Baywatch - S05E08 and 09

I know said this before but I'm really going to try to make these write-ups shorter from now on. Less explaining the plot pointlessly and also this means less spoilers, not that anyone cares. Party because 'anyone' doesn't apply when there's likely no one reading these. 

S05E08 - K-GAS, the Groove-Yard of Solid Gold

And the award for strangest Baywatch episode so far goes to... 'K-GAS, the Groove-Yard of Solid Gold', not that it had much competition. Say K-GAS out loud and it sounds like 'Kick-ass', get it? The whole title is simply the name of a radio station which will most likely only ever appear in this episode.

Only one story this time, it's all about people flooding to the beach trying to win a load cash, the radio station is running a competition. It's a treasure hunt where clues are hidden around the beach. Problem is, these extras are going nuts and almost killing themselves, the clues are often hidden in dangerous places.

Matt

He gets into the idea of winning the money himself.

C.J.

The radio station DJ falls in love with C.J. on first site, this is barely addressed. C.J. is mostly not into winning the money and gets a bit annoyed at Matt for getting into the idea. She says several things about how money isn't important and stuff like that, I guess the show forgot that gambling addiction episode. To be fair, there can be a difference between wanting the money and being addicted to the gambling games themselves.

There's one moment where Matt convinces her that it would be great if they won the money, since they are a couple. This part is simply so the show can do a montage of C.J. fantasising about being rich. However, it's just an excuse to do a Pamela Anderson fashion shoot, it barely conveys the idea of being which at all. This is the highest peak so far of 'hay look, C.J. has big boobs' in the show. We've seen it before but this is the most extreme example so far and feels out of place, like it has nothing to do with the story.

Kaye Morgan

The most interesting thing to happen, as far as canon is concerned, is that Kaye Morgan returns whose actress was still David Hasselhoff's wife in real life, I think. She takes over Jackie Quinn's cafe and renames it. I don't think we'll be seeing much of her and I don't think she'll ever appear in the intro. I like Kaye Morgan but only because she's an old school character, to be honest she's got virtually no personality and hasn't had any character growth since her first appearance when she was a bit of a antagonist. She was a reporter getting in the way, or something. As far as I can remember.

Not a bad episode overall.

S05E09 - Red Wind

This one is OK but I was hoping for more when the premise was laid out for us at the start, as well as seeing a returning character. Oh, also a really nice bit of music at the start.

A hot Santa Ana winds blows in and planets are aligned in a certain way, or something. It's explained that this leads to men getting aggressive, women getting horny and more crazy people coming to the beach to act, umm, crazy. It turns out we're told this literally to explain that these are going to relate to the three main stories. I don't see this episode being laid out in the usual 'A', 'B', 'C' way, the best way to explain is through what each character does.

Matt

Sadly he gets almost nothing to do, a woman in the sea takes off her bikini and throws it at him, sort of beckoning him to come give it back to her. We don't see her naked, of course. That's it, we barely see him again.

Mitch

It's safe to say that has the main story here even though it's not obvious at first. So perhaps I was wrong earlier, maybe the 'A', 'B' story structure is still here, it's just hidden better than usual. Someone who Mitch rescued eleven years ago comes back, wanting to be with him because she's painted this picture in her head that he's a hero. Problem is, she's engaged, so her fiancee is pissed doff with Mitch. Her fiancee is antagonistic at first but it gets fun when Mitch takes him under his wing, trying to teach him to be like him.

An overly stupid montage shows us the fiancee acting dorky, clumsy and stuff. It's over done but but sort of entertaining, even though they don't sell the idea that he's weak, when he's clearly a dude that's in shape. In fact, besides being smaller, he's possibly more ripped than Mitch. This is why we never see him topless.

This doesn't so Mitch's plan be is to go on a date with her (I really should have looked up these characters names) and act like a immature, selfish jerk. This is done in a montage in-which Mitch does so over the top, that I'm not sure if I loved or hated it. Afterwards, I really like the fact that it turns out she likes him even more now, for being free, fun and boyish. It's a joke that I was hoping the show would be. There's a bit more to this story at the end but I'll leave it at that.

Catherine

She gets the second biggest story and it's the most serious, probably one of the most serious stories we've had in quite some time. Catherine gets a bit obsessed over rescuing a little girl from drowning, but it turns out the father has gone a bit mad. She drowned a year ago somewhere else. The fact that there was never anyone else to rescue is revealed later in the story but it's obvious almost straight away. It's quite a heart felt story, though. The father is played by some dude I recognise from something else, a comedy I think, I like him. Catherine really should be given more stories like this, she's the best actor which was shown in her first appearance, before she became a regular. She's also the hottest, somehow. What a combination.

Destiny

Did I say Destiny? Yeah, I couldn't believe it too, they brought back this one off character who I liked, so she's not a one off anymore. I even said at the time that Destiny should be a main character. The great thing is, it turns out she's a regular in Baywatch Nights, which is a spin-off show. So I'll have to watch that, even though I heard it was bad and the premise does indeed sound bad. I doubt it's been remastered though, so I hope I can get decent copies of it.

The first time we see Destiny here is her reuniting with Mitch, since her original story was with him. But then she goes off and we don't see them interact again, which is new but disappointing. Actually it's probably only a bummer because she ends up doing pretty much nothing which is a bit odd. Why bring her back at all? She's there to calm peoples spirits and transmit positive vibes, which boils down to her and a bunch of others just sort of meditating in a circle. That's it, she does nothing else.

C.J.

She's not much better off than Matt, she has a story with Destiny, well, sort of. Well, actually not really at all. Destiny's first meditation scene has some Taro cards blow towards C.J., which reveal that C.J. is their new leader. It seems like this is going to be the story but it leads to absolutely nothing.

Overall, it's an OK episode but when it started, I thought they were doing to go more crazy with it. I was thinking more along the lines of that beer episode of Buffy. Just having people being more wacky would have sufficed, in fact the wackiest character was Mitch but he wasn't effect by the wind, he was acting.

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.

Baywatch - S05E05 - Air Buchannon

What a weird episode but not like you're thinking, it's not a weird story like that one where Summer was getting horny with a ghost. Did I forget to write about that one? Yes, ghosts exist in the Baywatch universe. It's not a rare comedy episode like that one where Eddie hits his head and dreams that the cast are in an approximation of a Gilligan's Island episode. No, it's weird fr a host of reasons but mainly because there's no clear real stories until nearer the end, sort of.

When I first started watching Baywatch, I read online some people say how much better the first three seasons are and that they had proper stories, or did they day that they had stories, period, I can't remember which. Is 'Air Buchannon' the start of that trend, will this become the norm if I keep watching? For now though, I need to make something clear - I liked this episode. Perhaps because of its novelty but also because Baywatch's stories started to copy earlier episodes quite some time ago, which I've complained about before. Really since around the start of season 3, it's been repeating similar stories from season's 1 and 2. So having it the way it is in this episode is fine with me, however a lot of things about this episode would definitely label it as a real shit one by most viewers. I should explain what they actually do in this one, shouldn't I/

So here goes. It's a load of small, mundane stories that just happen. they are even more mundane than usual, even when the show is trying to make it look like they aren't. At first I thought it is called 'Air Buchannon' because he's going around doing random jobs but no, it's called that because someone steals his Hang Glider. This is a weak connection and just shows how much of a non-story this episode is, because normally the titles explain what's going on it the simplest of terms. Let's make a few notes concerning the bits that stand out, because I can't think of any other way to write this.

