![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
It never ceases to amaze me just how much of my life I seem to have dedicated to slightly dodgy American action adventure shows. Browsing through the old video collection I've found two episodes of Team: Knight Rider. There may well be more. Two episodes is probably two too many for a lot of people, and I know that Knight Rider purists loathe it. I can't help but have some fondness for the thing, though.
It's a flawed show, which is something of an understatement. The production values are hilarious, for starters; there's a lot of very ropey acting; and the villains tend towards the mad, cackling kind. And how come there's so many megalomaniacs in America?! For all its faults, it is quite engaging all the same.
As the name suggests, it's based on Knight Rider, with hi-tech, talking cars built by the Foundation for Law and Government. There's no Michael Knight this time around. Instead the opening narration explains how, in the eighties, all that was needed was one man and one machine to fight off the bad guys. Now apparently it needs a team. Five agents and four and a half cars, mostly driven by the wonders of bad CSO. I'm not sure why there's five of them, as only one of them ever really does anything, and most of the others can't act. It's the most rubbish team in the history of law enforcement. We have Kyle, an ex-CIA agent with a dodgy past; his glamorous XO Jenny, who may be Michael Knight's daughter, but isn't sure yet; Duke, who's the obligatory black tough guy; Erica, an ex-thief with a serious hairspray fetish; and a desperately annoying whizkid called Trek. Duke is cool, and so is his car, but they're both black, so they never really get to do anything. Jenny and Erica both have promise as characters, but are played by people who couldn't be bothered to act. Trek's just downright annoying. Even worse, he and Erica drive hilariously awful motorbikes, that spend half of their time clipped together into a novelty car that looks like it's made out of cardboard. The only one who actually does any crime-fighting is Kyle, a short, scrawny, approximately ginger loose cannon, who drives a fabulously superior and snarky MPV called Dante. Whereas the rest of the team can't rustle up much of interest between them, Kyle busies himself having half a dozen shady background stories, all the best dialogue (out of the humans - Dante easily wins over all), and an on-going plot involving an unexpectedly flirty supercriminal only he can see, who speaks through an electronic voice-changer that doesn't even slightly hide the fact that he's David McCallum. It's a wonder that he has any time left to fight bad guys.
There's a lot of humour in TKR, which goes some way to papering over the shortcomings. In one episode, for instance, the team accidentally blow up the Washington Monument. Twice. It helps to make the show entertaining, but it also makes it very difficult to work out what exactly the writers were aiming for when they put it together. People get killed in abundance, America nearly gets blown up on a regular basis, and our (supposed) heroes are forever in fear for their lives; and yet half of them speak solely in punchlines, and the appalling acting and obviously fake driving make it all look like it was put together by Ed Wood. It's entertaining enough, but it's absolute nonsense, and I can't help wondering how it got made - let alone how it got David McCallum. Maybe he was bored. That would go some way to explaining why he keeps flirting with Kyle.
I like the idea of this show, I really do. Knight Rider had a good idea behind it, certainly, and there's no reason why it shouldn't be updated with modern technology. It got another makeover a few years later, so somebody else must have thought so too, although I didn't see that version. Why so many people in the team, though?! Kyle and Dante together are great. Duke and his truck "The Beast" are very good in support, and if they'd combined Jenny and Erica into one character, and cast somebody who could act in the role, that should have been all the team that they needed. Instead we get all these characters running around and bumping each other, and never having anything to do. And Erica and Trek's cars are really, really awful. Really. Awful.
Really.
Pictures. Because what the hell, I've got the show on the hard drive now.
Avengers Assemble.
Kyle...
... and Dante, who I suspect may have been modelled on Devon Miles, but with added sarcasm.
Duke...
... and The Attack Beast, a pretty cool car with attitude, who is absolutely smitten with Jenny.
Jenny herself...
... and her car Domino, who is also pretty cool, and entertainingly flirtatious. At this point the show's creators clearly ran out of imagination, meaning that...
Erica...
... and Trek...
