KNIGHT RIDER | Television

Knight of the Phoenix, Part 2

November 3, 2012 by Christopher

Season 1, Episode 2: Knight of the Phoenix, Part 2

How can we tell Knight Rider was made in the early 1980’s? When Michael escorts a waitress to a demolition derby, and her young son Buddy immediately disappears, no one is worried. “He’ll turn up,” Michael says, showing off his crack investigative skills by turning his head slightly to the left for one second to look around. Such an innocent, carefree decade, when a young boy could wander away at a crowded auto race and nobody immediately jumped to the conclusion that he’d been abducted/run over.

Another sign of the 80’s: Michael often has the sleeves of his leather jacket pushed up to mid-forearm.

We did this with our blazers and sport coats, too. God, we were terrible.

Anyway, in Part 2 of the series premiere, Michael Knight and KITT are hot on the trail of a gang of evil Silicon Valley masterminds who brutally murder cops, callously commit acts of industrial espionage, and fiendishly sponsor demolition derbies for charity. Michael and KITT have entered the race and Buddy, the irascible scamp that he is, has stowed away in KITT’s back seat and pops up mid-derby. KITT finally starts pulling his weight as a super-science car by driving on two wheels, which has the strange scientific side-effect of making Michael suddenly appear to be a heavyset middle-aged stunt driver wearing a giant black wig over a helmet.

Buddy, meanwhile, has turned into a mannequin who is, inexplicably, also wearing a giant black wig

More of KITT’s science powers are revealed during the derby, like oil slicks and smoke screens, plus the turbo boost (though it’s not called the turbo boost yet) which allows him to launch himself through the air as if flying off a ramp. All of the other cars get smashed up, Michael wins the race, and he tells the evil Tanya (the woman who shot him) that he’s interested in selling his science car, hoping to lure her into a trap. Tanya discusses it with her evil partner, and they agree that, yeah, Michael is definitely a cop.

Michael stops to use a pay phone (80’s!) to call Devon Miles, and the comical hoodlums from Part 1 show up and steal KITT. KITT drives them to a police station, where he demonstrates yet another power, the ability to throw ethnic caricatures out of himself using slide-whistle technology.

After some good-natured bickering that will become their hallmark, Michael and KITT head to a bar where Michael gets into a fight with all the other derby drivers. Another 80’s staple of television and film is utilized, as the fight is just a montage of goons getting thrown through doors, across tables, and onto floors, with no actual shots of punching. Michael is arrested and KITT is towed to COMTRON (the evil company) headquarters.

Michael’s response to being pestered by this guy: “Sit and spin.” Burn.

KITT escapes COMTRON by driving through a window, then bashes through the prison wall to free Michael. They drive back to COMTRON, and KITT ejects Michael onto a ten-story roof, this time silently (I guess the slide-whistle only works on minorities?). Michael reveals to Tanya that he is really Michael Long, and a security guard shoots him in the shoulder. He overpowers another guard named Baker and takes his uniform to fool everyone into thinking he is Baker, a clever ruse that works for literally zero seconds. Seriously, his plan fails so immediately it must be seen to be believed:

I love this for two reasons. First, it’s always good to see a classic good-guy plan shut down before it can begin. Secondly, the evil murdering boss is familiar enough with his security thugs that he not only knows their names, he can recognize their voices. It’s sweet. I bet every time he comes in for an evil day of work, he says “Morning, Baker! How’s Francine and little Emily?” And he’s genuinely interested, because he’s the evil boss who cares.

Michael escapes the building and is immediately captured by yet another guard, but KITT comes to the rescue. They drive to the airport to catch the evil COMTRON people, who send a fleet of evil truck drivers to intercept them, but KITT just turbo-boosts through one truck and over another. At the airport, Michael crashes KITT into the fleeing COMTRON jet, disabling it. Tanya runs over to KITT and tries to shoot Michael in the face again, but the bullet bounces off KITT’s window and kills her instead. The cops arrive and arrest all the bad people. Michael decides being a crime fighter with a talking car is a good idea, and the deceased Wilton Knight uses The Force to talk inside Michael’s head, reminding him that one man CAN make a difference.

In these episodes, KITT’s body and interior constantly look smudged and filthy. Will they hire someone to wipe him down between takes in later shows? Discuss.

