Baywatch - S04E05 - Sky Rider Review

 

I'm going to have to keep this one short because I don't have the time and even though I like it, there's not much to say. Sky Rider is a decent episode but I doubt it's popular with most viewers. After two pretty dramatic outings, we get a mostly fluffy one. I think I prefer the 'slice of life' stories in Baywatch now, just like this one. By season 4, there's been a bit too many stories about some criminal lurking about, they're all similar to each other and predictable because the format of he show would never let anything truly serious to happen. I think the three stories here are evenly divided but I'll list them by letters anyway.

'C' Story

It's a story about thieves on the beach, stealing purses I think. It's a Mitch and what's his name story, you know, the cop who vanishes from the show for chunks and then appears back at the end of the opening credits. He keeps disappearing for about six episodes at a time and is stories are mostly all the same so I forget his name. It's mostly a joke story, he wants to use a horse on the beach for... reasons. Like his quad bike can run out of fuel. Dude the quad bike is way cooler and easier to use and maintain. He captures the criminals and is then he's not allowed to keep the horse, what a surprise. The show has to go back to its status quo, after all

'B' Story

Slade returns which wasn't that surprising because I forgot to mention something in my previous review - When Summer talks to Jackie about dating Brody, Jackie does mention that Brody and Slade being friends is going to be a problem. They put that line in there knowing that's a story in the next episode. Finally a love triangle story in Baywatch but it's only for this episode and it does in some strange directions, things just kind of happen so I'll explain them in that way - Slade and Brody have a little fight but they're mates so they stop. Summer can't decide who to date which seemed a bit odd considering how over Slade she was in a previous episode. This leads to the most random thing I've seen in Baywatch, Summer gets a eating disorder in-which she scoffs down loads of chocolates and cakes. This was supposed to be serious and a bit dark but the show doesn't portray it well, mostly because it comes out of nowhere and then vanishes just as fast.

Summer wants the two dudes to decide for her and unknown to her, they also want to choose for her because they know she's stressed about it. Who will date Summer? They decide over a contest, they'll bungee jump out of a hot air balloon. This of course goes wrong, Slade almost drowns. It ends with a surprising and lame conclusion, Summer chooses to just be friends with the both of them, which they barely react to. So the Summer and Brody relationship barely lasted any time at all, this show still doesn't want to do another 'Shauni and Eddie' for some reason, it seems.

'A' Story

This story is about C.J., it's perhaps not the 'A' story but I'm putting it here because it slightly over-laps with Summers story, which Baywatch doesn't normally do. Also C.J. pops up in the other two stories as foil, as in, for the other characters to just talk to. The problem with this C.J. outing is that it's like almost all of her other ones - she gets into a relationship with some overly romantic dude who turns out to be a bit of a jerk or a big jerk. They're always about the dude doing a bunch of overly romantic gestures to get her attention, it's always predictable because we know he's not going to continue to be on the show.

Her boyfriend this time is a hot air balloon pilot, yes, Slade and Brody jump out of his balloon. She gets annoyed at him because he does unsafe stuff, leaves him and he just walks away, barely seeming to care.

And that's the end. Actually it doesn't sound like I enjoyed this episode does it, even though I said I did at the beginning of this review. I guess breaking down the stories like this revealed their weaknesses but it didn't feel bad because the episode jumps around the three stories a lot.

Baywatch - S04E04 - Blindside Review

 

Baywatch brings us a second sad episode in a row, which is odd.

'B' Story

Hobie gets another story straight after his previous 'Lover's Cove', though he's not exactly the focus - He meets a "friendly giant" from a local carnival... or fairground... with a bit of a freak-show thrown in too. This dude is called Manuel and he is one of those guys who does look a bit too big for it to be healthy. His acting is virtually non-existent but I did feel for him even though the whole evil freak-show boss thing is cliche. His boss is horrible to him but Hobie convinces the giant, who is a lovely, talented guy, that he can be more than just a fairground attraction where he's treated like a scary monster.

