Knight Rider, Season 1, Episode 1

Okay, I realized when I started this blog that I'd be forced to watch a lot of bad T.V. Previously I would wait about three seasons for a show to build up some significant buzz before renting all of it on DVD. Now, for the service of our readers (all 3 of you), I'm subjecting myself to T.V. as it happens, with all the risk that entails.

Which brings me to Knight Rider.

As with the prolonged trend of remade movies, nostalgia is big again on T.V. Before recently, however, most old television shows returned as cheap, unfunny films (Dukes of Hazard, Brady Bunch, et al). But with the semi-success of Battlestar Galactica, producers are now subscribing to the revolutionary notion that they can remake old T.V. shows as...T.V. shows.

The problem is most of these old shows we remember so fondly actually suck hard. (Remember ThunderCats? No. You really don't.) I think the quality of any remake is inversely proportional to the competence of its antecedent. The original BSG, for instance, barely made it out of its first season. Whereas Knight Rider - surely preposterous in its premise, but not without its charm and David Hasselhoff-supplied star power - lasted six. [Sadly, no algebra can explain why shows like Firefly and Freaks and Geeks were cancelled after barely a dozen episodes, yet JAG was allowed to march along for 10 full seasons. -eds]

So while it's not the total abortion that was fall's Bionic Woman remake, the new Knight Rider is pretty bland. Most old shows don't stand up to modern viewing, but at least they took some risks. No plot twist was too outlandish, no villain too over-the-top. In the original Knight Rider, Hasselhoff only appears partway through the pilot, after the original Michael is shot in the face (saved, of course, by a steel plate in his head, leftover from Vietnam) and undergoes extensive plastic surgery. Believable? No. But fun to reminisce about 20 years later.

The new version doesn't go quite so out on a limb, and that, I think, will be its downfall. Either you're making a show about a talking car or you're not. Man up already! Any attempts to make this ridiculous premise believable instead only make it achingly dull. Also, a Ford Mustang? Something strikes me as strange about the combination of muscle car and super-intelligent computer. (But a Trans-Am, on the other hand...) The product placement this implies is pretty sickening. In fact, they don't even imply it. The commercials actually feature Mike, as he's now called (I guess Michael was too stiffly formal), and the new KITT. In the spots accompanying the first episode, KITT gets jealous when Mike drives a Ford Focus. I'm not kidding. And don't get me started on how they rape one of the coolest opening theme songs ever.

As for the pilot itself, I don't have much to report. It never totally falls to pieces, but it doesn't have much to recommend it. The few gaffs that do occur mostly center around the female love interest, who is constantly smiling at inappropriate times (like at Mike's mom's funeral, or while being chased by hired killers). Apparently, KITT is also easier to hack into than Windows XP. It can't be long before we get the KITT-goes-evil episode.

In the original series, KITT had an evil twin named - you guessed it - KARR. See? That's the kind of bat-shit insane stuff that makes a show about a talking car worth watching.