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.
Cort needs money!
Episode 1.19 “The Big Race”
(Dir by Kevin Inch, originally aired on March 16th, 1990)
This episode opens with Cort trying to impress a woman who is convinced that he’s rich. He and Eddie illegally break into someone else’s yacht and Eddie dressed up in a tuxedo so he can pretend to be Cort’s butler. The meeting goes well into the woman asks Cort to donate $10,000 to a retirement home and Cort impulsively says yes.
Now, he has to come up with $10,000!
Luckily, there’s a water ski race coming up and the grand prize is $15,000. Cort, Mitch, and Craig enter and …. well, do you need me to tell you that they win despite the efforts of a bunch of snobby vandals?
Meanwhile, Shauni is scared to get in the water. She’s haunted by slow motion flashbacks of Jill getting attacked by that shark. (This is the rare episode of Baywatch that actually acknowledges that something that happened in another episode.) I guess Shauni’s going to have to quit being a lifeguard now. Oh wait — luckily, someone almost drowns and Shauni’s instincts overpower her fear. With the help of Michael Newman — NEWMIE! — Shauni finds the courage to do her job.
At least Shauni is still mourning Jill. No one else seems to care. Seriously, if you think about it — two lifeguards have died in the line of duty over the past two weeks and no one really seems that upset about it.
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, a lifeguard dies!
Episode 1.18 “Shark Derby”
(Dir by Gregory J. Bonann, originally aired on March 2nd, 1990)
Hey, remember Jill?
Jill, played by Shawn Weatherly, was a major character at the start of the season. She was the tough, seasoned lifeguard who was one of Mitch’s best friends. She was also Shauni’s mentor. If Shauni was often silly and superficial, Jill was all business. She also had a brief flirtation with Trevor, before Trevor vanished from the show.
As the first season progressed, Jill became less and less important. In this week’s episode, Jill finally gets to do something, She dies! She dies after being attacked by a shark who was drawn to the beach by an unethical restaurant owner (Peter Brown) who has been pouring chum into the ocean and who has also placed some sort of transmitter underwater that sends out a high-pitched tone that only sharks can hear. The restauranter is just doing it to promote his annual shark derby. However, when one of the sharks attacks a raft full of school children, Jill swims out into the ocean to save them. And she ends up getting bitten by a shark. She doesn’t lose any limbs. In fact, we don’t see any blood at all. But, at the hospital, it’s announced that Jill has over two hundred sutures. Yikes!
Despite getting chomped by a shark, it first appears as if Jill will survive. But towards the end of the episode, even as she’s preparing to leave the hospital, she develops a blood cot that kills her, off-screen. David Hasselhoff gets to show off his ability to cry onscreen. To be honest, that’s the main reason this episode works. We don’t really know enough about Jill to get too emotionally involved in her situation. But Hasselhoff is so incredibly earnest and sincere in his grief that he gets to you. Jill must have been someone amazing if the Hoff is crying.
This episode was shameless and emotionally manipulative and it was pure Baywatch. This episode also featured a record number of slo mo of doom scenes. The shark attacked in slow motion. Jill and Craig yelled at people to get out of the water in slow motion. Is it really slow motion if no one yells? I’m not sure.
So, Jill is dead. But the Hoff and the rest are still alive and ready to save swimmers across California.
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, Eddie’s incompetence continues.
Episode 1.17 “Eclipse”
(Dir by Paul Schneider, originally aired on February 23rd, 1990)
After Kirby (Lance Wilson-White), the lifeguard that Eddie was supposed to be training, mysteriously drowns, Eddie loses his job and is shunned by every lifeguard in California.
Well, that’s what should have happened. Instead, everyone tells Eddie that it wasn’t his fault and goes out of their way to make sure that Eddie isn’t beating himself up over one unfortunate death. We don’t actually see Mitch or Captain Thorpe calling up Kirby’s family to offer condolences. We don’t see Kirby’s funeral or Kirby getting the traditional fallen lifeguard salute. Kirby? Who’s Kirby?
Instead, Eddie meets with a psychiatrist (Dr. Joyce Brothers) and later admits that his sister drowned when he was a child and that’s why he feels so guilty about what happened to Kirby. Everyone is more upset about Eddie’s sister than they are Kirby.