We don't even get to see Manuel confront his boss and leave him, it's done off camera. He opens a stall at the beach selling wood carvings of pelicans that he made himself, that's the last scene of the episode and it's rather abrupt. This story has some really forced and moments, like Manuel falling off a pier so we can have a scene of life guards rescuing him. Of course this is lead by Mitch, who just happens to be walking by with Hobie. I guess they were on their way to meet him anyway? Manuel falls off because a rather large group of knife wielding thugs decide to harass him, this is in the day time and feels as if the writers decided they had to have someone drowning no matter what. I guess this ordeal convinces Manuel to leave the freak-show job because the next scene of his is the aforementioned statue selling one. It's not explained why this changed his mind though, so it makes the drowning scene feel real random.

Time for a nit-pick - You get the impression that the fairground is new there, as in it probably tours around, it doesn't stay in one place for long. However there's a scene under a pier where it's revealed that Manuel has a secret wood carving workshop, it looks like it's been there forever.

'A' Story

I'm probably going to sound livid about the main story of this episode and that may be an accurate representation of my feelings, even though the episode was fairly entertaining overall and this story was better than Hobie's one. Well, I say 'better' but... OK I'll explain.

John D. Cort, a character who left the show a while back returns in a epic scene involving riding a horse in typical John D. Cort action hero fashion. Even though John wasn't in the show from the very beginning, he joined soon after so he's virtually one of the original characters in my eyes. He was also great, a real action hero who had some quite refreshing 'non-Baywatch' style episodes. However, it's all downhill from then on because they do this character a disservice. Both stories are sad in this episode, John's one being by far the saddest.

It turns out that something is wrong with John, I should have caught onto it quicker because the episode is called 'Blindside'. At first I thought he had a small sight problem or that he's blind in one eye but he's not letting anyone know, but he goes to a doctor and it turns out he's going completely blind and there's no cure. This is all revealed pretty much at the end of the story so I should say what else happened before that, so here goes; It turns out that C.J. and John had a relationship in the past, this was of course off camera because in reality, the character of C.J. didn't exist back when John was on the show. Not that it matters but canonically speaking their relationship probably happened before the Baywatch pilot. It actually makes sense because when John joined the show, we were told that he moves around a lot and has been a life guard at Baywatch before, pretty much the same thing is said of C.J. when she is introduced, Mitch new both of them before we did, basically.

John has a condition which is sort of like tunnel vision, his peripheral vision gets blurrier and fades away so that he can only see what's right in front of him. I don't know how he didn't notice this, perhaps he was in denial. He does mention that the doctor said the condition may have started a long time ago, that's it's slow and gradual. Before we find all of this out though, the writers of the show decided to make it sting for the viewers even more - John decides he wants to stop travelling, he's going to stay at Baywatch to be a life guard full time. His true passion. They make out that John and C.J. are back together too though I will say the actors on-screen chemistry isn't stellar.

 The reality is that the show creators probably just wanted to make a dramatic story and maybe the guy who portrays John was happy with a more serious story-line. But my over active imagination can't help but see this story as a kick in the teeth to one of the original Baywatch characters. It's even C.J., a newer character, or sort of grasses up John to Mitch, telling him that there's something wrong with John. Now, Mitch had noticed it too and C.J. was just concerned for John, but I see it from a new light if I think about new cast versus old cast. Yes, I'm over thinking it but it just popped into my head.

In 1993 the viewers may have thought John was going to be back on the show for a while, hell, I even thought it might happen for a bit. I knew he was coming back to the show but I didn't know for how long, I guessed it wasn't going to be for that long because I never saw photos of him from later seasons, but I didn't know it would be for only one episode. I it also feels depressing that they took such a cool, manly character from the shows history and gave him an incurable condition. Like, couldn't they just have left him alone? Having him not come back at all would have been better. His story ends with him leaving C.J. because he doesn't want her to deal with looking after him when he becomes completely blind. He then leaves Baywatch, unable to be a life guard anymore, actually I think I'll look up if he ever comes back...