- Firstly, it starts with another rollerblading montage just like the last episode and it's long again, too. This is just the start of the oddities. Just like the previous one, rollerblading also ends up having nothing to do with the episode, at least they briefly mention it in the last one.

- We then see an extra doing Tai chi or something and she looks bad at it, then again, I know nothing about Tai chi.

- We then get the premise of what I guess could be called the 'A' story, or maybe the 'B' story? I'm not sure because even though there are two stories that get plenty of screen time, they're also scatter shot. Mitch and Steph have to do a 24 hour shift and this the main reason we get small stories, because we see them going around doing small rescues and stuff. But why would a life guard ever have to work for 24 hours? I'm not sure if that's a real thing. Also Mitch briefly mentions what happened with him and his ex-wife a few episodes ago, he also did this in the previous episode. It's unusual for Baywatch to acknowledge past stories.

- It's around this time that I noticed something I noticed in a previous episode but forgot to mention. Season 5 introduces diegetic sounds, most notably people talking on the beach. This is welcome even though in the previous episode there was a moment when it was too loud. The show has probably always had it but it's improved in season 5... or has it? Perhaps me noticing it means it's not as good, since it's supposed to sound natural.

- We then get C.J. telling some surfers that they are on a non-surfing part of the beach but it turns out this is not a story. I think this is around the time I started wondering what this episode is actually about.

- An old dude has a heart attack, I think, but it looks like he's just out of breath. Mitch and Stephanie are some of the life guards called to help and here is where we get another weird moment. The show spends quite a bit of time showing them actually driving there, they don't normally do this in Baywatch. They'll usually show them arriving in their yellow van jeep or maybe them getting into it at the start of the journey, at most. This part also leads into nothing again, we simply get told later that the hospital he was taken to said he is fine.

- I'll take this moment to point out again that I did like this episode even though I sound like I'm complaining. 'Air Buchannon' is good simply because we get to see the sights, sounds and atmosphere of this, admittedly unreal, place. Which sort of leads to the next bit.

- This is kind of hilarious. It's at this point I noticed how many bikini babe extras are throughout this episode. This show has definitely got more horny over time, gradually since the start. It was always there but I'm now starting to see what this show was known for back in the 90's. As in, I never watched it back then, not even once, but you know how the most strong opinions rise to the top in society and this was one of them. Well, the main one. You'd hear about babes, slow motion running, David Hasselhoff and Pamela, even though she's still not in it much. At that's about it, that's all you'd hear. Oh, also you'd hear it was crap but clearly it had something because it was immensely popular. Maybe it was just the TNA? I guess TV was the only way a lot of people could get their kicks, back then.

- The next weird thing to happen, though it's only weird for me, is that Charisma Carpenter appears as a guest star! I know her as Cordelia Chase from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, my favourite TV show of all time. Hobie and her start a thing together, will she be in it more after this? I doubt it.

- Next random this to happen is two boys hang glide in a place they aren't supposed to. One crashes but he's OK, he doesn't need rescuing, which is a first! He breaks the glider which leads to him and his make stealing Mitch's one later. These two are the closest to villains we have, they're just dicks though, basically.

- We get a random guy in the life guard switch box (call centre thingy) throughout this episode but there's a scene just after the hang gliding one where it seems he is not an actor at all. Who is this guy? I'd still trade my life with his though, his real life or his screen life, haha.

- Next weird thing is another montage... why would there be another one in an episode that already is going nowhere? Wait I answered my own question. Nice montage, I like. Funny thing is that it shows real people, which makes the beach babe extras stuff I mentioned earlier stand out even more. It really does highlight how fake this show is, the beach is and probably was never like this. We see real people who are wearing more, are less attractive and also there are far, far more guys. The earlier scenes with the extras were almost all women. Also in this montage, even though Mitch and Steph are driving around, you blatantly notice that two beach babe extras have been assigned to walking next to the car in almost every shot. I guess it was the shows attempt to offset the normies. Also the regular people are so much more densely packed than shots with extras.

- The next bit actually made me laugh. A bunch of cyclists and roller bladders crash into each other and the show makes it out to be so serious. There's about five of them and they literally can't get up and are moaning in pain, it didn't look like a very bad collision! One woman is saying she can't move her legs. These's people look way younger than me and I crashed my bike, I flew over the handle bar, onto my hands and scraped them. I was bleeding and I had sprained my wrists. I think I was 40 years old (so maybe last year) and I could still get up and walk. I could also just about ride still, though I stopped because it was painful. No way would those extras be that banged up.

- Next we get a hard cut to a montage of Hobie and Charisma Carpenter having fun. Yes, I'm going to call her that because I can't remember her character name. This cut from an apparently serious accident to fun times is funny. Also are they really giving us another montage? Is this the beginning of the show running out of ideas?

- Up next is Hobie has a house party, I'm getting tired and I can't be bothered to talk about this one. It's basically the other "main" story along with the Mitch and Steph one. It just leads to those dickhead boys stealing Mitch's Hang Glider and then an action rescue scene at the end where Hobie and one of the boys crash into a cliff. Yeah, Hobie grabs onto the Hang Glider while the other boy is taking off, for some reason. Even though he could have easily confronted him about the theft after he had landed. It's not like he was going to glide off into the sun set with his stolen goods. His mate is standing there with the car still.

- The next scene is Mitch and Stephanie getting horny, this, as well as the stuff I talked about earlier, makes this the raunchiest episode I've ever seen. Ya know, by Baywatch daytime TV standards.

- This bit is a part of the above but I'm separating it because it's so weird. They do a flashback of Mitch and Stephanie moments, one of which is of them meeting. She doesn't appear to be wearing a wig though so did they actually think ahead to shoot this before she cut her hair off for this season? Or perhaps it's an unused scene from an earlier episode, though that would have had to be a flashback too, since when Steph is introduced, she already knows Mitch. She's already dated him, too. Some of these flashback scenes are from previews episodes, however, since I remember them. They jump from black and white to colour, which is also a bit odd.

- That's about it for the stories, there was more but I can't be arsed, I've already gone into too much detail. The episode ends with Mitch and Hobie chatting while walking on the beach, something that the show does a lot.

Random, Out of Order Notes

- I rarely spot bad ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) in Baywatch but Hobie get's the worst one I've seen in Baywatch. I think it was when he's in his kitchen talking to one of the Hang Glider thieves.

- Not much to about new character Logan in this one, he's not in it. Also since his debut, he's at the tail end of the intro so perhaps he's not going to be in the show much. I find it odd that Stephanie is right at the end and has always been near the end, even though she's in it a lot. She's in it a lot more than cop guy, who I always forget the name of, even though she's in it more. In fact I'd argue that she's the 3rd most used character behind Mitch and Hobie, especially now that Summer is gone.

- I really liked the music in this episode. Most wouldn't like it but it's so 90's, it sounds like some 90's PlayStation games background soundtrack.

- This is a random place to put this but I forgot to mention this ages ago; Like I said earlier, Baywatch rarely mentions old stories and characters that have left. However, Matt and Summer move in together at one point and it's into the boat that Shauni and Eddie lived in! They actually mention this.

Baywatch - S05E04 - Baja Run

An alright episode but nothing special besides some of the sites.