... got saddled with these two monstrosities, Kat and Plato. If they look at all like Troy and Dillon's flying motorbikes from Galactica 1980, that's probably because that's exactly what they are. But fear not! For whenever danger is afoot (or Erica and Trek just don't want to fall over every time there's a slight wind), the lame-o-cycles convert into...
... this. Yeah. I'm not sure how it happens. Whenever they get close to each other there's a flash of light, and by the wonders of nineties CGI, the middle bit just sort of appears out of nowhere. Then hey presto, there's a fabulous cardboard car to fight crime in. If you're really, really lucky, and the criminals don't have anything faster than a giant tortoise to escape on, this might somehow be of use. Maybe. Since Erica and Trek's vehicles spend most of their time not actually existing, all of their in-vehicle scenes are done in a studio, with terrible backdrops, meaning that half of the time they needn't have bothered turning up. It's not a good arrangement, especially if you're trying to be dynamic.
The show has definite consolations, though.
Roughly every five minutes, like clockwork. Speaking of which...
... "Kaboom!" goes the Washington Monument. Shortly afterwards they hit it again. Just in case once wasn't enough.
And do actually get cut off at "Holy sh--", which is quite nice. The show works well when it's not really attempting to be serious. I just wish it did half as well when it's trying to be dramatic and exciting.
The bomb that did for the Washington Monument (the second time). The fact that it's clearly a doctored cotton reel should in no way be taken to be illustrative of the show's budget.
David McCallum. Or, rather more likely, a stand-in with David McCallum's voice. Whoever he is, he's a genius megalomaniac who has clearly known Kyle for years. For a while they seemed to be hinting that he might be Kyle's estranged, traitor father, although if he is, the flirting would be a little hard to explain. He likes blowing stuff up, anyhow. Naturally this makes him very welcome, although annoyingly the show got axed before we got to find out exactly why he likes blowing stuff up. Or what his connection to Kyle is, or anything else really. I completely understand why the show was axed, as it's mostly terrible, but they could at least have ended it first.
So, yeah. Team: Knight Rider, then. Or How To Get A Pretty Good Idea, And Then Screw It Up. That is a slightly less catchy title though, I'll grant you.
It's a flawed show, which is something of an understatement. The production values are hilarious, for starters; there's a lot of very ropey acting; and the villains tend towards the mad, cackling kind. And how come there's so many megalomaniacs in America?! For all its faults, it is quite engaging all the same.
As the name suggests, it's based on Knight Rider, with hi-tech, talking cars built by the Foundation for Law and Government. There's no Michael Knight this time around. Instead the opening narration explains how, in the eighties, all that was needed was one man and one machine to fight off the bad guys. Now apparently it needs a team. Five agents and four and a half cars, mostly driven by the wonders of bad CSO. I'm not sure why there's five of them, as only one of them ever really does anything, and most of the others can't act. It's the most rubbish team in the history of law enforcement. We have Kyle, an ex-CIA agent with a dodgy past; his glamorous XO Jenny, who may be Michael Knight's daughter, but isn't sure yet; Duke, who's the obligatory black tough guy; Erica, an ex-thief with a serious hairspray fetish; and a desperately annoying whizkid called Trek. Duke is cool, and so is his car, but they're both black, so they never really get to do anything. Jenny and Erica both have promise as characters, but are played by people who couldn't be bothered to act. Trek's just downright annoying. Even worse, he and Erica drive hilariously awful motorbikes, that spend half of their time clipped together into a novelty car that looks like it's made out of cardboard. The only one who actually does any crime-fighting is Kyle, a short, scrawny, approximately ginger loose cannon, who drives a fabulously superior and snarky MPV called Dante. Whereas the rest of the team can't rustle up much of interest between them, Kyle busies himself having half a dozen shady background stories, all the best dialogue (out of the humans - Dante easily wins over all), and an on-going plot involving an unexpectedly flirty supercriminal only he can see, who speaks through an electronic voice-changer that doesn't even slightly hide the fact that he's David McCallum. It's a wonder that he has any time left to fight bad guys.
