn’t see anyone. The two people on the dingy continue to insist that someone is on the boat, even as Eddie dives off of it.

Along with Baywatch regular Newman (Michael Newman, the real-life model for Mitch Buchanan), Eddie searches the now sunken boat. And, to his shock, he finds a dead man on the boat. Eddie does a classic “Nooooooooo!” but, being underwater, no one can hear him.

With everyone blaming him for the accident, Eddie continues to insist that no one was alive on the boat when he first checked. Eddie’s old friend and mentor, Mitch Buchanan, decides to investigate the case himself and he soon figures out the truth. The dead man did drown but he was already dead by the time the boat sank! But who wanted to kill him?

It’s actually not much of a mystery as there are only two suspects and it is established early on that they’re working together. In fact, they talk about how they committed the murder before Mitch even figures out that it was a murder so say goodbye to any suspense. The truth of the matter is that the storyline was less about the mystery and more about trying to boost the ratings by reminding everyone that this was a Baywatch show. It might have been more effective if the show had made use of a top-tier Baywatch co-star (David Charvet, Pamela Anderson) as opposed to bringing back Billy Warlock, who hadn’t been on the show for a few seasons before his guest turn here. But then again, bringing on a “current” co-star would have begged the question of “Why do we need a new show to watch a story from the old show?”

There’s a second storyline, in which a man (Barry Pearl) is concerned that his mistress (Valerie Wildman) has hired a hitman to kill him. Garner, Ryan, and Lou all stakeout the mistress and discover that she doesn’t actually want to go through with the plot and that her original plan was to kill the man’s wife. The man is so overjoyed to discover that his mistress wanted to kill his wife that he literally jumps for joy. This was a weird storyline but at least it featured the characters doing real detective work for once.

This was a breezy and entertainingly dumb episode. This is perhaps the first episode to feature every member of the main cast doing something and there was a nice feeling of comradery amongst the regulars. That said, the episode ended with Mitch pointing out that they had solved all the cases and then asking, “What do we do now?” Uhmm …. how about you go to your other job, Mitch?

Seriously, I don’t know how Mitch balances everything.