Retro Television Review: Baywatch 1.2 “Heat Wave”

Posted on October 18, 2025 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 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.

Save me!

Episode 1.2 “Heat Wave”

(Dir by Gus Trikonis, originally aired on September 29th, 1989)

Not much of an episode this week, I’m afraid.

California is dealing with a heat wave and no one has air conditioning (really?) so everyone in Los Angeles is heading down to the beach so that they can relax in the hot sand. Eddie and Trevor keep giving each other the side eye because Eddie is a Baywatch lifeguard and Trevor is a country club life guard. Eddie tries to hit on a woman who has spent the entire day relaxing near his tower but it turns out that she’s visiting from Australia and only has eyes for Trevor. “Maybe next time,” she tells Eddie.

Craig is told by his boss that he has to choose between being a lawyer at a big firm or a lifeguard. Craig’s wife, Gina, suggests that Craig quit the law firm and become a beachfront lawyer. She says that he can still be a lifeguard and he can just use their kitchen table as his desk. I don’t know if I would be as understanding as Gina. Craig was making a lot of money as a big corporate lawyer, even if he apparently couldn’t afford to get an air conditioner.

(What the Heck, California? How are you surviving with air conditioning!?)

Meanwhile, two stupid kids get trapped in a storm drain. Mitch sends the junior lifeguards out to look for them. Hobie asks, “What can a bunch of junior lifeguards do?” Mitch replies that this is an opportunity for the junior lifeguards to go to all the places that they’re usually not allowed to go. So, basically, Mitch’s plan to find the missing kids is to put a bunch of other kids at risk. I guess that’s why he’s the lieutenant.

Luckily, the two dumb kids are rescued. One of the kids is the son of Steve Humboldt (Jeffrey Byron), a former Baywatch lifeguard. It turns out that Steve lost custody of his kid in a court case and he basically abducted him. But, after the kid nearly dies, Steve is like, “We’re going to call your mom and go home!” and that apparently makes everything okay under the “He Changed His Mind Afterwards” clause.

This was all pretty dumb. Stay out of the storm drain, kids! It’s not that difficult.

Retro Television Review: Baywatch 1.1 “In Deep”

Posted on October 11, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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.

The other big development this week is that Garner Ellerbee (Gregory Alan Williams) made his first appearance as the beach cop who hates sand. (Then why become a beach cop?) He and Mitch appear to be old friends. Little do they know that they will eventually open up a detective agency together.

This episode was predictable but the cast was super likable. The earnestness of it all carried the day.

Retro Television Review: Baywatch: Panic At Malibu Pier

Posted on October 4, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, I start a new series of reviews. Since I already did Baywatch Nights, it just made sense to go ahead and do Baywatch. All together, this show ran for 11 and a movie so it should only take 241 weeks to finish up the series….

“Baywatch: Panic At Malibu Pier”

(Dir by Richard Compton, originally aired on April 29th, 1989)

It’s not easy being a lifeguard.

That would seem to be the main theme running through Panic at Malibu Pier, the two-hour movie that also served as a pilot for Baywatch. Consider the drama:

Mitch Buchanan (David Hasselhoff) loves the beach and he loves getting in the water but it’s cost him his marriage and now, his ex-wife (Wendie Malick) is suing for sole custody of their young son, Hobie (Brandon Call). Hobie doesn’t like going to school. He doesn’t understand why he can’t just spend all day on the beach like his father. Mitch, meanwhile, has been promoted to lieutenant of Baywatch and he’s now no longer supposed to do rescues. He’s just supposed to supervise the other lifeguard. His boss, Captain Thorpe (Monte Markham), is very insistent on that. Mitch explains that he doesn’t even like wearing socks. Ewwww. You have to wear socks, Mitch!

Eddie Kramer (Billy Warlock) is a rookie lifeguard. He finished at the top of his class but he’s also a tough kid from Philadelphia who grew up in the foster system. Shauni (Erika Eleniak) is another rookie lifeguard who freezes up when she has to provide CPR to a drowned girl. Her mentor, Jill (Shawn Weatherly), tells Shauni that it happens to every lifeguard. I bet it’s never happened to Mitch. Shauni seems to have a crush on Eddie and Eddie seems to be driven to prove himself. Eddie has guts because he wears a Philadelphia t-shirt in California.

Al Gibson (Richard Jaeckel) is the veteran lifeguard who is reaching retirement age and who dies at the end of the episode and gets a big lifeguard funeral on the beach.

Trevor (Peter Phelps) is the Australian lifeguard who calls everyone “mate.”

