I Watched Every Episode of Baywatch Nights - Season 2

 

One of my speculations during Season 1 of "Baywatch Nights" was that it was constantly being tweaked due to low ratings. Well, in between Seasons 1 and 2, producers decided tweaking, re-tooling and adjusting just wasn't good enough - forget all that - instead, for Season 2, they pushed the Whopper Button.

From Wikipedia:

"For the second season, facing slipping ratings, which were never as good as the original series, the producers decided to switch to a science-fiction format (inspired by the success of The X-Files)."

Ho boy! Yes, the silly, beach-adjacent detective show with attractive women walking around in the background has changed to a paranormal investigation show set in a darkly lit sound stage. A pretty dramatic switch, I'd say, but do you think they're going to explain it within the logic of the show? Not one bit.

As the season begins, one of the main characters of the show (played by Gregallen Williams) is gone. Did he quit? Did he die? Did he retire? Not a word is spent on him, his name will not even be said. Whereas in the first season, each episode would begin with a customer wanting to hire the detective agency, now episodes begin with a mysterious government agent, Diamont Teague, needing their help for secret government secrets. Why? They were never paranormal experts, they were just an average detective agency, when did they become experts in the paranormal and why does the government, the richest organization in the world, ask THEM for help? We're talking about a former lifeguard and his pals, here. Never discussed, don't worry about it.

Maybe the show is better off not explaining. Because the one time they do make an attempt, the result is hilarious. In S02E07, a woman calls them because she's worried her daughter is in too deep with voodoo. Why does she call them? They explain: because Mitch, as a lifeguard, once saved her daughter. That's what they say. When you're battling a Haitian cult, you call Mitch Buchanan the former lifeguard because....? He swims good and can administer CPR? He'll bring a whistle or even a red floaty thing?

Regardless of the inciting incident, you can imagine the formula: each week is another phenomenon - creature from the black lagoon, aliens, ghosts, mummies, werewolves, time vortexes; they investigate them all, come to a conclusion and give a happy ending that's tinged with some ambiguity or spookiness.

One of the tropes they follow to a painful degree is: two partners on an investigation and one is a skeptic and the other is a believer (or more open to the possibility). Mitch and his partner trade off these roles depending on the episode but most of the time Mitch is the skeptic. It's a tried-and-true formula but it doesn't work so good when you're doing a TV series. "Don't give me those silly wives' tales" is a really weird thing to say when something paranormal has specifically happened to you every single week for the past 17 weeks and you've seen concrete evidence that it's all real. This stupidity reaches unbelievable levels in the episode (again S02E07) where Mitch, the victim of voodoo, is driving in a car alone and finds his hands spontaneously start bleeding, then feels stabs in his side and can barely move, then sees a man's stomach spontaneously explode, finds his hand has spontaneously healed but at the end of the episode he's SURE that voodoo doesn't exist. Mitch, you're a cartoon. It is possible that his denial is said as a joke, but given the tenor of the rest of the season, I don't think so.

Here's my favorite action sequence of the show. I can't decide if that's what they meant to do or somebody screwed up badly. Well someone screwed up badly either way but I mean, is that "style"? What is that? Is it exciting when a fight scene is blurry, hard to follow and shot at 3 frames per second?

Let's talk best and worst episodes. The best episode, I think, is S02E06, the gang goes into an old cabin and gets trapped in a surreal time-portal/time-loop thing. This is one of the more creative plots and the most dreamlike and they mix the sci-fi with some humor. It's still not great but it has, at least, something to it - it's enjoyable, it's different, you can see the kernel of a good show somewhere in there. Also in the "imaginative" category is S02E13, the gang investigates a Virtual Reality D&D computer game that swallows people into another dimension. It's very dumb but full marks for "going for it" with an odd idea, as opposed to just fighting a mummy or a vampire. The worst episode is very tough because the entire series is a slog, but the dumbest episode, I'll say, is S02E12 where a Viking is found in ice, unfrozen by scientists and goes on a rampage in modern day Los Angeles. A Viking, complete with the horn helmet, swinging his sword at trucks... it's so laughable.

