Baywatch - S05E06 and 07

S05E06 - Short Sighted

I watched this yesterday so it is fading in my memory, I have it playing in the background to remind me.

I realised that in post production, montages are the perfect way to pad out an episode to the correct length, specifically important back when TV shows had to be more specific with their lengths. Simply film the story scenes first and then pad out the rest with montages. This one starts with a montage of Logan and Caroline qualifying to be life guards through a race, of sorts. Older episodes have had this race before but spend entire stories on them, I'm glad they didn't do that again. Also in the past, they've been more like obstacle courses.

'B' Story

I should point out that Logan qualifying is just for the position there in America, he isn't a rookie, he is an experienced life guard from Australia. This part of the episode is about Caroline not being able to concentrate on work because she's working with Logan, who she is no longer dating. We barely saw them date or do much together at all before this happened, by the way. Stephanie, her sister, tries to help via nepotism, which leads to Caroline getting missed off, because she wants to fight her own battles. I think the message was that Stephanie was wrong but Caroline comes across as such an ungrateful, selfish person, that it doesn't land as well as the show writers wanted it to. The sisters make up in the end.

'A' Story

This story is about a 'little person' called Simon. On the baywatch.fandom site and in the episode he is referred to as a dwarf, but I think this is considered offensive nowadays. So I'll call him a little person even though it sounds just as silly, in my opinion.

Simon and has a son called Nick, I think, and Nick is ashamed to have a dad who is a little person. They explain why this is a new thing by saying they only recently met, after Nicks mum left her husband and didn't let him see his son. I'm telling you the story here even though I don't want to just re-write the kinds of things you find on Wiki pages!

Though that's perhaps because there's not actually much to say about the story. It's heart felt and I see what they're going for. It's noble and a nice message to tell the audience, which is not to be prejudice and that the love for your family is important. However, there's not much to say beyond that when it comes to writing a review sort of thing here on a blog. Also, because it's 1994/1995 Baywatch, it comes across as incredibly corny at times. I think there was a montage of Simon walking around with a sad song in the background and the song was so cheesy. It's a 'look how sad some peoples lives are' story which I respect, but seems dated. Nowadays people with disabilities are more often put into normal stories that aren't about their disabilities. But then again, I don't have numbers on that and perhaps the absence of these kinds of episodes is a bad thing. Maybe making people aware that they should be compassionate is a good thing that is missed now, but who knows, I dunno. Overall I didn't mind this episode, though.

Matt is nice in this episode. I mean... come to think of it, this character is now played as the perfect human being. It's funny to think he was supposed to be a bit of a rebel when he was first introduced.

More interesting to me is that when I looked up Simon because I forgot that name, I found out that the actor, Ed Gale, played as Chucky in some of the Child's Play movies, including the first two. I love those movies. Anyway, I'm leaving it at that, this is a shorter write-up than usual but still too long. I need too spend less time writing about Baywatch, I'm thinking I really should be spending more time doing more important things and I'm already one episode behind.

S05E07 - Someone to Baywatch Over You

On Freevee they incorrectly call this episode 'Someone to Baywatch Over Your'. I have very little time so let's try to smash this one out quickly.

'B' Story

Matt rescues a woman called Angela who now wants to be his servant out of gratitude, she's from a small village who does this out of tradition. This is a lighthearted, mostly comical story involving Matt and C.J. trying to fake Matt having an accident. So that Angela can rescue him and therefor break things even so they can get rid of her. The montage of the two of them unsuccessfully setting up fake accidents for Matt was amusing, though it would have been funnier if when the random boys find him in the hole, they just started to bury him.

I noticed that Angela was played by the same actress who was in that episode where Mitch gets a house maid, seems like the show doesn't have many choices when it comes to actresses with foreign accidents. Hang on, I just realised, even the story is similar - The foreigner waits on someone hand and foot in both episodes. The conclusion to this story wasn't mind blowing but I didn't see it coming.

'A' Story

It's a crime story but the focus isn't the crime for once, it's F.B.I. agent being a dick to Mitch. It's not bad and a little different from usual, as in, I can't think of any old episodes it's like. However, there's not much to say about it. It's mostly just Mitch and the agent, who happens to be an attractive woman, I might add, arguing because she doesn't respect his job. It's revealed at the end which I didn't expect or even think about, but I appreciated them explaining it. It ends with an action sequence of them chasing the criminals in a speed boat because of course it does. Actually that's not true, it ends with Mitch wooing the agent because we could never have a woman not fancying Mitch, could we.

Overall it was a good episode, not great, just good.