There's a lot of humour in TKR, which goes some way to papering over the shortcomings. In one episode, for instance, the team accidentally blow up the Washington Monument. Twice. It helps to make the show entertaining, but it also makes it very difficult to work out what exactly the writers were aiming for when they put it together. People get killed in abundance, America nearly gets blown up on a regular basis, and our (supposed) heroes are forever in fear for their lives; and yet half of them speak solely in punchlines, and the appalling acting and obviously fake driving make it all look like it was put together by Ed Wood. It's entertaining enough, but it's absolute nonsense, and I can't help wondering how it got made - let alone how it got David McCallum. Maybe he was bored. That would go some way to explaining why he keeps flirting with Kyle.
I like the idea of this show, I really do. Knight Rider had a good idea behind it, certainly, and there's no reason why it shouldn't be updated with modern technology. It got another makeover a few years later, so somebody else must have thought so too, although I didn't see that version. Why so many people in the team, though?! Kyle and Dante together are great. Duke and his truck "The Beast" are very good in support, and if they'd combined Jenny and Erica into one character, and cast somebody who could act in the role, that should have been all the team that they needed. Instead we get all these characters running around and bumping each other, and never having anything to do. And Erica and Trek's cars are really, really awful. Really. Awful.
Really.
Pictures. Because what the hell, I've got the show on the hard drive now.
Avengers Assemble.
Kyle...
... and Dante, who I suspect may have been modelled on Devon Miles, but with added sarcasm.
Duke...
... and The Attack Beast, a pretty cool car with attitude, who is absolutely smitten with Jenny.
Jenny herself...
... and her car Domino, who is also pretty cool, and entertainingly flirtatious. At this point the show's creators clearly ran out of imagination, meaning that...
Erica...
... and Trek...
... got saddled with these two monstrosities, Kat and Plato. If they look at all like Troy and Dillon's flying motorbikes from Galactica 1980, that's probably because that's exactly what they are. But fear not! For whenever danger is afoot (or Erica and Trek just don't want to fall over every time there's a slight wind), the lame-o-cycles convert into...
... this. Yeah. I'm not sure how it happens. Whenever they get close to each other there's a flash of light, and by the wonders of nineties CGI, the middle bit just sort of appears out of nowhere. Then hey presto, there's a fabulous cardboard car to fight crime in. If you're really, really lucky, and the criminals don't have anything faster than a giant tortoise to escape on, this might somehow be of use. Maybe. Since Erica and Trek's vehicles spend most of their time not actually existing, all of their in-vehicle scenes are done in a studio, with terrible backdrops, meaning that half of the time they needn't have bothered turning up. It's not a good arrangement, especially if you're trying to be dynamic.
The show has definite consolations, though.
Roughly every five minutes, like clockwork. Speaking of which...
... "Kaboom!" goes the Washington Monument. Shortly afterwards they hit it again. Just in case once wasn't enough.
And do actually get cut off at "Holy sh--", which is quite nice. The show works well when it's not really attempting to be serious. I just wish it did half as well when it's trying to be dramatic and exciting.
The bomb that did for the Washington Monument (the second time). The fact that it's clearly a doctored cotton reel should in no way be taken to be illustrative of the show's budget.
David McCallum. Or, rather more likely, a stand-in with David McCallum's voice. Whoever he is, he's a genius megalomaniac who has clearly known Kyle for years. For a while they seemed to be hinting that he might be Kyle's estranged, traitor father, although if he is, the flirting would be a little hard to explain. He likes blowing stuff up, anyhow. Naturally this makes him very welcome, although annoyingly the show got axed before we got to find out exactly why he likes blowing stuff up. Or what his connection to Kyle is, or anything else really. I completely understand why the show was axed, as it's mostly terrible, but they could at least have ended it first.
So, yeah. Team: Knight Rider, then. Or How To Get A Pretty Good Idea, And Then Screw It Up. That is a slightly less catchy title though, I'll grant you.