Meanwhile, Eddie searches the beach for a ghostly woman in a white nightgown. Eddie and Craig’s wife, Gina (Holly Gagnier), speculate that the woman is the ghost of someone who burned down the lighthouse decades ago. Mitch theorizes that the woman is an escaped mental patient. The woman later turns up on the beach, dead from drowning. Again, nobody seems to be too upset. Aren’t these people supposed to be lifeguards?
While this is going on, Hobie discovers that his friend Katie (Hayley Carr) is going to have to euthanize her dog because it bit her family’s landlord. Katie runs away and Hobie hides both her and the dog at his house. Mitch is not happy about this but he does agree to adopt the dog so it won’t be killed. Yay!
This episode was dumb. Apparently, as long as Eddie’s feeling better, it doesn’t matter that two people drowned. Stay away from Malibu, folks.
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.
The drudgery of season 1 continues.
Episode 1.15 “Muddy Waters”
(Dir by Paul Schneider, originally aired on February 2nd, 1990)
It’s a busy couple of days in Malibu!
Hobie has been getting into fights at school. Is it because the kids refuse to believe his amazing stories about his lifeguard father or is it because he has a crush on his teacher, Amanda Keller (Sherilyn Wolter)? Amanda wears glasses but takes them off whenever Mitch comes into the room so we all know what that means. Mitch is about to get a girlfriend.
Meanwhile, a picture of Shauni appears in a cheap calendar, posing in her official Baywatch bathing suit. The Captain (Monte Markham) wants to fire her but Craig proves that Shauni isn’t lying about the picture being used without Shauni’s knowledge. Not only does Craig print a calendar with the captain as “Miss March” but he also tricks the Captain into signing a release form. Shauni is vindicated. Craig’s wife complains about how sexist the calendar was. This storyline felt a bit hypocritical for a show run people who reportedly spent hours obsessing on how everyone looked in their swimsuits.
Finally, Cort and Eddie are training the junior lifeguard at the water park. An angry man who always wanted to be a lifeguard keeps loosening the bolts on the water slide. Cort, Eddie, and Garner catch him but the trouble’s not over yet! The ex-boyfriend of one of the lifeguards is making trouble and vandalizing park property. He’s captured after a dramatic chase up a water slide. Even though Cort is chasing the guy up the water slide, people keep sliding down. It felt kind of dumb, to be honest. Why not just climb the stairs to the top so that you can be there whenever the guy gets there? Why not position one lifeguard at the top and one at the bottom so the guy will eventually be caught no matter which way he climbs or slides? It seems like Eddie and Cort put a lot of people in danger for no good reason.
This episode was forgettable and dumb. That’s kind of the standard when it comes to the first season of Baywatch. Some people stand in the darkness for good reason.
Airport ’77 is the one where the plane ends up underwater.
If the first two Airport movies emphasized the competence of the the crew in both the airplane and the airport, Airport ’77 takes the opposite approach. The first of the Airport films to be released after Watergate, Airport ’77 is a cynical film where no one seems to be particularly good at his or her job. Viewers should be concerned the minute they see that Jack Lemmon is playing Captain Don Gallagher, the pilot of the soon-to-be-submerged airplane. As opposed to Charlton Heston or even the first film’s Dean Martin, Jack Lemmon was always a very emotional actor. He excelled at playing characters who were frustrated with modern life. Just as with Heston and Martin, Lennon plays a pilot who is having an affair with a flight attendant. The big difference is that, this time, the pilot is the one who desperately wants to get married while the flight attendant (played by Brenda Vacarro) is the one who doesn’t want to get tied down. As an actor, Lemmon didn’t have the arrogance of a Heston or the unflappability of Dean Martin. Instead, Jack Lemmon was the epitome of midlife ennui. He’s disillusioned and he’s beaten down. He’s America at the tail end of the 70s.
Another sign that Airport ’77 is a product of the post-Watergate era is the character of co-pilot Bob Chambers (Robert Foxworth). Chambers might seem like a nice and friendly professional but actually, he’s the one who comes up with the plan to knock out all of the passengers with sleeping gas and fly the plane into the Bermuda Triangle so that his partners-in-crime can steal the valuable art works in the cargo hold. Chambers plans is to land the plane on an unchartered isle so that he and Banker (Monte Markham) can make their escape before the rest of the people on the plane even wake up. Instead, Chambers turns out to be as incompetent a pilot as he is a criminal. He crashes the plane into the ocean, where it promptly sinks to the bottom. The impact wakes up the passengers, all of whom can only watch in horror as the ocean envelopes their plane. With the water pressure threatening to crush the plane, Captain Gallagher and engineer Stan Buchek (Darren McGavin) try to figure out how to get everyone to the surface.
