Season 1, Episode 18
Date of airing: March 4, 1983 (NBC)
Nielsen ratings information: 12.99 million Households, 15.6 rating/24 share in Households
Written by: Virginia Aldridge
Directed by: Winrich Kolbe
”I read about a bird once, a long time ago. A white bird. It eats, sleeps, spends its entire life in flight. It never lands. That's its purpose, it's destiny. To fly forever.”
Maybe David Hasselhoff can act? He surely managed to make me care a little bit more than usual about his character, now that he had to fight against his emotions when facing his girl from his past. Not that Hasselhoff managed to cry in front of the camera, but he was close to it, turning the otherwise conspiratorial thriller story into something more dramatic and worthwhile for the characters, simply because of Michael and Stevie's shared backstory.
It did help that guest star Catherine Hickland was Hasselhoff's then-girlfriend (they got married in 1984 and divorced in 1989; in 1992, she got married to soap opera actor Michael E. Knight – what a coincidence), which not only made her an interesting guest star for the show who managed to get some acting chops out of the star, but she was also the ninth woman guest star of the week whose character tasted the lips of Michael Knight. Only with the twist that Stevie also tasted the lips (and the entire body, in fact) of Michael Long before the show even started.
Stevie's existence in the plot also opened up the question of whether Michael was ever allowed to have a life outside of the Foundation and being K.I.T.T.'s driver. Granted, the man is known to have a lady waiting for him in every corner of the country (which is something K.I.T.T. generally makes fun of), but settling down and having a family? I guess working the case and saving Stevie from big-shot mobsters means that he made his decision not to be with her and instead continue fighting crime. And just like Stevie's story about the bird, Michael continues to fly because he is on a mission, and he has been taking that mission seriously. It's his destiny to fight crime and protect the innocent, of which Stevie happened to be one.
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| The beautiful woman says goodbye and leaves Michael to save the world again. |