I'm surprised, turns out he does come back but not for long. He's in one episode of season 5 and also the movie 'Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding' but I bet he's not in it much. Maybe a cameo? It came out ten years after 'Blindside' so surely John is blind by then. That'll be depressing.

Anyway back to 'Blindside'. In his last scene, John talks about wanting to see some more things in the world before he loses his sight completely, really sad.

Baywatch - S04E03 - Lover's Cove Review

 

'C' Story

The 'B' and 'C' stories are very short so I won't spend much time on them, they're both probably as short as each other so perhaps two 'B' stories would have been a better way of labelling them.

Summer and Matt start a romantic relationship. Even though I saw it coming, it wasn't built up properly so it felt sudden. Shauni and Eddies iconic Baywatch romance was built up from the idea that they bugged each other. Arguing and all that and then realising they love each other, it was kind of obvious what was going on and probably cliche even for the time but at least it took time. On the other hand at least they didn't just copy Shauni and Eddies relationship origin story. Half of this 'C' story is just a montage of Summer and Matt running about and playing basket ball, by the way. I predicted that there would be a scene where Summer explains why she's not with Slade anymore and I was right. She explains to her mum that Slade is always off surfing at tournaments far away and she's right, that's something we actually saw in the previous season. He always acted distant and like he was just Summers friend too, though I think that was more because of his bad acting than anything else.

'B' Story

I'm only prioritising this story over Matt and Summers one because the episode starts off with it and that beginning consists of a pretty well done action rescue scene. Mitch is on a date with Jackie, Summers mum, when someone falls asleep at the feel, in the day time I might add, and drives off a mountain into the sea. Mitch goes off to rescue her, of course. The story is all from Jackie's perspective, she likes Mitch and they've been on several dates but the sparks aren't exactly flying. That's about it really, they decide to just be friends at the end.

'A' Story

I can't believe "fake" Hobie went from being one of my least favourite characters to one of my favourites within three episodes, he's aged a little and his acting keeps improving. Also, is he more tanned now? Since this the main story of the episode, Hobie turns out to be the focus which I don't think has ever happened before. Least, not the second version of Hobie. It was surprising to see him have long scenes where he's the main character. If you include the old version of Hobie, he's had quite a few stories where he fancies some random girl, but this one completely blows the others out of the water.

At first I wasn't keen on it, especially when you find out a sad fact about his new love interest, I thought it was too much of a downer for Baywatch. It also came out of the blue. However that becomes the reason why it's such a good story and to be honest one of the best ones in Baywatch so far. It's the most heart wrenching, that's for sure, but to be honest that's not saying much, when compared to all the other Baywatch episodes before this one.

A little nit pick is that Hobie's actor still isn't great at acting in distress but he's getting better. Also they hold on a cross fade at the end of the episode and it looks bad, they didn't even bother to crop out the background of the photo that's on the top layer. They also cut away from it and then back to it again, which feels wrong. I'm wondering if this was even in the original version of the show or if they added in the remastered one.

I'm just being picky though. Some viewers will find this story corny but I liked it. It doesn't even have a happy ending which I kind of wanted because I'm a wimp when it comes to this kind of stuff, I wanted them to somehow magically fix the situation.

Baywatch - S04E02 - Race Against Time: Part 2 Review

 

I don't think there's much to say about this episode which is good because I don't have the time, not that it's a bad episode, it's perfectly fine. There was a good cliff hanger in the previous one, it leads to the scenario that takes up 85% of part 2. Hobie, Gayle and Ken are stuck underwater in Ken's private jet, Hobie and Ken are fine but Gayle is bleeding, stuck under wreckage and usually unconscious.