'B' Story

A continuation of the Logan, Caroline and Matt love triangle and it definitely is one since it is confirmed that Caroline does sort of fancy Matt too. It is implied that they've gone on a date or two but they were just basic ones like dinner. I say that, it's not that they tell us this but Caroline has a date planned with Matt in this episode and it doesn't come across as their first, to me. However Caroline forgets about this and it leads to her telling her sister Stephanie that she's chosen Logan, because he's fun and Matt is too serious.

I'm glad this happened because it looked like this story was going to mimic the old one where Summer couldn't choose between Matt and Slade. After this, the story diverges even more; After Matt makes no effort to hide his jealousy for Logan, he gets with C.J. This was surprising but I welcome it and it is perhaps an unintentional call back to their first ever encounter where Matt was clearly eyeing up C.J., that was two seasons ago when they were introduced. I don't think the show had them be anything but platonic after that.

This burgeoning romance is first shown in a cute little scene where Matt and C.J. are hitting a boxing bag, it's a bit more spontaneous and human than most scenes in Baywatch, perhaps it was improvised. The second part is shown in your typical Baywatch romance montage of two people frolicking and kissing. In retrospect this pairing is rushed like a lot of them in the show, so I'm afraid it probably won't last long and is just a diversion from the original route of getting Matt and Caroline together. I wouldn't be surprised if this happens in the next episode.

I almost forgot to talk about Logan. He is shown to be a nasty piece of work in this episode, for sure, so he's far worse than Trevor Cole. I don't mean he's a villain in the way that we get thieves and murderers in one-off stories, but he's definitely the most nasty life guard we've had in the main cast so far. That's not saying much though, since they've all been so super nice so far. It's a nice change but I doubt he'll stay this way. I can't believe he payed a dude to attack a woman so he can rescue her, they make an effort to make him look 'not that bad' though, by showing him tell the attacker that he went too far.

Later on, Caroline see's Logan snogging the woman he rescued so he knows he's a piece of work now. This will most likely lead to her trying to get with Matt.

'A' Story

I was thinking while watching this that the story is way better than the other, but now that I think about it, not a whole lot happens. The thing that stops it from being trash is that John D. Cort returns for a one off, which is very welcome. Looking on baywatch.fandom, I see this is the last time he's in the show, which is real sad for me. Well, besides appearing in the 'Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding' but I barely count that because it's way later and the more I watch the show, the more I realise that this Hawaiian movie thing is probably going to be just a bunch of cameos. Will he be totally blind? It's about ten years later so he should be but I get they come up with some excuse, saying he's cured because otherwise that would be way too much of a downer for a reunion movie. Come to think of it, I'm fine with that.

Back to Baja Run. John D. Cort is still going blind, a thing they introduced last time he appeared for a one-off, which I still think is ridiculous, unnecessary and depressing. I guess on the one hand, it is something different for the show to do for once, but why to such a believed, cool, season 1 character? At least they don't focus on it this time but it's still a thing, since they couldn't just brush it under the rug. This show is pretty silly and loose but in John's last appearance, they did point out that his condition is not treatable, that he is going to go blind.

Anyway, onto the actual story - There's not much to it to be honest, it's just an excuse to show some Baja racing. Is that what it's called? I can't look it up because my internet is down at the moment. The episode is called 'Baja Run' so Baja is a part of it, at least. I'm OK with this though, it looks cool and fun, it makes me wish my life was like that, just like a lot of things in this show.

I don't know why I'm even going to bother saying anything about the rest of this story. John has an expensive artefact, he hides it from some bad dudes who want to steal it from him, Mitch doesn't know, bla bla bla. I don't recall when but I'm pretty sure they've done this story before. Like I said, it's really just an excuse to show Baja racing because the artefact is hidden by the side of a road.

Summer and Jackie

That's it for that episode but I have some other random thoughts to air. As we all know, Summer and her mum Jackie are gone from the show starting with this season. I've already said it but they will be missed, Jackie's actress was real good and Summer's sudden split from Matt and her job wasn't explained at all. I know this is just silly show from decades ago so I'm not that bothered, but it's an observation that Baywatch will make out characters to be important and in love and then just end it unceremoniously. Also I forgot to say something in my write up about the last episode - Jackie doesn't have any speaking scenes after she's rescued, she's basically just screaming for help for the whole thing and then leaves the show. Just something I wanted to point out, haha.

S01E01 - In Deep

No, I'm not doing a review of this episode (yet), it's just yesterday I decided to watch the original intro but I ended up watching five to ten minutes of it. It's a shame I didn't write about the first two seasons because I like the origins of media and for some reason the first two seasons of Baywatch aren't represented as much online as the later ones. Before I continue, to clarify, this episode is sometimes listed as episode 2, since the pilot, which is more like a movie, is sometimes episode 1. I'm watching Baywatch on Freevee, episode 1 is the pilot probably because their database software has no way to list an episode 0.

It might be nostalgia but the little I watched of this does seem better than season 5 episodes. Not by a lot though, Baywatch hasn't changed loads so far and the changes have been gradual. The thing that stands out the most is the charisma of the characters in 'In Deep', especially the guys, though this might be because I only watched about ten minutes. Mitch is the main character and is always in the show so I'm not counting him, he hasn't changed.

For all the praise I've given 'new' Hobie for getting better and better at acting, I'd forgotten how charismatic and natural the original one was. It's also funny to be reminded how much older he was, he's probably about the same age that Hobie is now in season 5, so new Hobie has finally caught up with him. Old Hobie is still better though, how he has conversations with his Dad is so much better.

We also have Craig, again, the charisma is high in this one. Basically the acting is just better all around. John D. Cort isn't there from the start but it doesn't take long for him to join and I think he's another good example of the early characters being better. Seeing him appear for the last time in 'Baja Run' today reminds me again of these original episodes.

You barely see her in the first ten minutes but there is of course Shauni as well, my favourite life guard. She's the reason why I re-watched the old intro because I still connect part of the music to her slow-motion run, even though she's no longer in it. What I mean is that the intro music is the same in season 5 but there's a part of the music that I connect to Shauni. In this episode, we see Eddie acting stand-offish towards Shauni. It's funny to see the tired old cliche of 'if the boy is mean to you, it means he likes you' here.

Not that you see any of this at the start of this one, but watching this does remind me that under water scenes do look better in later seasons. Even though it is still obviously shot in a swimming pool. I remember that in season 1 and 2, not only are the camera angles and clarity not as good, but they also barely put in rocks and stuff on the bottom! It was so blatantly a swimming pool. If I re-watched those now, they'd look even worse.

Baywatch - S05E03 - Aftershock

Yeah I'm still writing about Baywatch, for some reason.

Been There, Done That

'B' Story

We start off with this one but it turns out to have very little screen time, it's Matt and Logan not liking each other, partly because they both fancy Caroline. Is this a love triangle? I don't know if it is if none of them are attracted to Matt. Caroline might like him but we haven't had her say anything either way. This is partly because both her and Logan are so new to the show, they've barely had any time to do anything. Not only have they rushed into the Matt vs. Logan scenario but also the Matt fancies Caroline one, too. He only just split up with Summer and we haven't seen him mention her or act sad at all. Now, this is not to say that he is supposed to be a bad person, what I mean is that the writers have decided to pretend Summer never existed, at least, in the stories involving Matt. This isn't a huge deal, it's not like having Matt be all mopey would have been interesting, but it does feel unnatural after two seasons them both being madly in love.