Tally for the premiere episodes:

MICHAEL’S INCOMPETENCE: HIGH
He’s shot in the face, drives through a wall, falls asleep at the wheel, blows his cover, loses a boy, has his car stolen, gets arrested for brawling, allows KITT to be towed, gets shot again, strips a guard naked to steal his uniform and fools absolutely no one, and gets caught by another guard. Not a great start.

MICHAEL’S ROMANCE: LOW
Gets a kiss on the cheek from a waitress.

KITT’S POWERS:
Collision detection, two-wheel driving, oil slick, smoke screen, turbo boost (x4), ejection system (with comical whistle for ethnics), bulletproof everything, dual sunroof

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KNIGHT RIDER | Television

Knight of the Phoenix, Part 1

November 2, 2012 by Christopher

I recently noticed that the 1980’s television show Knight Rider is on Netflix Instant. I was about 10 when this show came out, and I loved it, because what wasn’t to love? David Hasselhoff as Michael Knight was cool, wore a leather jacket, had huge hair, solved crimes for pretty ladies and then kissed them, and drove a talking black Pontiac Trans Am named KITT that was made out of SCIENCE. For a little boy, the only thing that could have made Knight Rider any better would have been if Michael Knight had also had a pet dinosaur.

I watched it religiously back then, but I’m sad to say I don’t remember a heck of a lot of specific details about it now. It’s all sort of a vague, shadowy blur of turbo boosts, that vooh-vooh noise KITT makes when it thinks, and the recollection that Michael Knight and KITT both had evil twins at some point. So, I thought I might watch a few episodes to see if it’s actually a decent show, or if I was just a stupid kid.

Season 1, Episode 1: Knight of the Phoenix, Part 1

I’ve watched the opening few minutes of this show twice, and I still can’t tell what’s really going on. There’s Detective Michael Long, his partner (who is disguised as an electrician), a woman stealing secret plans from a casino hotel room, Michael’s boss who is working with Michael and also working with the thief-woman, an old gambler who Michael is protecting from something, and the old gambler’s wife who is working with Michael’s boss and the thief-woman. Everyone follows each other around and talks into wristwatch communicators, then Michael’s partner gets shot in the parking lot by Michael’s boss’s henchman, then Michael gets shot in the face by the old gambler’s wife in the desert. This all happens in about four minutes.

KNIGHT RIDER!

Michael is taken by helicopter to a sprawling mansion, where an old man named Wilton Knight gives Michael a new, surgically altered face, changes his last name to Knight, and has Michael Long declared dead, all without asking Michael’s permission. The plan: to turn Michael Knight into a crime fighter, a man capable of taking down the criminals the law can’t touch, by giving him a Trans Am filled with computers. Michael demonstrates to his new employer, Devon Miles, what a great choice he is for the task by immediately driving the car through a fucking wall.

Wilton Knight dies, Michael Knight puts on a red mock turtleneck and a black leather jacket, and heads out to find the woman who shot him, who is working in– as Devon puts it– “a place called Silicon Valley.” Ooh, sounds futuristic. En route, Michael discovers that his car can talk. The Knight Industries Two Thousand, or KITT, introduces himself, and Michael, rather than being completely amazed by his talking car, is just slightly annoyed. He tells KITT to shut up, drives away, and promptly falls asleep at the wheel. Luckily, KITT can drive himself, though there’s some comical business where Michael has to pretend he’s a deaf man with an injured neck to fool some cops who pull him over (I don’t really feel like explaining it any more than that).

KNIGHT RIDER!!!!!

Michael reaches Silicon Valley and visits a restaurant where the woman thief from the casino happens to be hanging out. He tries to slyly get some information from a hot waitress, arousing the suspicions of the thief, who calls the people who shot him, who immediately decide he must be a cop. Smooth, Michael. You’ve got a new name and a new face and yet you’ve been made six minutes after arriving in town. Meanwhile, in the parking lot, a duo of adorably offensive stereotypes spot KITT and excitedly plan to steal him later.

“JOO WANT TO STEEL THEES CAR, MANG?” “WORD, BRUTHA!”