There's not much to say because most of this episode is an action sequence where Mitch, C.J. and a few of the bit-part crew are doing an underwater rescue. The wrecked inside of the plane, with water leading into it, is a convincing set. Ken is freaking out and fairly selfish while Hobie keeps calm and helps out his mum. The only surprising part is that Ken isn't revealed to be a bad person and dumped by Gayle when they're in the hospital after the rescue. You see, Gayle doesn't know how Ken acted because she was barely conscious. Hobie and Mitch know he wimped out but respect to Mitch for not grassing on him, it's funny though because he almost does. Ken says to Mitch something like "I'm not a coward but I'm also not a good hero, I do love Gayle though", which I think was a good line. They make it clear that Ken isn't a bad person, though the actor could have dialled down his freak-out mode while in the plane. It was a bit much, so much so that it made him look too much like he was going to be a villain. Let's now say farewell to Ken, I doubt he'll ever be in the show again. Gayle will dump him off screen and we'll probably never hear why.

Gayle randomly says that she was wrong, that Hobie belongs with his dad at Baywatch. How many times has she said that now? That's the end of the 'A' story, the other two stories from part 1 are then wrapped up with barely any time left. Though to be fair they're clearly setups for a new status quo for a few characters, albeit a small one. Matt's dad takes away his motorbike so he's just like, screw you, I'm going to stay in Baywatch. I guess because Matt thinks his dad is too forceful.

We briefly see C.J. grimace at the fact that Matt will have to stay at her place longer, along with Stephanie, who seems fine with it. We never saw this happen in part 1 but it was mentioned that he'd now be homeless because his dad is cutting him off. Seeing C.J.'s reaction isn't important but Baywatch doesn't normally do any foreshadowing at all. This will probably lead to nothing more than comical high jinks where they don't get along under the same roof, knowing Baywatch, this will only be for half of one episode. If I wasn't more familiar with the show, I'd have guessed that it was to setup a season long story, but I would have been wrong. But who knows, maybe I'll be wrong, maybe it'll start off a romance between them.

The third and final story is the one about Jackie starting up a restaurant. She complains to Summer about how much it's costing to get it refurbished, then a load of life guards appear with hammers and nails to help her out. A montage entails which involves splashed paint and random "jokes" like oh look, C.J. is tired. This is portrait by her having her eyes closed and sometimes laying down. I know I'm pointing out a pointless thing here, it's like I notice these little things. Decades ago, a director or writer told Pamela Anderson to look tired in a montage. I'm not saying it wasn't needed, you need characterisation even in a little montage. By the way it felt a little having a montage so close to the end of an episode, it's because the plane crash story took up so much space.

Random Thoughts on Hobie

Like I said before, Hobie's actor is gradually getting better and this episode finally convinced me that he is actually Mitch's son. I still wish they hadn't replaced the actor, though. A while ago I accidentally had something spoiled for me - He is in the show for a long time, possibly all of the rest of its run. It was when I saw the actor had been changed, I saw his photo on the Baywatch fan site, I was confused because he looked totally different. But it turns out that he's on the show for so long, that he becomes an adult. It doesn't even look like the same dude when he's older. Clearly he works out and becomes like all the other life guards on the show. This episode ended with Mitch and Hobie chatting while walking on the beach, something that is becoming a common occurrence.

Guido Torzini and the passing of actors

He's not in these episodes so my resolve was weakened, I looked up if he's in the show anymore. I was right in an earlier post when I said I wouldn't be surprised if he was taken out of the show, it turns out it happened even sooner than I thought. In fact I think I wrote that just after seeing 'Stakeout at Surfrider Beach', it turns out that was his last episode. I don't like to see any characters leave, but it's Guido, so I'll get over it. The actor was actually in an earlier episode with Shauni and the rest of the original cast but I don't think he was playing as Guido, even though the character acted virtually the same. So I think this will be the true farewell to him showing up as anyone else in Baywatch.

I looked him up just now, he was played by a guy called Buzz Belmondo who is no longer with us, I'm not surprised since he looked pretty old in season 3. Guido wasn't a great character but it's sad to hear this about anyone. I will never even get close to achieving as much as he did in his life. Without even looking up what else he did, just being in Baywatch was a massive achievement. He worked beside some hugely famous people, beautiful people, talented people. If anyone is reading my stupid, crappy blog, I know Baywatch isn't a respected show, but the amount of work put into it is still far more than normal average people like me experience. We can all list off "better" TV shows but it still takes a lot of skill and effort from hundreds of people to even make a corny show like this.

