Knight Rider: Knight In Shining Armor [series premiere]
By fred | September 25, 2008
(S01E01) Ben Silverman, the man who calls himself the “Paris Hilton of NBC”, whatever that means, still hasn’t been fired. The new NBC fall schedule and “brilliant” ideas like this latest remake, Knight Rider, it’s all him. And sure, back in February when people still hadn’t realized we were talking about NBC – the ones behind the new Bionic Woman – and/or because curiosity is such a strong force, people tuned in.
They did, close to 13 million people watching the Knight Rider movie pilot. Of course, everyone who did realized what a mistake that was and swore never to came back, but for NBC exec this was a sign of success, they were sure of it, and the series was ordered.
And here we are.
So yes, no reason to even try to hide : I had incredibly low expectations for this show. In fact, that might not be true, I don’t think I even had any expectations at all, none, nada. Which is probably the only reason I wasn’t disappointed when I tried to watch this horrible mess, it actually made me laugh.
That’s how I would describe this episode/show, it’s so bad it makes you laugh.
One could argue that back in the 80’s there weren’t that many alternatives, cable, hundreds of channels, video games and Internet weren’t yet known to Man, and watch a car jump over another one in slow motion was a big deal I guess. But still, there are reasons the show worked, because KITT had a personality that fully co-existed with Michael, which also implied that Michael was an actual character, not an empty doll, because the show didn’t take itself too seriously and had some humor, and because while not the greatest actor of his generation, David Hasselhoff was a cool knight.
But this, Oh God I can’t even begin to describe how it’s all wrong. KITT is a stupid boring computer that doesn’t have anything close to a personality or anything to make it worth be heard (it’s time like these you wish Will Arnett could have voiced KITT…), a couple of lines were funny but I’m not even sure it was intended to be, and Justin Bruening is what I imagine the “Dolls” will be like, on the upcoming new series Dollhouse, when they haven’t been implemented with things like personality, charisma, etc
He’s standing right there, but there’s nothing. And if you thought the movie we got in February was bad when it comes down to screenplay and plot, you better be prepared before watching this crap, because it’s actually even worse !
I didn’t think they could pull it off, but they did : they managed to do something even worse and more ludicrous than the total lack of plot they came up with months ago. It’s almost impressive actually. And I am convinced that this was written for 12 year old and younger, because anyone older than that cannot possibly have fun watching this.
They throw in so many (silly) plots in there you wonder if they’re not just trying to see what could stick around, apparently the laws of physics don’t apply to KITT at all, the transformation into all kinds of Ford models, well, whatever, the secret lab I’m not sure if it was meant to be funny or not, and even in the little things it gets stupid, like KITT warning Mike at some point not to hit the wrong button and open the window, otherwise they’ll all die, and then some time later when someone tried to open the door KITT doesn’t let him, cause that could be dangerous.
By the way, I loved how they try to pretend Mike is actually driving KITT, even – or is it especially – during high speed chase, while he’s always looking the other way to some video feed or whatever…
But they did manage to get Sarah (Deanna Russo) to strip in her underwear within 10 minutes, so I guess it’s not like all they could came up with was useless crap we didn’t want to see, right?
The idea was bad, the movie was really bad, the series is even worse. And with the very bad start it had last night (not even 7.5 million viewers!), this won’t even last as long as Bionic Woman…
Posted in Reviews
Shows: Knight Rider