Oh wait, except they weren't, were they, because there was a love triangle involving them and Slade. The Matt and Logan rivalry has been done before - It's a combination of Slade story and the old rivalry between Eddie and... who was it? Oh, I think it was John D. Cort. They weren't in a love triangle but John was introduced to the show after Eddie and Eddie didn't like him. They work out their differences and become great friends. This does all happen very quickly, I admit, but yeah, this new Logan thing is played out just the same. This story doesn't go anywhere so I'll leave it at that.

'A' Story

At least we get to see Caroline in the other story, shes stunning, but the 'A' story is quite unbelievably played out. We spend most of the episode on this one, I don't know what to say, this entire episode isn't exactly bad but... Gayle and Mitch want to get back together again, Hobie is happy about this and then they don't get back together. I can't believe they did this story again, they've done it so many times before.

Since I'm watching this show decades after it aired and I'm watching four or five episodes a week, perhaps it's unfair to criticise it for certain things. Back in the day, viewers would miss episodes and there would be larger gaps between them watching them, so perhaps they'd not notice when stories were re-told. The only tiny differences are that it's Gayle who is really into the idea when it's usually the other way around, and that they decide to re-marry, immediately.

As in, right now in the same episode! Even Stephanie remarks that isn't Mitch rushing, though this is because shes jealous. I knew this episode was coming because I looked at Gayle's baywatch.fandom page months page months ago because I decided I didn't care about spoilers when it comes to this character. Probably because of this exact reason, when she comes back into the show for normally one episode, it's usually the same story. However, I didn't know this one was going to be so soon, I thought I'd read that the wedding episode was way in the future, like, season 10 or something. I kind of do regret reading it now, because I already knew that Mitch runs off to save people literally just before he says "I do" at his wedding. So Gayle decides it still annoys her now he puts his job first. Is this the last time we see her? Maybe. I'll look it up later.

Small note about Hobie which I forgot to say earlier - I was wrong about what I said yesterday, even though he did leave to go live with his mum at the end of the episode, he is back straight away in this one. Over is fear of earthquakes and ready to get back to normal, making the drama from 'Livin' on the Fault Line' pointless. Well, what I mean is it took away the weight of the situation.

Random Thoughts On Baywatch

- Logan looks a bit weird in the intro, I first noticed how he looks before he was added to the show, when I saw promotional photos of him. He looks pretty normal in the show, though.

- Maybe they feel like they can get away with re-using story-lines because they change the cast quite often.

- I might be imagining it or it's creeping in very slowly; The heroics of saving people is getting more extreme, or amplified. I don't mean the action, stunts or size of the situations are getting bigger, I mean they're making out the lifeguards are more like super heroes. Imagine a parody of Baywatch, which I'm sure there were many back in the day, were the gravitas of the situation is turned up. They're still mostly just diving under water to grab someone, but it's made out to be more amazing now.

Baywatch - S04E22, S05E01 and S05E02

Here I am again, writing for a blog that possibly no one reads, but every post gets one view, I wonder who this person is. Actually, there's a few Baywatch posts that have two views, weird. I guess sometimes Baywatch fans stumble across this page when Google searching Baywatch. They then see that it's badly written reviews of the show and leave, if you can even all these reviews.

Spoilers Ahead because I don't know how to write without them.

S04E22 - Guys & Dolls

Yet again I'm going to say that I'm not going to write much about this two episodes, but then I probably will. Guys and Dolls is a pretty good episode but nothing amazing, I'll give it credit though, it's the first decent crime based one in a long time. This is probably because it doesn't spend much time on the criminal activities due to the fact that it's a secret that's revealed at the end and the focus is lies and deceit instead.

'B' Story

This is barely a story but I figured I'd mention it anyway - We get some pointless scenes of Steph and her new boyfriend from previous episode, they're very happy together so we get those increasingly hilarious Baywatch montages of a couple being super happy together. They usually involve the couple frolicking about, playing basketball, running on the beach, etc. The story is virtually non-existent, Steph is worried that this dude is going to have to leave because he is in the military, he'll be called away or something. This ends with whatshisname and Mitch pretending to her that he's going to Antarctica (I think), this joke lasts for about five seconds before they tell her he isn't. Baywatch.fandom says "Stephanie’s romance with a Coast Guard officer deepens, causing conflict with Mitch." even though there's no conflict at all.

The funny thing the Coast Guard boyfriend isn't in the next episode and, in fact, he's not mentioned and Steph has a new boyfriend.

'A' Story

Actress A.J. Langer returns as a different character, which Baywatch sometimes does but this is only the second time that they've done it without trying to hide it at all. She looks exactly the same though she does act differently, to be fair. The first time was literally in the episode before this one, 'Trading Places'. The last time A.J. Langer was in a story alongside Eddie, who, if you've been reading my blog, was one of my favourite characters and one of the original cast. She got him into a lot of trouble in that one, it was a good episode.

In 'Guys & Dolls', shes a character called Rachel but it turns out she keeps giving out fake names so her other two names are Nancy and Linda. I think her real name turned out to be Linda but I can't be sure, it isn't important in the story anyway. This is essentially a Matt Brody episode but is doesn't exactly have much to do, he's sort of just there for the ride. Rachel is rescued by Matt (which is funny because Eddie does in the old episode but the results are different) which leads to her telling him about how shes in town for an acting audition. This turns out to be a lie when her dad turns up looking for her, shes run away and her loving dad is there to find her and also tell her that he has a fatal illness. More than this happens but in a nutshell - Matt goes to speak to Rachel, who tells him that her dad is lying, he's not dying and he's a terrible, abusive person.

What makes this episode good is that at this point in your usual Baywatch story, it would be obvious who is telling the truth. Not only is it not, but also it turns out they're both lying. The reality is that they aren't father and daughter, they are partners in crime. They have fallen out over some sort of diamond smuggling and Matt is stuck in the middle. They're both scumbags, basically. I forgot to mention the words 'con artist' this whole time, that's what they were.

S05E01 - Livin' on the Fault Line: Part 1

Summer is Gone Forever

I didn't even notice this new season approaching while I was watching 'Guys & Dolls', it didn't feel like a final episode to a season at all. I say that as if shows have to do that, they don't at all. We're given an updated intro since the cast have changed a bit, yet again. The biggest change is that Summer is gone, I new this was coming since I saw a group photo a while back and she wasn't in it, but I didn't think it was going to be this soon. That's two seasons she had, not much really in the grand scale of things, for a character I thought was going to be a big deal. She was in it for as many seasons as Shauni and she seemed to be the Shauni replacement, in a way, though she turned out to not be that similar. Summers character didn't have much depth but she did grow on me. Her exit was quite sudden, Matt and her are perfectly in love in the previous episode and then suddenly we're told here that they split and she's left Baywatch. This is told to us by her mum, Jackie, who, yes, is evidently in the show two episodes longer than Summer, the reason being is that this is a two part story. When she shows up in this episode, I thought it would be for a single scene where she tells us why they're leaving, but she actually ends up being a part of the story. Not a big part, though.

Of course in reality, Jackie isn't Summers mum, she's an actor, so having her in this episode makes me think that Summers departure was definitely not planned. I don't know if she was kicked off the show or she wanted to leave, I haven't looked it up.