Serious Science-Fiction, ya'll.

Let's run through guest stars again. It was more fun the last time but we need to get through it.

• S02E05 - Brant von Hoffman - not a celebrity but I just want to point out that he played two different characters across the two different seasons of "Baywatch Nights." Shyah! Right! As if we wouldn't notice!
• S02E11 - Robert Ginty! Again! He was also in Season 1 as another character.
• S02E12 - Edward Mulhare! He was Michael Knight's boss in "Knight Rider" (which obviously also starred David Hasselhoff) so this is an unofficial reunion episode. This episode also has Tom Dreesen and Johnny Dark. They're both good friends of "Late Show with David Letterman" and they happen to be in the same episode acting along one another in the same scene. Seems like a big coincidence, maybe there's a story there, I don't know.
• S02E16 - Pamela Bach-Hasselhoff. I remember her from "Baywatch" because I had a crush on her. I never knew her name so I never knew that she was actually married to David Hasselhoff in real life.
• S02E18 - Terry Kiser! From "Weekend at Bernies." He's Bernie.
• S02E19 - Alexandra Paul - Stephanie from "Baywatch." She died in "Baywatch" the previous year and appears here as a ghost.
• S02E20 - Rance Howard - father of Ron and Clint.
• S02E22 - Gregallen Williams - the guy who was a major character last season but cut from this one returns to do a cameo in one episode. No, they don't bother to explain anything, he just shows up and he's there now.

A few other unrelated notes. 

• Due to particular structure of S02E13, 21 minutes into a 42 minute episode and the opening credits are still playing. 
• In S02E01, Mitch is reading a real (I think) newspaper that contains the headline "Flyers Will Drink from Stanley Cup." The episode aired September 1996, which means it was filmed before that, and so the headline probably refers to the 1995-1996 playoffs. The Flyers finished first in their conference that year but lost in the second round to the Florida Panthers. In fact, the Flyers have not drunk from the Stanley Cup since then and we're coming up on 30 years later.
• There is a two episode run (S02E20-21) where Mitch and Angie Harmon's character are especially affectionate and playful with each other. Their chemistry has completely changed and it's very cute. I thought a show centered around these characters - a different show - could have really been enjoyable.
• I mentioned the theme song for Season 1 was excellent, the theme for Season 2 is not.

So that's "Baywatch Nights" Season 2. It's not exactly a terrible show but it's incredibly boring and was a complete slog for me. The acting and production are well done but I just don't care at all. When the  first season was stupid and silly, it could fall back on a certain amount of charm and attractive women. This season is stupid and silly but intends to be dark and serious sci-fi/horror and it's all very offputting. Keep in mind, I hate horror so I do have that bias but I like science-fiction. Good science fiction usually has a certain weight of intellect behind it, though, and the word "intellect" is one thing that has never been associated with Mitch Buchanan and "Baywatch". 

Even if the title didn't doom the project from the start, I think the entire concept of aping "X-Files" was doomed for failure. Yes, "The X-Files" was a big hit but that doesn't mean there was a sudden upswell in the public's demand for paranormal investigation shows. Bear in mind, I know almost nothing about "The X-Files" so I could be wrong here, but I don't think people's attraction to it was due to a love of aliens and monsters. I think the idea that "The Truth is out there" struck a chord with the zeitgeist of the time, it tapped into an unexpressed, deep-seated feeling that we were all being lied to. Compare that to the Nights tagline "The nights will never be the same" and you can see why it never made it to a Season 3.

And now that "Baywatch Nights" has inexplicably intersected with the genre of ghosts and goblins, you can see this whole venture into "Baywatch Nights" was in celebration of Halloween. Did you see that one coming? Happy Halloween.