As usual, the passengers are played by a collection of familiar faces. Olivia de Havilland and Joseph Cotten play former lovers who are reunited on the flight. Christopher Lee is a businessman who is unhappily married to alcoholic Lee Grant. Grant is having an affair with Lee’s business partner, Gil Gerard. A young Kathleen Quinlan plays the girlfriend of blind pianist Tom Sullivan. Robert Hooks is the bartender who ends up with a severely broken leg. As the veterinarian who is called to doctor’s duty, M. Emmet Walsh gives the best performance in the film, if just because he’s one of the few characters who really gets to surprise us. Actors like George Furth, Michael Pataki, and Tom Rosqui all wander around in the background, though I dare anyone watching to actually remember the names of the characters that they’re playing. Airport ’77 has the largest number of fatalities of any of the Airport films, largely because even the good guys aren’t really sure about how to reach the surface.
George Kennedy returns as Joe Patroni, though his role is considerably smaller in this film than it was in the first two. He shares most of his scenes with James Stewart, who plays the owner of the plane. Fortunately, neither Stewart nor Kennedy were on the plane when it crashed. Instead, they spend most of the movie in a control room, getting updates about the search. They don’t get to do much in the film but it’s impossible not to smile whenever Jimmy Stewart is onscreen, even if he is noticeably frail.
Airport ’77 is the best-made of all of the Airport films. The crash is well-directed and the scenes of water dripping into the plane are properly ominous. There’s not much depth to the characters but Jack Lemmon and Darren McGavin are likable as the two main heroes and Christopher Lee seems to be enjoying himself in a change-of-pace role. Olivia de Havilland and Joseph Cotten, two old pros, are wonderful together. That said, Airport ’77 is never as much fun as the first two films. Even with the plane underwater, it can’t match the spectacle of Karen Black having to fly a plane until Charlton Heston can be lowered into the cockpit.
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, there’s a lot happening on the beach!
Baywatch 1.7 “The Cretin of the Shallows”
(Dir by Vern Gillum, originally aired on December 1st, 1989)
Eddie gets his wisdom teeth taken out. Feverish and on pain-killers, he has a hallucination in which Gina Pomeroy (Holly Gagnier) kisses him. Eddie spends the entire episode nervous that Craig is going to discover that he’s having an affair with his wife but actually, Eddie isn’t having an affair. It’s not until the end of the episode that Gina tells Eddie that they never kissed and Eddie finally starts to relax. Gina promises not to tell Craig because “I think it’s sweet.” Myself, I’m just curious as to how stupid Eddie actually is.
Shauni and Jill deal with a teenage boy who has made a bet with his friends that he’ll be able to get a kiss from both of them.
And a horrifying serial killer (Robert Trebor) is stalking the night, brutally murdering people on the beach.
One of these storylines is not like the other!
The first season of Baywatch was seriously weird. Light-hearted lifeguard hi-jinx would be mixed in with scenes of people being murdered. Mitch and Craig weren’t just lifeguards. They were also cops who solved mysteries (Kind of like Baywatch Nights!) and they put their lives at risk to do so. Remember how I mentioned that Gina told Eddie that they never kissed? She told him that after she had been rescued from the serial killer. Gina nearly died! Neither Gina nor Craig seemed to be too upset about that, though. I would be a little bit traumatized but that’s just me.
This episode really didn’t work for me. Personally, I like the light-hearted stuff. It’s dumb but, at heart, Baywatch’s appeal is that it’s a dumb show with nice scenery. Tossing a serial killer into the mix just made things unpleasant. It didn’t feel like it belonged on a show about people running on the beach in red bathing suits.
This is my last Baywatch review of 2025. Retro Television Reviews will be taking a break for the holidays so that I can focus on Awards Season and Christmas movies! Baywatch will return on January 10, 2026.
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, the ocean is full money!
Episode 1.6 “The Sky Is Falling”
(Dir by Kim Manners, originally aired on October 27th, 1989)
Baywatch was a show that was often known for being unintentionally funny.