Hobie

It's a big earth quake story. It didn't take me long to remember that they've done this before in an early Baywatch season, possibly season 1. So that means Hobie has been in one of these quakes before but that was a Hobie played by a different actor, so I doubt he'll mention it. This time Hobie is one of the ones trapped under debris, I think I recall he was one of the ones doing the rescuing last time. There wasn't a gap between recording seasons, as far as I know, since we're still in 1994, but Hobie sure is growing up. They finally replaced his section of the intro which showed him looking a lot younger. In the new one, he is no longer a child. His voice is also changing in this episode, I guess this is the Hobie that is to become of the full on adult life guard that I've seen a photo of from a later season. The one which I thought was being played by a different actor since he looks so different. Also because he looks so much older, this was when I remembered that the show went on for so long, that he had time to actually grow up throughout it.

At the end, we see Hobie has created a sand castle. The funny thing is that it's ridiculously good, seemingly made in a short period of time. It's hilarious.

Logan

Some new dude, an Australian life guard and he's a dick, we see this when he has an argument with Matt. Sound familiar? Yeah, he's just like Trevor Cole but doesn't seem as interesting. That's a little unfair because he's barely in this episode but there was something I liked about Trevor, I don't know, he just had charisma. Couldn't they have been more original? Even just have someone or isn't from Australia, they've even had another episode where the Australian life guard is the bad guy. WHat do they have against Australian's? Perhaps it's because English actors are usually bad guys in American things and the Australian accent sounds a bit like an British accent. I'm English by the way, and even though I can tell the difference, I admit, the first few words that came out of Logan's mouth sounded British.

Caroline Holden

Here we have the blatant female life guard replacement for Summer, in fact she literally says it. I didn't recognise her when I saw her in the intro, it is Stephanie's sister from earlier in the show where she turned up for one episode. I remember her acting really well in that one, maybe that's why they got her back. That one was about her and her husband to be but it turns out since then, her husband has been cheating on her, so she ditches him. A welcome addition to the cast since... well, just look at her.

A New Dawn, Sorta

I'm now writing this the day after most of what I wrote about this paragraph, it's after I've seen part 2 so I'm begging to forgot the details concerning part 1, so I'll wrap this up soon. So here's a few observations concerning 'Livin' on the Fault Line: Part 1'

- The beginning spends way too long on a montage of a bunch of characters and extras rollerblading, I thought this was going to have something to do with the episode but it's totally unrelated. We see Matt is teaching a group of youths to roller blade, but this doesn't lead to anything.

- Hobie is with three friends of his in the roller blade montage and for a bit after, one of them is a girl who looks like shes going to be a part of the story, but she ends up saying a couple of lines and then vanishes.

- Matt possibly looks a bit bigger, he sure has been pumping iron.

- As far as I can remember the original earthquake episode, this new one has a lot more people trapped.

- I've spend way too much time on this episode but I must say some more - There's some things in this episode that feel a little... different from the last reason. Firstly the music is a bit different, it isn't worse but it sounds more old fashioned, it's more like mid to late 80's TV background music. Another thing that's different is the camera angles, I can't quite put my finger on it but they seem to move around differently. Maybe this had a different director than usual, I can't be bothered to look it up, though.

- On a related note, there's a couple of scenes that have been badly edited.

- I have mixed feelings, I didn't think this one was bad but something did happen that goes against that feeling; It felt long. In fact I paused it thinking it was almost over, only to see that not only was I only just over half way, but that the episode was only 39 minutes, that's a bit shorter than usual. So this episode did kind of drag.

S05E02 - Livin' on the Fault Line: Part 2

Right, onto the one I only just watched.

Jackie

The main thing to say is that half of episode is taken up by Jackie's rescue, a character that I doubt will even be in the show again. This is because her rescue required the most action, which I didn't realise before. Most of the other trapped people are easily rescued and don't require much time. Moving on, I'd like to say that her and Summer will be missed, I will miss Jackie's beach restaurant thing which was definitely under-utilised. Baywatch doesn't have enough variety in its locations.

Stephanie

The second biggest rescue is Stephanie and then some of the others, saving Steph's boyfriend and his work colleagues. Her boyfriend is stuck under water after diving, which has been done a few times before in Baywatch. One of the colleagues is scared and selfish and all doom and gloom, which is also something Baywatch has done before. This whole rescue is ok but looking back at it now, I'm not interested in it. I wonder if Stephanie's boyfriend will vanish after this episode, haha.

Logan

Logan is one of the life guards who turns up to help Steph. He does something that makes him out to be a worse person than Trevor Cole, so perhaps he'll be more of a full on villain than Trevor was. You see, Trevor started off as a bit of a dick but he was a good person at heart and he changed into a good guy. I really liked that but they've done that before, so if they make Logan more of a villain, that would be cool. Baywatch lacks any regular antagonists.

Hobie

He gets trapped in his garage, his Dad rescues him but he's traumatised for the rest of the episode. He's afraid of going into buildings or under structures, in fear of them falling on him. This was all fine until it's revealed what this was building up to - He wants to go live with his mum where it's 'safe'. Are we really doing this story again? I'm of it, I'm tired of Mitch stressing over it and the drama over it. It was fine in earlier seasons but they've done it too many times now, it was literally a story thread back when Hobie was played by a different actor.

There is a shot a the end that suggests Hobie is actually leaving, maybe he does leave the show for a bit, maybe to go to college or university in real life. However I assume he would return, since I know he's in the show when he's older. Wait, I'm not saying he's going to leave for a long time... he's not, is he? The show would feel weird without him.

Caroline

Not much to say here. As far as long term goes, at first it looks like she might get with Matt, making her the ultimate Summer replacement, haha. However, it looks like she might get with Logan, which I don't prefer over Matt. Maybe the writers always feel like they have to match up any pairs that are new characters. There's also a hint of a love triangle which is quite possible, but Baywatch didn't do a very good job of that last time and didn't give it enough time to grow.

Final Thoughts

Since this one is almost all action, there's not much to say about it, but here's some random final thoughts.

- Near the end, the episode abruptly transitions from the chaos and destruction to everything being fine. As if there's a time skip but they don't make this clear. Suddenly everything is fine but it's clearly not a long time after, maybe it only takes a day to clean up after a massive quake.

- It transitions to a montage of the beautiful people, place and scenario. Which I liked but they use two or three shots of old footage. The one that stands out the most is of a dude jogging on the beach on his own. This shot was in many, if not all of season 1's intro, maybe season 2 as well, I can't remember. My point is, it's been used a hell of a lot. This is lazy, lazier than I've ever seen before in this show. The montage is supposed to be of the present but we're seeing clips from somewhere between 1988 and 1990. I take that back, this HD version of Baywatch has slightly different intros from the original so I'm not sure when that footage was recorded but still, it's lazy.

- I thought I had more to say about this one but I guess not. Byeeeeeee.

Baywatch - S04E20 and S04E21

S04E20 - The Life You Save

These two are going to be short reviews since we've got a couple of stinkers here, especially this one. I sure did choose a bad time to start writing about Baywatch, the episodes I didn't write about were actually good and sometimes pretty great.

'The Life You Save' is a clip show; an episode that consists of excerpts from previous episodes, which Baywatch has done once before, so far. In its defence, only half of the running time is excerpts, at most. However show this is played out is odd to me, our lifeguards are faced with budget cuts so they have to prove to the government officials that their job is important. "We save lives ya know!" is basically the entire story. Outside of the excerpts from previous episodes, Mitch and the gang spend almost the entire time pitching their importance, which comes across like weird, like they're at a board meeting with a script. I mean, they do have a script and I don't mean because this is a TV show.