Michael follows the waitress home where he discovers the same people who shot him also killed the waitress’s husband, and she and Michael team up to bring down the whole evil Silicon Valley crew. Michael meets the waitress’s son, Buddy, who says adorable TV kid things, like “Are you gonna marry my Mom?” causing everyone to smile, because kids, they’re such awkward dicks. Michael tries to figure a way to get closer to the people who shot him, and it turns out they’re sponsoring a demolition derby. Hey, that’s convenient, since he has an indestructible car and all. The demolition derby is tomorrow, also convenient, because if it had been, say, yesterday, he’d have to spend 364 days sitting around the waitresses’ shitty apartment, hoping like hell it was an annual event.

That’s the end of the first episode. Something I noticed about Michael Knight that completely escaped me as a kid: he’s ridiculously incompetent. In the space of forty minutes, he gets his face shot off, drives through a wall, falls asleep while driving, and blows his cover. I’ll have to keep an eye on this in future episodes, and see if he continues to be the worst secret detective agent with a talking car ever.

KITT doesn’t do much in this episode, but I remember, as a kid, being in awe of KITT’s digital speedometer. That seemed like the coolest thing back in 1982. I still don’t have a digital speedometer. My odometer is digital, but it’s not really that exciting.

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I Read A Book

“The Terror” by Dan Simmons

November 1, 2012 by Christopher

Used to be that reading a book wasn’t a noteworthy accomplishment, but these days me reading anything not on the internet is pretty amazing. Plus, I read a fiction book, which is exceedingly rare for me, plus plus it’s a 766 page fiction book, or novel if you’re some kind of fancy pants. The point is: good for me.

The novel is “The Terror” by Dan Simmons, historical fiction horror, I guess, imagining the fate of the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus, two old-timey ships that went looking for the northwest passage in 1845. In reality, the expedition did not go so well, and in this fictional version, it did not go so well even worse. Here’s some more bad news: I have no idea how to review a book, so I’m just going to say some things and hope I don’t sound like a complete moron.

In the novel, the two ships, carrying about 130 men, become stuck in the ice near Canada (this happened for real) for two years (also for real), and find themselves battling not just the extreme cold, frostbite, and a contaminated food and water supply (real), but also a mysterious and terrifying monster than begins stalking and killing them (this is the fiction bit). The book is broken into chapters told from the perspective of several of the crewmen, kind of A Game of Thrones style, a format that I think is pretty great. It lets events unfold without jumping around between multiple characters, but also lets you hear about these events later from another perspective. I dunno, I thought it worked well in A Game of Thrones, and it works well here, too.

Simmons seems to know his old-timey boat stuff; honestly, I’d have read a purely factual book about this expedition if he wrote it, because I like old-timey boat stuff. Like, I love submarine stuff in films if it’s done well, too. There’s a horror movie called Below, about a haunted submarine, and it’s not very good, but the submarine stuff is excellent. I watched it and I was like, “Please, forget the shitty ghost story, just keep doing submarine things and yelling submarine words at each other!”

Simmons also does a good job throwing in a lot of the elements I like to see in horror fiction:

1) Have the people in the story in an incredibly terrible situation. Forget about the monster: they’ll be lucky to survive even without a monster.

2) Add a monster.

3) Have one of the people in the situation wind up being way, way fucking worse than the monster.

4) Don’t play favorites: surprise me by killing people that I expect to live. This will make me think anyone can die, thus actually creating suspense.

5) Make the non-horror stuff interesting enough to get by on its own.

Stephen King was really good at these things in a number of his books, and Dan Simmons is good with them in this novel too.

In terms of Simmons’ monster, like I said, it’s almost kind of unnecessary: there’s enough horrible stuff happening without it. Plus, it’s not really scary, more gruesome, but no more gruesome than the other things happening. Plus, when you find out what it is, it’s kind of like, “Huh. Okie-dokie, then.” Also, if you have a monster in your book, describe it in great detail. Maybe I have no imagination, but when you keep describing it simply and vaguely as having a “triangular head,” I am basically just going to sit there picturing a literal triangle-headed monster. Like, flat with sharp points, and everything. And it looks really stupid in my head.

Anyway, I enjoyed the book! The ending went waaaaay out into left field, unsatisfying so, I think, but it’s only the very very end, so it doesn’t ruin the whole book or anything. If you like old-timey boats, and surgeons cutting off frost-bitten fingers, and a monster, and people writing in journals, and a book heavy enough to bludgeon cattle unconscious, there’s a lot to enjoy.

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