Of course, it’s open for debate just how self-aware Baywatch may or may not have been. Some of the show’s writers and directors have claimed that the show was meant to be campy. At the same time, there are cast members who specifically left because they felt that there was no way to play some of the scenes they were expected to perform. Professional surfer Kelly Ward left the cast after he read a script that involved him fighting an octopus that tried to steal his surf board. Jason Momoa has said that appearing on Baywatch Hawaii early in his career made it difficult for him to convince other casting directors to give him a chance. That said, David Hasselhoff reportedly continues to swear that Baywatch was a sincere tribute to lifeguards and that it was responsible for people learning how to perform CPR and the Heimlich Maneuver. Once you’ve watched Hasselhoff tear up while talking about a girl who saved her little brother using a technique she saw on Baywatch, you’re left with little doubt that Hasselhoff took the show very seriously.
That said, I do think most of the humor on Baywatch was unintentional. That’s especially true of the first season, which was about as earnest as a network television show can be. With this week’s episode, Baywatch tried to be intentionally funny and the results were definitely mixed.
The humor came from Harv (James Sloyan) and Sylvia (Carol Siskind), two frumpy bank robbers who crashed their private plane in the ocean and subsequently lost a suitcase containing thousands of dollars. Throughout the episode, there are shots of the suitcase floating in the ocean. Finally, a boat collides with it and money goes flying everywhere. Soon, everyone is running into the water and getting trapped in a riptide. Lifeguards to the rescue! As for Harv and Sylvia, they were meant to be funny but instead, their constant bickering just got annoying. Watching them, I thought to myself, “If these two idiots can rob a bank, anyone can do it!” That’s not a Hasselhoff-approved message.
Slightly more successful was a storyline about Captain Thorpe (Monte Markham) deciding that he needed to get back on the beach. For Thorpe, this meant working a tower with Eddie and Shauni. For Eddie and Shauni, that meant having to spend hour after hour listening to Thorpe’s long-winded stories. Billy Warlock and Erika Eleniak actually did a pretty good job portraying the mind-numbing boredom of being stuck with Captain Thorpe.
As for the serious storyline, Gail has accepted a job in Ohio and wants to move there …. with Hobie! However, when Mitch helps Gail pack, they both get sentimental and end up sleeping together, leading Hobie to believe that his parents are going to get back together. Hey, divorced parents — DO NOT DO THIS! Seriously, divorce is hard enough on a child without giving them false hope. In the end, Gail decides to let Hobie stay in California after Hobie uses his junior lifeguard training to save the life of a drowned girl. Hobie’s a hero and his big reward is that he doesn’t have to go to Ohio. I’m going to say “Ouch!” on behalf of the Buckeye State.
In the end, this episode was pretty uneven. The thieves weren’t ever a credible threat but I did laugh at everyone running into the ocean to try to grab the stolen money. The important thing is that the show didn’t have to relocate to Ohio.
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.
Trouble comes to Malibu!
Episode 1.3 “Second Wave”
(Dir by Scott Brazil, originally aired on October 13th, 1989)
Jimmy Roche (Daniel Quinn), an old friend-turned-enemy of Eddie’s, is in Malibu and he and his gang are eager to give Eddie a hard time. When Eddie tries to rescue a man in the water, Jimmy trips him and then plays keep-away with Eddie rescue can. Dang, these guys are hardcore!
Eddie doesn’t want to tell anyone about his past, even after Jimmy files an assault complaint against him. (Eddie was provoked into throwing a punch.) Jimmy threatens to robs Gina and Craig unless Eddie gives him some money. Eddie agrees to meet with Jimmy but then tells the cops. Garner Ellerbee decides to set up an undercover sting, which basically means that Garner stands next to Eddie while Eddie waits for Jimmy to show up. Somehow, Jimmy figures out what’s going on. Looks like Eddie will just have to beat Jimmy up on the beach and prove that he’s no longer a delinquent from Philadelphia.
That would be an intense storyline, if not for the fact that Jimmy himself comes across as being kind of a wimp. I mean, a young David Spade is a member of his gang! Eddie allows himself to be intimidated by a young David Spade! Think about that. This storyline just made Eddie seem kind of dumb,
Meanwhile, a young Mariska Hargitay gave a terrible performance as Lisa (hey!), the daughter of the head of the country club. Lisa (!) decided to pursue a romance with the country club’s lifeguard, Trevor, as a way of upsetting her father. When Lisa (!) jumped into the ocean to make a point (though I’m not sure what point), Trevor rescued her. However, Lisa (!) later went into shock because she still had water in her lungs. Trevor was able to get her to the hospital in time but he learned an important lesson about not being a cocky lifeguard.
“The county lifeguards know about secondary drowning,” he’s told.