Finally, Craig Pomeroy (Parker Stevenson) is the attorney who prefers to spend his time in his lifeguard tower. Even when he should be at the office and working for his clients, Craig just hangs out at his tower. He saves the life of a disturbed teenager named Laurie (Madchen Amick). Laurie subsequently becomes obsessed with him. When the married Craig tells her to stay out of his lifeguard tower and stop taking off all of her clothes, she accuses Craig of assaulting her. Later, she tries to murder Craig’s wife (Gina Hecht). This all could have been avoided if Craig had just gone to his office like he was supposed to.

This pilot film for Baywatch has everything that the show would make famous — stiff line deliveries from the supporting cast, red swimsuits, David Hasselhoff’s earnestly goofy sincerity, slow motion, and plenty of musical montages. Amongst the guest cast, Madchen Amick stands out at the obsessive Laurie, showing an ability for handling melodrama that would be put to good use on Twin Peaks. Take a drink every time Mitch says, “Rescue can,” and see how long you can go before passing out. Unlike a lot of pilots that don’t really resemble the eventual show, Panic at Malibu Pier is unmistakably Baywatch.

And, watching it, you can see why the show eventually became a success. The beach scenery is nice. The men are athletic, the women are pretty, and the slow motion is cool the first time you see it. Of course, the most important thing about the pilot — and the show itself — is that it doesn’t require a good deal of attention. It’s one of those things where you can step away from the screen for a few minutes and then come back without having worry about having missed anything important.

Panic at Malibu Pier was a ratings hit. Baywatch followed. We’ll get into that next week.

Party Line (1988, directed by William Webb)

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Jedadiah Leland

“Hot singles are waiting to speak to you!”

Remember those party line commercials that used to air late at night in the 90s? For just a few dollars a minute, you could call and talk to someone claiming to be a hot woman in your area of town. (The commercials always featured women because everyone understood that only men would be dumb enough to call the number.) Even when I was a teenager, I knew that there was no way that a young, hot woman was sitting at home alone and waiting for a stranger to call her. But obviously, some people thought they were true because those party lines commercials aired for a long time and really only went away once everything moved online.

In Party Line, Greta Blackburn and Leif Garrett plays homicidal siblings who have money to burn so they spend all of their time on the party line, enticing men to sneak away from their wives and come to their mansion so that they can be murdered. Detectives Richard Hatch and Shawn Weatherly are assigned to find out why so many married men are turning up dead. The chief of police is played by Richard Roundtree, who is so smooth that his main purpose in the movie is to remind us that not everyone has to use a party line to pick up women. It’s a standard 80s thriller that has some moments of unexpected humor, largely due to the contrast between the beautiful and rich killers and the people that they target. Richard Hatch is wooden in the role of the detective but Shawn Weatherly is attractive and likable as his partner, Greta Blackburn makes for an excellent femme fatale while Leif Garrett is twitchy but convincing as a killer who likes to wear a bridal gown.

Party Line was made when the idea of adult phone lines was still a new one. Apparently, when those lines first started to advertise, the part about it costing money wasn’t actually mentioned and could only be discovered by reading the small print at the bottom of a television screen. Since the small print was not only very small but also usually accompanied by a picture of a blonde in lingerie, no one ever bothered to read it. I was not one of them but I do know more than a few 90s kids who came home from school to discover a parent waiting to talk to them about the phone bill. The world was a different place back then. Today, everyone should know that most hot singles have something better to do than to talk to you and if they don’t, they’re probably killers like people in Party Line. It’s not worth a dollar for each additional minute.

Police Academy 3: Back in Training (1986, directed by Jerry Paris)

Posted on April 27, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Police Academy 3 opens with a state in the middle of a fiscal crisis. Money has to be saved somewhere and the governor (Ed Nelson) has decided that it’s not necessary for the state to have two police academies. I am not sure why the governor would be the one to make that determination since the previous two Police Academy films established that the academies are run by the city but I guess I should remember that I’m watching a Police Academy film and not ask too many questions.

Which academy is going to be closed down? Will it be the academy run by Commandant Lassard (George Gaynes) or the one run by Commandant Mauser (Art Metrano, returning from the second film)? Mauser is willing to use any dirty, under-handed trick to keep his academy open. Meanwhile, Lassard has his most recent graduating class returning to instruct his latest batch of recruits. Can Mahoney (Steve Guttenberg) and Michael Winslow’s human sound effects machine save the academy?

When I watched Police Academy 3 this weekend, I was surprised to discover that it wasn’t as bad as I remembered. Maybe it’s because I watched it immediately after the first two films and my senses were dulled but Police Academy 3 turned out to be an amiable and enjoyably stupid comedy. It helped that two of the new recruits were played by Tim Kazurinsky and Bobcat Goldthwait. Returning to the roles that they first played in the second movie, Kazurinsky and Goldthwait make for a good comedic team. As for the rest of the Police Academy regulars, they all do their usual comedy bits like pros and without any fuss. It’s predictable and sometimes, funny.

