KNIGHT RIDER: Deadly Maneuvers

Season 1, Episode 2
Date of airing: October 1, 1982 (NBC)
Nielsen ratings information: 12.83 million Households, 15.4 rating/26 share in Households

Written by: William Schmidt, Bob Shayne
Directed by: Paul Stanley

 

”K.I.T.T., go to manual. We're stopping.”

“Really? Why, is there a young lady in the vicinity?”

Apparently, Michael and K.I.T.T. got into some more adventures between the pilot movie and this episode, because the car already knows all of Michael's horny little behaviors. The fact that K.I.T.T. is all in on assisting Michael, helping young, attractive women with their issues, makes the car Michael's best wingman ever. A wingcar, so to speak. Then again, Michael and Robin Ladd weren't locking lips in this episode, and she was a little more hesitant to see in Michael more than just her knight in black Trans-Am armor than Maggie was in the pilot movie. However, the two were still allowed to flirt a little, and Michael once again experienced that his good looks and his good-looking car helped him gain trust from women immediately. They accept his help and take a seat in his car without hesitation.

The story was pretty bonkers. It's only the second episode, and Michael was already dealing with tactical nuclear weapons, which were the size of a normal ordinance rocket, about the length and twice the size of your arm. Everybody on this base, even the villains, acted stupidly around the ordinances, not to mention the fact that characters were entering the cell in which the nukes were stored without check-ins or any other military presence right outside the building. Michael could have walked out of that base with a bunch of nukes in his trunk, and no one would have been the wiser.

But the action during the climax looked neat for an early-1980s show. A bunch of explosions, the hero stunt car (and its stunt driver) making sharp turns, rockets flying through the air... Impressive stuff, and most likely not cheap to film, considering the number of trucks that blew up here.

 

Michael Knight's power stance: Leaning against a wall, with a hand on his hip.