Okay, so why wouldn’t Trevor know about that? The whole idea behind Trevor’s character is that he was a hotshot lifeguard in Australia before he came to California. So, is the show implying that he wasn’t trained in lifeguard basics in Australia because given how famous Australia is for its beaches, I find that hard to believe.
Anyway, after she recovers Lisa (!) announces that she’s going back to New York and Trevor realizes that she was only using him to make her father angry. Trevor stops by Baywatch HQ and talks to Mitch and admits that he doesn’t enjoy working as a lifeguard. Lifeguard Jill Riley gives him a sympathetic look. It looks like they’re falling in love but I’ve seen this series before so I already know that Jill is going to get eaten by a shark and Trevor is going to vanish after a few more episodes.
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 purchased on Tubi.
This week, Hobie’s a snitch!
Episode 1.1 “In Deep”
(Dir by Peter H. Hunt, originally aired on September 22nd, 1989)
Hobie, you idiot!
Mitch’s young son is spending the summer with his father and he’s supposed to be concentrating on summer school. Instead, he hanging out with two older guys, Scott (Christopher Murphy) and Ron (Lance Gilbert), and basically letting himself be used as a slave in return for jet ski lessons.
Mitch is not a fan of jet skis. They’re unregulated and they’re dangerous, he says. As if to prove Mitch’s point, Scott collides with a windjammer! The woman on the windjammer is killed. (Craig and Eddie pull her body out of the ocean, which is the type of sad thing that Baywatch would eventually stop featuring.) Hobie, realizing Scott is guilty, tries to find the evidence to prove it and nearly gets himself killed as a result. Fortunately, Mitch is able to save him and Scott is arrested. I have to say that, after this episode, I kind of found myself agreeing with Mitch’s ex-wife. The beach is too dangerous!
Meanwhile, Craig caught Eddie sleeping in his lifeguard tower and realized that Eddie, who I assume is getting paid to be a lifeguard, doesn’t have a home. Did he ever have a home? Has he been sleeping on the beach all this time? How did he apply for Lifeguard School without an address? Anyway, Craig takes Eddie back to his Venice loft, where Craig’s wife (now played by Holly Gagnier, replacing the pilot’s Gina Hecht) decides that they should let Eddie rent their storage room. It’s even got a view of the beach, if you ignore all the other buildings in the way and instead just find that one unobstructed alley to look down. (Actually, Eddie finding and looking down that alley was cute and likable. He was so excited!) I have to say that, for a lawyer, Craig’s loft really sucked. It was pretty impressive for a lifegaurd, though.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986! The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!
Welcome aboard, it’s love!
Episode 6.21 “The Captain’s Crush/Out Of My Hair/Off-Course Romance”
(Dir by Ted Lange, originally aired on February 19th, 1983)
Kathy Costello (Stella Stevens) is looking forward to taking a cruise with her husband, Joe (Monte Markham). However, at the last minute, Joe decides that he would rather go to a golf tournament than take a vacation with his wife. The angry Kathy boards the boat and immediately runs into her ex-boyfriend, Ted Cole (Ron Ely). Kathy enjoys spending time with Ted but then suddenly, Joe shows up on the cruise. He’s not happy to discover his wife is spending time with her ex. The main problem with this story is that there’s no one to root for. Kathy is cheating but her husband is being a jerk. It’s rare that I ever watch an episode of The Love Boat and say, “This should end with divorce,” but this episode inspired me.
Meanwhile, Lydia (Delta Burke) boards the boat with her wealthy fiancé (Jeffrey Tambor). Lydia’s ex-boyfriend (Richard Gilliland) also boards the boat, hoping to break up their engagement. This storyline felt oddly similar to the other storyline and it suffered from the same problem. There was no one to root for. None of these people deserved to get married.
Finally, movie star Janine Adams (Joan Collins) boarded the boat and ate dinner with the Captain. The next day, the tabloid news wires are full of speculation that the Captain is going to become Jane’s tenth husband and the Captain starts to think that maybe he’d like to be Jane’s tenth husband. Go for it, I say! Seriously, Janine and the Captain are as close to a likable couple as this episode has so they might as well get married. Of course, they don’t get married. I guess that’s a good thing. It’s hard to imagine The Love Boat without Captain Stubing at the helm.
This episode was directed by Ted Lange and, as usual, he gets good performances from the cast. Unfortunately, this cruise is let down by two weakly-written stories.
Through the Shattered Lens 