Also I thought clip shows were a way to save money, maybe I'm wrong because the episode does start with a newly shot rescue. Plus they bring back some old 'one off' characters who book end the excerpts, which I assume costs money and time. It's kind of interesting to think that these are probably the only actors who wanted to come back, some of them say barely anything by the way. They are just there to say how awesome the lifeguards are for saving their lives. There's even a clip in-which you see Eddie, you even here him speak! You don't see any other ex-Baywatch people though, only the ones that are in the show now. I wonder if they had to ask permission.

It sort of felt like they were promoting the show itself, but I doubt Baywatch was struggling with money at the time. The episode ends with them not getting budget cuts, in fact I think they get even more money than before, which was a bit dumb.

S04E21 - Trading Places

At least this one isn't a clip show but it isn't much more entertaining. I'm really quite tired of crime based episodes even though I must say, they don't seem to do them much anymore. Remember that one when that Japanese dude hated Mitch? They seemed pretty fun back then. I mean, that dude was the guy from the original Mortal Kombat movie to be fair, so he was awesome.

I can't be bothered to say much about 'Trading Places', especially the story, so I'll just say some random things that come to mind:

- The actor who is the criminal was in a previous episode, I'm pretty sure he's supposed to be a different person but he acts just the same. They should have just made him the same dude, why not?

- I am labelling this as the 'Stephanie Empresses Herself' episode. She makes seal noises for way too long as a joke and her Vietnam flashbacks are hilarious. They have generic army music and look like they're from that Cannon Fodder video game. I've rarely laughed so much at a Baywatch episode because it looks like they're going to reveal that Stephanie was in a war and now has P.T.S.D. over helicopters. Imagine if they just dropped that into her back story this late into the show. Luckily it's not that silly, it turns out her father died in a crash, so now I feel like a dick for laughing earlier, haha. She wasn't actually there but I guess you can have P.T.S.D. over anything, I mean, I have it over less serious things. P.T.S.D. has a scale, too, some people will be so traumatised that they'll freeze up, like Stephanie does on the helicopter.

I know the pay off at the end is that she over-comes her fear because she has to rescue Matt, but her training with the Coast Guard clearly didn't help. There's literally a scene where she's learning to fight and she flings someone over who is behind her. But then when the criminal grabs her from behind later on, she shakes herself around like shes trapped in a vice and then gives up. Yes they have guns but at that moment, you can tell shes trying to fight one of them off. In fact Matt is the one who puts up more of a fight, before he is unrealistically beaten and thrown off the boat by a older, less fit looking guy. We've seen Matt fight for longer and take more of a beating than this in previous episodes.

Speaking of Matt... a nit-pick - He is left in the water to die in a net. Steph comes to save him, she takes the net off him easily, I think Matt could have done that earlier himself. Also the idea of being tied up in a net in the sea is terrifying, but it also had floater things on it, so was having the net actually a life-saver?

Steph gets together with the Coast Guard guy at the end, which is a bit surprising since bit-parts like this don't normally carry over to more episodes in Baywatch. I'll be surprised if he vanishes because the show doesn't do that anymore, not with romantic partners. It did at first though - In earlier seasons, Mitch would often seemingly start a relationship which doesn't end at the end of the episode, but then we'd usually never see them again.

Anyway, why am I writing so much about this boring episode. Oh, one last thing - Not much actually happens in Trading Places, there's no 'B' story even though there should have been. There's scenes that linger for way too long, which makes me think they needed to pad it out. There's so many shots of boats and helicopters just moving about.

Anyway bye.

Baywatch - S04E18 and S04E19

(Side Note - The font and spacing in some of my posts has been inconsistent, I'm not sure why and I don't know how to fix it. In the editor it says it's all normal but it clearly isn't... oh well, no one reads this anyway. Besides maybe one person because I always get one view on each post, some kinda "leaker" I guess, haha)

I didn't get around to reviewing a bunch of Baywatch episodes which is a shame because there were some bangers, including probably the best one ever, called Mirror, Mirror. It stared whats her face, Trinity from The Matrix, and she was amazing, the best acting the show has ever seen. Hang on, I missed ten episodes?! I didn't realise it was that many. I might get back to them (I doubt it) but for now, I'll have to skip to...

S04E18 - Rescue Bay

We have one big story here, no 'B' plot. It's not a serious one which is unusual for an episode that only has one story, Baywatch usually only does this for serious, non-comedy adventures. There's not much to say about 'Rescue Bay', it's a good but simple one - It's Baywatch parodying Baywatch, which makes it the most Baywatch episode of Baywatch so far. Is it 'meta'? If it is, they wouldn't have used that word back in 1994.

'Rescue Bay' is the name of the show within a show, it's the parody of Baywatch in this episode. Mitch and the gang watch its test footage at the end, which is a parody of Baywatch's intro. The "actor" (in reality, an extra) playing as Summer looks a bit like Erika Eleniak and has a name that sounds a tiny bit the same, too. I'm don't know if this was intentional.

Speaking of which, earlier in the episode, before the whole parody thing is established, there's a brief B role shot of two life guards, one is a woman facing away from the camera. These two look like Shauni and Eddie, if they are, it must be old footage that they stuck in there to fill time. It's a bit odd and also quite sad, for me, at least. Seeing them, almost as if they're still there working, is a bit surreal and also slightly depressing. Have I ever mentioned that they're also still in the intro? Least, I'm sure Eddie is. They're both really hard to spot but it's left over bits from the old intro. One is a silhouette of Eddie and the other is Shauni on a boat, the camera is really far away though so I'm not 100% sure.

The Baywatch.fandom.com page for this episode is surprisingly sparse, only having some rather try trivia. This episode probably has a lot of untapped trivia. It points out an error, ironically making a typo itself while doing so. And yes, I know I make typos constantly and also my writing and grammar is bad all around. I just wanted to point it out, that's all.

Hollywood Producer

I can't remember if they say the characters name and I can't be bothered to look up the actor. He's been in it two or three times before and I really REALLY thought he was playing the character as his last appearance. He's not though, even though he's acting exactly the same. It wasn't even that long ago, it was the episode where he's trying to get with C.J. even though he's on holiday with his wife. C.J. doesn't know and hi-jinks insure, since this guy always plays the comic relief. The moment I knew he was playing a different character was when someone asks him who C.J. is, and he doesn't know. I don't think we ever he him speak to C.J., which was perhaps intentional, so hopefully the audience wouldn't remember they've been in an episode together before.

C.J.

There's a line right at the start which seemed like exposition explaining why C.J. won't be in the episode again, since she hasn't really been in season 4 all that much. However she does appear about half way through this episode and is quite prominent. I'd like to use this opportunely to point out how little shes been in the show since her debut at the start of season 2. I thought she would have been a more important character by now, since I remember how popular she was in the 90's, I thought this was the show that got her that stardom. Perhaps it happens later, since I do know shes in Baywatch for a long time after this. I don't know what other work she was doing at the time, maybe that's why she's not in the show as much as most of the other characters.

Also, besides, this silly episode, C.J. has been in almost exactly the same plots in all of her appearances, it's kinda crazy. Every plot is about a relationship she's having with some dude who has specific job - A photographer, a dolphin trainer, whatever, I can't remember the rest. She falls in love, which is a trait that others like Stephanie has pointed out since C.J. first came into the show, and then they split up for some boring reason. The guy is a arsehole, or he has to leave town for some reason. They're the same stories, pretty much. It's just weird that they never place her into any other different stories.