Baywatch - S04E01 - Race Against Time: Part 1 Review

Even though there were things I wanted to say about the rest of season 3, I don't have the energy or time to do so, so I'm going to skip forward to season 4.

Race Against Time: Part 1 Review

The final episode of season 3 was a pretty normal, single part story but season 4 starts off with a two parter. The title doesn't make sense until the end, though I did realise what was going to happen a few minutes before it did.

The 'A' Story

Gayle Buchannon returns to the show for the first time in ages. She's here to visit Mitch and Hobie but doesn't tell them that shes bring along her fiancee, who no one knew existed. This makes her look like a horrible person but to be fair, it's only done because it's a cliche TV show writing thing to do. If Mitch new she had a boyfriend, off camera or from a phone call, and knew that the boyfriend was coming to visit too, then the show couldn't have his and Hobie's shocked reaction at their front door. Mitch also goes through the emotions of sadness, jealously and anger throughout the episode, which would have seen out of place if he already knew about Gayle's fiancee. I mean, they could have still done it, but he wouldn't have been caught off guard and why would he have agreed to let the bloke come over in the first place.

Matt and the 'B' Story

Matt's dad wants to move back to Europe and take Matt with him. I like the Matt Brody character but this story, which gets little screen time in this episode, is such old ground for Baywatch, I kind of can't believe they're doing it. It's only the start of season 4 and they've already done this so many times, the one that sticks out to me though is the Shauni one, of course. Shauni is a character who isn't in the show anymore, she had a rich dad who didn't think her job as a life guard was important and didn't like how little it payed. In fact they did this story for Shauni twice, which made no sense since her dad Shauni save someones life which made him understand the importance of her job. They did that in the first story so it was dumb how he seemed to forget all that in a later episode. I guess some people don't change, or that it's closer to reality, but it was more likely lazy writing.

The scene where Matt argues with his dad also looks exactly like the old one where Shauni talks to her dad, it looks like they're in the same location. They even did a similar story concerning Mitch and his dad. Mitch's dad learns the error of his ways when he witnesses Mitch save someone, if they do that yet again with Matt, I'm going to lose my mind. Ok, ok, I sound like I'm more bothered about all of this than I actually am. At least Matt's actor shows some convincing stress in his scenes. However there is a montage later where he blows off steam by riding his bike. It's fine but the director must have told him to really sell that he's de-stressing, because Matt keeps fist pumping and looking overly happy while riding, it's kinda silly.

Also Matt's dad is played by a different actor which is a shame because the original one was good and seemed to have an interesting personality. This new one seems more generic, however he is older looking which come to think of it, Matt's original dad did seem a bit too young.

The 'C' Story

The 'B' and 'C' stories may get equal screen time, to be fair, so the 'C' story may just be a second 'B' one. Summers mum, Jackie Quinn, wants to move back to where they came from because she can't find a job, Summer would go with her but she doesn't want to, of course. Jackie doesn't want her daughter to be unhappy so she spends all of her savings to open a restaurant, it needs to be refurbished first though.

A little nitpick - The restaurant that Jackie gets, it's first mentioned by Summer. Her mum wants to go get food there and Summer tells her that it closed down, they both say that it's a shame because the it was the best food around. This makes it sound like it recently shut down, but when Jackie goes to take a look, it looks like it's been closed for decades. It's boarded up with ancient looking wood and the windows are thick with dirt, Jackie has to wipe it away to look inside.

Jackie Quinn

Having Jackie pop up in this episode make me realise how long it's been since we've seen her, that's a shame because she's a good character and a good actor. Her and Summers chemistry is great, too.