Police Academy 3 was the first Police Academy film to have a PG-rating and, as a result, the jokes were still as juvenile and crude as the first two movies but, at the same time, Police Academy 3 seems to have made peace with the fact that it’s target audience was a bunch of adolescent boys dropped off at the theater by their mothers. Mauser is still regularly humiliated but no one gets a blow job while standing in front of a podium. This is a Police Academy for the entire family, assuming that your family is easily amused and not too demanding.

Police Academy 3 is a dumb movie and the recurring joke about policemen accidentally entering the Blue Oyster Bar is even less funny the third time that it’s used. There’s also a Japanese recruit who only seems to be included because, back in the 80s, American films were obsessed with making fun of Japan. Despite all that, Police Academy 3 is still not as bad as the usual Police Academy sequel.

But what about Police Academy 4? Check in tomorrow to find out if it’s also better than I initially remembered.

(It’s not.)

Horror On The Lens: Amityville: It’s About Time (dir by Tony Randel)

Posted on October 9, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s horror on the lens is a haunted house film from 1992. In Amityville — It’s About Time, Jacob (Stephen Macht) buys a new clock for his home but what he doesn’t realize is that the clock comes from the infamous Amityville House! Soon, everyone in the family is acting strange. Has the clock brought evil spirits with it or–

Well, let’s not even consider the other possibilities. Of course the clock is full of evil spirits!

As I watched this film on YouTube last month, a lot of it seemed very familiar. I quickly realized that this was because Amityville — It’s About Time used to show up on HBO all the time when I was a kid. And while I never sat through the whole film, I did always somehow seem to manage to catch the most gruesome bits and pieces whenever it was on. And yes, it did give me nightmares!

Of course, the movie would not give me nightmares today but still, it’s good for what it is. Some of the scare scenes still work, especially the one involving the dog. Stephen Macht makes for a good psycho and, in the spirit of Halloween, you can even forgive the plot for not making a bit of sense.

Interesting to note: The uber annoying Lenny is played by Jonathan Penner, who would later find some fame as a three-time contestant on Survivor.

(Also, needless to say, this film is rather tame by today’s standards but it’s still NSFW!)

Back to School #53: Dancer, Texas Pop. 81 (dir by Tim McCanlies)

Posted on September 14, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Dancer, Texas Pop. 81 is a 1998 film about a small town in West Texas that only has a population of 81 citizens. Just from my own experience of telling people about how much I happen to like this movie, I get the feeling that only 81 people may have actually seen it. But no matter! Regardless of how many people have actually seen it, Dancer, Texas is one of my favorite films about my home state.

Dancer starts out with a scene that is so quintessentially Texan that it might as well appear next to Texas in the dictionary. Four teenagers — all of whom are scheduled to soon graduate from high school — sit out in the middle of the highway. The road seems to stretch on forever. The land around them is empty. If you’ve ever been to West Texas, you know what type of land I’m talking about. It’s the type of land where you feel like you can see forever. In the far distance, we see a pair of headlights.

“Car’s comin'” one of them drawls, knowing that they’ve got at least another 15 minutes before that car ever gets anywhere near the tiny town of Dancer, Texas.

These four teenage boys make up 80% of the graduating class of Dancer’s high school and all four of them are planning on leaving town and heading for Los Angeles. Keller (Breckin Meyer) is their leader, the big dreamer who can’t wait to get out of the state. Terrell Lee (Peter Facinelli) is the son of the only rich man in town and he’s being pressured by his mother to stay in Dancer and to learn the oil business. John (Eddie Mills) is the simplest of the four and also the most reluctant about leaving. He simply wants to be a farmer and he can’t understand why his taciturn father refuses to say anything to keep him from leaving town. And finally, there’s Squirrel (Ethan Embry), who is the weird one. Every group needs a weird one and Squirrel is weird even by the usual standards of small town oddness.

Not much happens in Dancer, Texas. That goes for both the film and the town. Over the course of two days, all four of the boys are forced to decide whether they really want to leave or if they actually want to stay. Adding an extra poignancy to their decision is the fact that there literally is no chance that life in Dancer is ever going to change. Dancer is as it has always been and always will be. Deciding to stay means staying forever. And, as the film shows, that’s okay for some people and terrible for others.

I really like Dancer, Texas. Yes, it does move at its own deliberate pace and yes, a few scenes do tend to get a bit too obvious in their sentimentality (just to name two of the complaints that I saw from some commenters over at the imdb). Meyer, Facinelli, and Mills all give such wonderfully natural performances that it makes you all the more aware that Embry seems a bit out-of-place. But, ultimately, none of that matters. Dancer, Texas is one of the most honest and sincere films that I’ve ever seen and it’s a film that does my home state proud.

Lisa’s Rating: 8 out of 10