Date of airing: October 8, 1982 (NBC)
Nielsen ratings information: 17.2/30 in Households
written by: Deborah Davis
directed by: Daniel Haller
I had the Jackie Chan “What just happened” meme in my head throughout most of the episode, because I could not believe the stupidity and absurdity of some of the characters during this hour, the main hero included. Since I am not familiar with a lot of 1980s television, I guess I will have to learn that this kind of storytelling was the norm back then, which means there will be a lot of sexist, misogynistic, and rapey white men in KNIGHT RIDER, and Michael Knight needs to collect all his mighty strength to fight them off – as long as he is not a sexist, misogynistic, rapey asshole himself. And he was walking quite the fine line between being the town hero and the sexist white man when he landed in White Rock and his first order of business was a hamburger prepared by the general store’s only employee Sherry Benson, with whom Michael could not even wait to flirt like she was the only woman in town and he needed a little excitement before his eyes.
Yes, this was very much an issue I had with this episode – the series is only four hours old, and Michael already had three women he could flirt with, with two of them being mothers to a boy each (let's be real here, Sherry was pretty much Davey's mother, even if they were siblings according to the script – a story purpose that was not necessary at all), he was actively making out with one of them, and both boys thought that they had a father figure in Michael, with both boys essentially begging our hero to be their new father. It has become clear quickly what kind of person Michael was supposed to be according to the writers of the show, and this time around, the women Michael hooks up with seem to be single mothers, which is nothing James T. Kirk ever experienced during his journey through the galaxy. Will there be a running tally of women Michael Knight hooked up with in the four-year history of the show? Only for as long as I do not forget to make that tally at the end of each episode's review.
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| "Are you my new Daddy?" |
This episode was still fine though. This time, unlike the previous episode, it did not need to shower the audience with boom-booms and instead just needed to depict Michael at his supposedly best: how to drive like a madman on dirt roads. More than 40 years later, watching Michael do the same stuff for about five minutes in nearly every episode is going to turn out boring after a while, but I guess that is what 1980s audiences wanted to watch, or what broadcast networks and studios were ready to spend their money on. I am certain that most shows back then offered an episode like this one, and I know that THE A-TEAM would deliver a similar premise as this episode just four and a half months later ("Black Day at Bad Rock," airing on February 22nd the following year), making me wonder if some NBC writers' rooms were working together and sharing ideas, to save time and money. After all, having to write more than 22 episodes a year sometimes is hard work, so if you can find a way to help each other and get the scripts written faster, then so be it.
The story of a biker gang looking to fight another biker gang in Random Town, USA is nothing that made me happy, especially since it established bikers as horrible people who are out to just pillage a town, abuse all the people there, and move on like this is a pre-apocalyptic version of a MAD MAX movie. Nobody in the writers' room obviously made an attempt at creating more realistic biker characters, but then again, is KNIGHT RIDER even a show that wants to attempt even a little bit of realism every once in a while? All Michael needed in this hour was a bunch of guys to fight (and race against), and cliches work better in cases like these than trying to spend an entire day in the writers' room, trying to come up with authentic villains. Thank the heavens that KNIGHT RIDER is a 1980s broadcast network show – if this had been HBO a couple of decades later, one of the bikers would most likely have violated Sherry and murdered her brother Davey, just to prove that this biker gang truly is a violent and murderous one.
By the way, the existence of Davey reminded me about the fact that KNIGHT RIDER was most likely supposed to be a family-friendly show from beginning to end, with the target demographic being boys and young men. After all, this is the third episode of the series and the second with Michael building a strong connection with a young boy. And it does not stop there because the boy is also very fascinated with Michael's car, as were most likely the watching kid audience at home, who then immediately went to their parents and screamed at them to buy the toy K.I.T.T. car for them – and voila, merchandise money!
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| When you do not have to ride a bike for the camera, you have all the time in the world to chat. |
The climactic chase scenes were fun to watch, but mostly because I could see that they were done for the stunt driving and accidents, and not for the logic of it all. When one of the bikes was crashing into the lake, you could see the black Trans-Am stopped to the left of the screen, with the back part of the car still visible, although the situation of the scene demanded for the car to still be driving. Not to mention that all the bikers were idiots for being this easily outmaneuvered by Michael during the entire chase. He just did a quick 180-degree drift, and that confused the bikers so much that some of them fell off their bikes and could not continue the chase any longer.
But hey, this was a proper chase scene in general, and it took a couple of minutes to conclude. As long as I do not have to witness some of that cringe-level acting, I will take those car chases, even if they will probably become repetitive after a short while. Anything to not force me to watch Michael flirt with the young attractive guest star of the week...