Summer Quinn

I don't know why I'm sometimes including their full names in these titles, and sometimes not. I haven't got much to say about Summer for this one, she's not in it much. Summer is a character who I thought was going to be in the show a lot from her introduction at the start of season 3, but she really isn't. I also recently saw a picture which looked like it was from season 4 - Matt, who was brought into the show at the same time as Summer, was there but Summer wasn't. By the way it was totally by accident that I saw that, I was watching a Youtube video which had nothing to do with Baywatch but a clip of it popped up for a second. The video was about old video games award shows on TV in the USA. They were talking about a TV channel in the early 2000's so they were showing clips from that channel, I think it was called Spike.tv. Come to think of it, the early 2000's? That is way past season 4 of Baywatch, which was 1993, so perhaps I'm wrong the clip being from season 5. Unless Brody stays in the show for super long, but I doubt it.

C.J.

We see C.J. for a few seconds, she wasn't important in this episode. I was surprised how little she was in season 3, perhaps she'll start turning up on season 4 more often.

Kelly Slater (Slade)

I noticed that Slade is still at the end of the opening sequence but he isn't credited and he's not on screen for as long. I'm not surprised, he was a terrible actor so I'm assuming he's either gone for good, or soon to be taken out of the show. I'm sure they won't make any story out of Summer and Slade breaking up, that's not the Baywatch way. However they might have a single, short line explaining that he moved away, they've certainly done that before.

Gayle

I did spoil things a little for myself a while back, when it comes to this character. I did accidentally see online that this character is in the show very little from around season 2 onwards. I think she's almost entirely gone after this two part story until fight at the end of Baywatch's run.

Gayle was briefly portrait as an antagonist way back in the early days of season 1 but we soon learn that she's an alright person and an alright mum. In 'Face Against Time: Part 1' they decided to forgot all of her progression and make her just like she was in early season 1. It doesn't feel right, it feels out of character now. In fact the story is even a regression back to her original main one, which is that she wants Hobie to leave Baywatch and go live with her far away. This all felt repetitive and silly since they already resolved that story ages ago.

Mitch

David Hasselhoff shows some good acting here, the anger and jealously, mostly played up in a slightly committal way, is fun. He's also sad about Gayle which really came through to me in his performance. 

Hobie

Jeremy Jackson playing as Hobie still irks me a little but you can tell that his acting is slowly getting better, apart from the end of the episode, that is. When the plane starts to show signs that it's going to crash, Hobie's fear is unconvincing. On the other hand, it's not as weird as Gayle's and her fiancee's reactions. They sit there looking barely concerned and just odd, I don't mean it looks like their acting direction was to try to 'try to look calm', I mean they look like they have barely any emotions at all. This is going on while Hobie is still on the phone with Mitch, saying how scared he is, while the other two saying nothing at all and just sort of look at him.

Stephanie Holden

She's in it a bit and as usual does some solid acting, but she's not important to this story, so far. For this one she's mostly used as a sounding board for Mitch's and Brody's drama.

Baywatch Season 3 and Review - S03E04: Rookie of the Year

My last post has two views?! Wow, scary. Maybe it's wasn't a real person.

Falling Behind on Baywatch Reviews and Still Missing Shauni and Eddie

I haven't written a blog post since the the 13th of June, which isn't a big gap compared to back in the day but it is for Baywatch reviews. I've fallen behind since I watch one episode almost every day. My last post was about the episode called 'Tequila Bay', I'm way ahead of that now. My pace of writing about Baywatch was already slowing down and I'm afraid it will probably only get worse. I'm still enjoying the show even though I do still miss Shauna, Eddie and to a lesser extent, the other old characters. Then again, they did all work together as a team, naturally, so it did feel nice to have them all together.