I did notice that she has definitely become a better actor this point in the show.

Mitch

He's pretty good in this episode and I'm glad it wasn't all about him, since we've had quite a few like that. Mitch gets to passionately kiss both Steph and C.J. in one scene, I swear David Hasselhoff must write this stuff into the script himself, and I don't blame him.

Garner

As usual he's a bit one note but Garner does get some more fun scenes this time around. He plays as himself, as usual, as well as the actor who is portraying him in 'Rescue Bay', which was quite a good idea.

Hobie

He's not in this one. It's funny how much better this character has become over time, after I used to dislike him. So I look forward to his return. He was probably off doing school work at the time, that's most likely the real-life reason he often vanishes for a while.

S04E19 - Western Exposure

Well look at this, the only episode in this season that has a name which starts with the letter 'W'. I don't know why I'm telling you that. We get a stinker here, after quite a few good and also great episodes. Basically this is the 'let's do a country music themed episode. You may like it if you like county music, though even the music on show here sounds pretty generic to me. On the other hand, what do I know about country music? Nothing. Not much actually happens which is partly why it's not a good Baywatch episode, this is partly because a lot of time is taken up by three and a half music scenes. Two of them are literally low budget music videos.

'B' Story

Hobie likes one of his friends but it turns out she has a crush on his dad, Mitch, which I found hard to believe. I don't think it's realistic and Bridgette's actress was bad at acting, which didn't help. However I did like how good Mitch was a being fatherly to Hobie, helping him out and stuff. The perfect father figure. This episode has nothing to do with the beach but, of course, someone has to randomly start drowning so there can be a rescue. Hobie helps with this so Bridgette shows interest in him and apologies for calling him a dork in a previous scene. Hobie then asks her "Do you have a quarter? Go call someone who cares", which is a great line and solidifies that Bridgette is the villain of this story, even though I didn't fully realise that before. I guess it's because she called Hobie a dork, which the show makes out is really bad, which I found funny. When Bridgette apologies to him, she says "I'm sorry for calling you what I did yesterday", as if it's a really bad word. Haha, dork? Is it really that terrible.

'A' Story

Ricky Van Shelton is a country music singer who plays as Jesse Lee Harris in this story, who is a famous singer also. His acting is so flat, it doesn't fit in with Baywatch. I'd say it's bad, perhaps it is, but I'd also describe it has simply 'real', it's too much like a real person would act. Right, so, I'm not gonna say much about this story, there's really not much to it - He is looking for his son, and his wife too, I guess. He is on the road touring too much, you see. Works too much, that old cliche. He finds them at the end and the acting his son does is also real bad, he's not in it much though so whatever.  It was just a bit part, after all. Oh, also Ricky's agent makes a brief appearance and his acting was terrible, he even looks at the camera. Just a whole lot of bad acting in this episode.

There's also a country music singer who is C.J.'s friend, I can't be bothered to explain her part of the story, she's just there to waste more screen time with her singing. She'll be one of these friends of the main cast who will never be seen again after this episode. I did some research, she is a famous country singer called Martina McBride, which is sort of funny because Jesse is the famous one in this story and she is the "no body" looking to become a star. The actor who played as Jesse was also a real life country music singer who seemed to be well known but for more reason baywatch.fandom.com chose not to point this out, instead only going for Martina McBride.

I look up Ricky Van Shelton on Google and there was some fluff piece about him vanishing but I think that was all nonsense. Looks like the reality is that he worked real hard and then retired, probably with tons of cash. He would also be real old by now, too. Funnily enough, it looks like he quit a little over ten years after this Batwatch episode and it sounds like he wanted to spend more time with his family. That's just like the end of this episode! Then again, it's such a generic story, that isn't that the reason everyone retires.

Baywatch - S04E08 and E09

S04E08 - Submersion

I won’t be writing much about this one since I watched it several days ago and I also wasn’t a big fan. I figured I’d go to baywatch.fandom.com to see what they had to say about this one but oh boy, the contents of the page is short.

‘Submersion’ is one whole story focusing on Mitch, so no ‘B’ or ‘C’ stories this time. I didn’t like this one that much but I think he you haven’t seen many episodes of Baywatch, you may like it. I think most episodes have to have at least one person being rescued from drowning, this one probably has the longest rescue scene ever. This is because it’s the focus of the story; Mitch has to rescue two young brothers but he has to choose who to rescue first, this leads to one of them almost dying and being in a coma. Mitch blames himself but the episode makes it clear that he shouldn’t be, everyone around him reassures him that it wasn’t his fault. Well, besides the boy's mum. The only scene which made me feel anything was at the end when the mum forgives Mitch and realises he was a hero, this is, of course, after the boy regains consciousness and is fine.

I had several issues with this episode but I can’t remember them all since I didn’t watch it today. I think the main thing was that it’s just a downer. Like several episodes before, Mitch expresses his love for the sea and/or the beach, or someone else mentions it about Mitch. In ‘Submersion’ it turns out one of the brothers also loves the sea, this is the one who almost dies. In reality, Mitch and the boy would probably be terrified of the sea after this incident, but the show never addresses those kinds of things for obvious reasons. Mitch would especially be sick of the sea since he’s always attempting rescues and there’s even been at least one episode before where Mitch didn’t manage to save someone. The only difference in that old one was it didn’t happen in the episode live, it was in a flashback.

Mitch is a fine character but he can’t hold up an entire episode, especially since we see him so much throughout the whole show's run. Also, come to think of it, that other serious episode about Mitch injuring his back wasn’t that long ago.

S04E09 - Ironman Buchannon

I liked this one but I might not write about it much since I don’t have much time right now. This is such a light and fluffy episode after the last one, which was perhaps intentional. With this title, I was afraid this was going to be another Mitch-centric episode but luckily he only gets one of the two stories.

‘B’ Story

I wanted to write more about this story but I really don’t have the time, I did like it but there’s not much to say. Matt wants to buy a motorbike to replace the one that his dad took away from him, this story is a bit odd because are we supposed to think he’s cheating on Summer? It’s obvious that he’s not from what happens in his second scene, he’s with this hot woman who likes him but he’s clearly going to buy a bike from her. Before I continue, I’d just like to point out that there’s one scene showing Matt and C.J. living together, and showing C.J.s disdain for him. This is the “payoff” from several episodes ago when we see C.J. not liking the idea that Matt is moving in with them. They don’t do a good job of explaining why she doesn’t like him there, there are no real good reasons.

Anyway. In retrospect, this story is a bit random. Matt reveals to Summer that he’s been working at a grocery store, or something, to pay for a new bike. Summer thought he was cheating on her, you see, even though barely any time was taken on this. It turns out the lady selling the bike had stolen it so Matt loses the like instantly. The other random part is that Summer hits her head while doing a rescue so she almost dies. Matt and some others save her and it’s all a bit serious but then she's fine not long after. This leads to her talking to Destiny about what she saw when she was unconscious, this seemed like it was going to lead somewhere but it lead to nothing. Actually, she didn’t have a pulse, doesn’t that mean her heart stopped? So she was dead for a few minutes, right?

As an audience, we get to see what she saw in glorious montage form. Though it’s just her in a casual swimsuit, swimming underwater and stuff. The show creators certainly started to lean into Summers attractiveness more around the start of this season, by the way. Also besides Summer, this episode has more skin and curves on show than they usually do, for your information.

