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, we meet Eddie’s never-before mentioned brother.
Episode 2.18 “Sharks Cove”
(Dir by Monte Markham, originally aired on April 20th, 1992)
Shauni’s friend Debbie Kent (Monica Lacy) throws a party on the beach with her boyfriend, Zack (Spencer Rochfort). When Debbie and Zack get in the water, Debbie suddenly yells out Zack’s name and is then apparently pulled below the surface by something. Zack runs back to the beach and says that a shark got Debbie.
Shauni, who is still haunted by Jill’s shark-related death in season one, insists on investigating this one on her own. She quickly figures out that Debbie faked her death because her father (Ernie Lively) was putting too much pressure on her to become a competitive, Olympic-class swimmer. It turns out that Debbie has just been hiding out in Zack’s trailer for the past few hours.
Meanwhile, Eddie decides to bring his older half-brother, Bobby (Blake Gibbons), to the beach. Bobby is schizophrenic and lives on a ranch, but his therapist thinks it would be a good idea for Bobby to spend the weekend with Eddie. Bobby ends up stealing a lifeguard outfit and running off. When Eddie eventually finds him, Bobby is on the edge of the pier, trying to rescue someone who isn’t really there. Bobby plunges into the ocean. Eddie saves his life, and hopefully he pays to get Bobby a new therapist, because this one obviously had no idea what she was talking about.
This was a strange episode. Baywatch previously established Eddie as a former juvenile delinquent from Philadelphia who came to Malibu to get away from the gang life. This episode features flashbacks of Eddie and his brother growing up in California, and Eddie is presented as the one who pays for Bobby to stay at the ranch, despite the fact that Eddie was previously portrayed as having come to California without a dime to his name. (Eddie even slept in his lifeguard tower until Gina and Craig agreed to take him in.) The first season also established that Eddie had a younger sister who drowned. In this episode, he has an older half-brother who was schizophrenic and, in the flashbacks, there’s no sign of a sister. Baywatch is not exactly a monument to continuity.
As for Debbie, she returns home and is forgiven by her father. Considering that lifeguards and police officers have been spending the last day or so searching for her, I assumed she would be in a bit more trouble than she was. Faking your own death is not something that I would recommend.
The Hoff was barely in this episode. Maybe it was his week off.
