Musings of a Virgin

Just watched the premiere of Knight Rider last night and I really have to comment on just HOW BAD IT WAS. They did a 2 hour pilot of this show over a year ago and were met with a very luke warm reception from the audience. Even the most staunch Knight Rider gave it an ok, most others (me included) had less than favorable things to say about it.

For some unknown reason, this show is now making its debut and you would think that after a year to retool the show and make it better, there would be some redeeming qualities about it. You would be wrong.

PLOT/WRITING
The biggest problem with this show is the writing/plot. That entire first show was about showing off the car (understandable) and some action scenes, with a paper thin plot line about Micheal's mysterious history which he can't remember and seems to be the main focus of the show for at least the next few episodes.

OH MY GOD!!! Have these asshats seen recent shows? Burn Notice? Chuck? Heck even Jake 2.0 had better plot lines. The entire first episode was all about showing off how much $$$ they could spend on special effects and make the plot fit into the action scenes. Where's the intelligent or witty conversations, where's the scenes which make Michael seem cool? where's the plot that even The Love Boat had a better grasp on?

THE CAR
This is the 21st century. We've seen a hell of a lot of special effects and are very spoilt. We expect all TV shows to have movie quality effects. KITT (the car) is supposed to be the main emphasis of the show, and it FAILS!!! I am not a car person and even I thought the original KITT from the 80's was a cool car. There is NOTHING cool about the current KITT. Its a car has a "superior" AI and some gadgets included as well. Did no one think that perhaps liquid metal might be a better idea? A car that can morph into other vehicles (with some limitations), or a hover/flying ability, or SOMETHING cool. Something we have not seen before.

But no, this car's emblem changes from a "snake" in normal form into a cobra when its in attack mode. It has a very annoying AI voice which does not seem to be any smarter than the original KITT which is very bad given that its been 30 years and we have super dumb lines like "you can't feel KITT, you're a computer". Michael actually said that line to KITT in the show. Its like this guy has never seen any TV shows like TERMINATOR or Matrix or Battlestar Galactica, in today's world, we expect our AI to be very much more than human and we expect our heroes to be more intelligent than to say a line like that.

SIDEKICKS
OH LORD. Again, did they hire the casting director and writers from 1980? In this decade we like our sidekicks smart, fun and having the ability to carry the show or play off the main cast. Take a note from "The Big Bang Theory", "Will and Grace", "Prison Break", "Burn Notice", "Eureka".

You know what this show has? A nerdy but brainy person who is their tech guy that everyone seems to look down on and faints at the sight of blood. A hot asian chick who constantly spouts one-liners and loves to tease the nerdy guy. And a black female FBI agent who has an attitude problem and makes you want to smack her.

Super bland, one dimensional sidekicks that we've seen from the 1980's. I'll admit that some current shows also suffer from one dimensional sidekicks, but they usually have other redeeming qualities.


EYE CANDY
Knight Rider is an action show. And as such it needs eye candy. The 2 main leads of the show are Deanna Russo and Justin Bruening, Now I think the girls are fairly hot, but I'm not exactly a good judge on that department. I can however comment on Justin Bruening.

15 mins into the show there is a scene where both of them need to undress in the car at high speed because KITT was just hit by a missile and was now burning on the outside (liquid) nalpham and the temperature was rising fast inside. (I kid you not, this was the actual plot - Like taking off your clothes in the confines of a car helps any in this situation).

Don't get me wrong, I would kill for a body like Justin Bruening. But on a action TV star, his body is a B-. Wentworth Miller in Prison Break, Jeffrey Donovan in Burn Notice, Robert Buckley in Lipstick Jungle. Those are hot men that fans fantasize about, build websites and web shrines to and constantly scour the internet for shirtless pics for. I've seen some very hot photos of Justin on the web but perhaps he should have hit the gym before taking off his shirt for his "BIG BREAK".

To sum up, what does this show have going for it? ... ... ... ... Hmmmm... it does have high production values which all prime time shows have.

Don't even bother to acknowledge the existence of this remake.

Labels: TV

Posted by emyln on Saturday, September 27, 2008 at 6:18 AM | Permalink