‘A’ Story

Mitch is training to be in a yearly competition that I assume he has won a lot before, but he’s getting old so he wonders if he should enter the senior version instead. I thought they were going to be clever by having him lose but no, of course he wins. Not even second place against a bunch of 20-year-olds when Mitch is supposed to be, what at least in his 40s. Ben is in this one, he vanishes for many episodes and when he comes back, it’s only for a few brief scenes, at best. They bring him out for any stories that are about being old, sadly I think he dies in real life not long after this, so I doubt we’ll see much more of him. He gives us a few brief expressions and grunts which lead me to believe that Mitch would lose and that we’d be given a message about how accepting your age is a good thing.

Mitch also rescues someone called Destiny who hangs out with him for the rest of the story and emotionally helps him prepare for the competition, this is all played for laughs. She also sort of becomes Mitch’s girlfriend and the other characters joke about how he’s going through a mid-life crisis, since she’s a lot younger, you see. I should describe her - She’s ditsy, into people's auras, positive reinforcement, and all that kinda stuff. I’m not sure what you’d call this kind of character, a hippy, I guess? You know, she’s into meditation and stuff but she’s a comedy character.

I actually think she should be in Baywatch more but I bet she vanishes after this episode. She’s light-hearted and they could add a bit of depth to a character like this. Again, I thought this relationship was going to lead to Mitch realising he’s not young anymore but the hilarious thing is that it doesn’t, and unusually, Destiny doesn’t have a reason to leave at the end. What I mean is that most Baywatch episodes have characters who are only in it for one story, then they leave because they are killed, arrested, split up with a main character, or just leave town for some reason. But Destiny is just at Mitch’s birthday party at the end and then leaves with all the other guests. She does say something to Mitch about coming to visit her where she works, but I didn’t get the impression that was a proper goodbye. Perhaps the idea is that she's so bubbly that she kisses everyone on the lips, so she’s not actually Mitch’s new girlfriend. It was all played for jokes anyway so it doesn’t matter.

Speaking of Destiny, who Mitch rescues, I almost forgot to say something that I wanted to mention months ago - I find it funny that Baywatch, especially when it comes to Mitch, has totally discarded something that was kind of a big deal in season 1 and perhaps season 2. That you aren’t supposed to have a relationship with someone you rescued, the biggest part of Baywatch’s pilot is literally about that. A woman gets saved and even before it turns out she's an obsessed crazy person, the lifeguard makes it clear that he’s ‘not her hero’, in fact, he’s disgusted by the idea that she wants to reward him. There are one or two other episodes about how keeping it professional is the best idea but that’s all out of the window after around season 2. I guess the reason why is that it’s an easy way to introduce a bit-part character via rescue, so you can have that person for one episode and not only have it about how they are dangerous, nuts, obsessive, or whatever. Mitch has dated several people he has rescued and it’s played up as being romantic which is the opposite of season 1 stories, it’s probably the biggest change the show has had, so far.

Hobie was clearly not available on set for filming this one, since he definitely would have been at his Dad’s birthday party. Instead, he briefly calls him on the phone and we don’t even hear his voice.

Baywatch - S04E06 and E07 - Tentacles

This two-part story is great, well, great for Baywatch anyway. It may have been better if I hadn’t left a day between watching most of it and the last 20 minutes, which made it feel like the ending was rushed.

Part 1

‘B’ Story

This is what I’ve decided to coin a ‘Mitch Crime Story’ because there are so many of them, I liked it at first but it does peter out in part 2. A criminal breaks her husband out of jail by using a speed boat, of course. Why would a prison be right next to the sea like this? Is that a normal thing, I guess so. I don’t know what these characters' names are so I’m going to call them Mr. Husband and Mrs. Wife because their names aren’t even on the two Wiki pages I use for this kind of thing.

There’s quite a lot of shooting, the criminals use a semi-automatic while in the speed boat which was a cool scene. Mrs. Wife is a stunning individual so I wasn’t surprised to find that the Baywatch Fandom site describes her as a ‘beautiful woman’. They do escape but Mr. Husband gets shot, and they run into Mitch so they decide to kidnap him so he can patch up the dude. I say them, I mean Mrs. Wife since Mr. Husband is unconscious for the rest of this episode. From then on the story take place downstairs in a big boat. It’s one of those stories where someone is held at gunpoint, forced to do surgery. I thought I liked this part of the episode but thinking back to it now, it’s pretty generic and I vaguely remember Baywatch doing something like this before.

‘A’ Story

Baywatch surprises me by having some continuity. It continues the story about Summer possibly having an eating disorder while Slade and Matt try to decide who will pursue her. However, the story beats are the same as the previous episode - Summer binge-eats sweet things while the guys literally do a dangerous competition to see who wins. The latter is the odd one because didn’t they already decide that they were all going to just be friends in the last episode?

All of this doesn’t matter though because their story culminates in all three of them fighting off a giant octopus which seems mostly intent on downing Summer. I love it, it was so whacky. Both of these episodes have quite a few unintentionally funny or weird comments, the three of them are totally fine a little after almost being killed by a sea creature is one example.

They all decide to be friends again, just like in the last episode but then after the attack, Summer confesses her love for Matt, out loud, when for a moment she thinks he’s dead. Slade sees this so he decides to leave Baywatch, the other two don’t want him to go but they’re still all friends. Slade says something like ‘You two are meant to be together’. I assume this is Slade's real exit from the show and I’m a little impressed that Baywatch bothered to make a sending-off story, considering how he’s a rubbish actor and they didn’t bother to do the same thing for more important characters in earlier seasons.

Apparently, this is Nicole Eggert’s favorite episode (she plays as Summer), I understand the octopus scene was fun but it was brief, so this doesn’t bode well for later stories concerning Summer. Does it really not get better than this?

Part 2

‘B’ Story

This is better than the other part of the episode but I don’t have much time so I’ll try to keep it brief. You’ll notice that the story in part 1 concerning Summer and the boys is over, so they replaced it with this one. I don’t think Baywatch has done this before, it makes this two-part story, well, not really a two-part story, besides Mitches bit. Anyway, in this new story, we are introduced to Caroline, Stephanie’s sister. She’s not going to become a main character but I wonder if she’ll be in it again because she’s drop-dead gorgeous and acts the socks off everyone else.

The funny thing about this story is that it runs at breakneck speed, it should have been divided between these two episodes. This leads to unintentionally funny pacing.

‘A’ Story

Last episode ‘B’ story becomes this one's main focus. Mitch continues to help the criminals, but not much happens. Mr. Husband wakes up and takes up the of pointing the gun at Mitch, he also likes him far less. Mrs. Wife doesn’t exactly like Mitch but they did get to know each other a little in part 1 and she does appreciate that he saved her husband's life, however she is still prepared to kill him.

Some of the Baywatch gang notice that Mitch is missing so they go find him on that boat, somehow. The end of this story is quite basic and unsatisfying - The criminal couple goes up deck leaving the keys to Mitches handcuffs close enough for him to reach with his foot, so he escapes almost straight away. Come to think of it, this is just as the police are turning up so this is another example of Mitch rescuing himself even though someone else was just about to rescue him. I swear this must be David Hasselhoff or the writers always deciding that Mitch must be the macho man who always helps himself, just before anyone else gets the chance.

I'm not sure if I had more to say about this episode and may have not even finished writing about it. I must post it now though, since wrote it several days ago. Basically, I can't remember if I finished this blog entry or not.

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.