Getting to the End of Season 3 - Small Issues

The enjoyment factor is waning a little though, since more and more of the stories are starting to feel similar to season 1 and 2 episodes. They are often told a little differently and it doesn't happen loads, but I can imagine it becoming more frequent as the seasons go on. I wanted to write about these in more detail but since I've fallen behind, I can't remember the specifics, so here's just some vague examples off the top of my head - Hobie has a dream in-which is dad is injured, or killed, I can't remember which, while rescuing someone. He warns his dad who doesn't believe it but Hobie's warning eventually saves him. The dangerous event actually does happen. Wasn't there an episode just like this before? I can't quite remember it but there was some about a dream, for sure. Maybe it was Hobie again, but this time season 1's Hobie (the other actor). Isn't there also an episode in Season 3 where C.J. also has a premonition style dream? There's also a 'B' plot where it turns out that C.J. is addicted to gambling in casino's, I'm pretty sure there was an old episode about Eddie having similar issues, possibly in season 1. And then there's Harvey, who was only in season 2. He also had a gambling problem, if I remember correctly.

Another observation about season 3, about half way through the season, the Mitch focused stories become very frequent. Mitch is alright but there's just too many at that point.

I may have to skip reviewing most of season 3, or I'll just blast through them, writing only a few words about each. But for now I'll try to catch up.

Review - Season 3, Episode 4: Rookie of the Year

I'm going to review the rest of this season from the perspective of someone who has now seen all of the season, simply because I'll find it hard not to. Stephanie and C.J. move in together, they spend barely any time on this story, it's not important. I might be wrong but they may only spend two scenes on this story. Basically Stephanie is the tidy one and C.J' isn't.

The main story is about the rookie life guards competing to see who will be hired. We of course already know who gets the jobs because they are in previous episodes, in the intro and they're not extras, unlike almost everyone else who are competing.

Notes and Observations

- I had this episode running in the background, is it just my imagination or does it look more colourful than the last episodes of this season? Maybe they changed cameras.

- For season 3, I hate to admit it but the montages, especially the ones with under water shots, are often better than the ones in season's 1 and 2. The music, which I think was all replaced for this remastered edition, is also a bit better. Some of it actually sounds quite good and fitting, unlike some of the older, bootleg sounding tracks.

- It's funny how low effort the screenshots are for this episode on baywatch.fandom.com.

- Matt's dad is in this episode, he's quite a good actor and I kind of recognise him. Even though he's the typical mean dad character, I do like the dynamic between him and his son. Unfortunately we barely ever see him again, maybe he'll return in season 4.

- Guido Torzini briefly shows up, I didn't know he was going to be on the show so much at this point. He was in season 3 so much, that I'm surprised he's not in the title sequence. He'd have to be at the end, though. Guido is the most in your face comic relief character I've ever seen on a non-comedy show. I guess I'm used to him by the end of season 3, but he is supremely unfunny. The joke is that he's a got a foreign accent and that he's not fit like everybody else. The weird thing is that he's literally never not trying to be funny, he feels like a dated character type even in 1992. Harvey Miller in season 2 was a comic relief character but I guess he didn't work out, so the show creators decided to ramp it up to 100% with Guido. I don't know if he continues to be in it after season 3 but I doubt it, since I never saw a picture of him online back when I was watching season 1 and didn't care about spoilers.

- We briefly see that Matt Brody has the hots for C.J. but this is only touched upon once or twice after 'Rookie of the Year' and only a tiny bit. It's then completely dropped for the rest of season 3, they have a platonic relationship, it seems. So to recap - Summer like Matt at the start of the season but they never mention this again after, I think, one episode, and then Matt doesn't get with C.J. I'm not even saying they make a story out of these, what I mean is they don't even explain why these characters don't get together. Funny thing is, I guess that makes the show unintentionally more like real life. So anyway, it makes me realise that Matt really wasn't the replacement for Eddie. Perhaps the writers thought it's best to have characters occasionally only have one episode relationships with a guest star, since it gives them more freedom. But does it? I'm not sure. I guess if Shauni and Eddie stayed in the show, the writers would always have to come up with scenarios around the fact that they are married. Of course, that opens doors to a whole host of other stories. I think other shows after Baywatch realised the potential for long running stories about relationships, love lives and love triangles. That's made me realise something - I can't believe I've watched three seasons of Baywatch and there hasn't been a single love triangle. Before I started this show, I thought that was going to be a main focus.