One of my more endearing (or less endearing, if you listen to my ex) qualities is that I have never grown up and, unlike most people, I make no pretenses that I have. Even a brief survey of my apartment testifies to my underdeveloped psyche: a glossy menagerie of toys, trinkets and playthings array themselves before the visitor like exhibits from the 80s pop culture version of a Civil War museum, each showing the slight wear around the edges of having been put to use in a vain attempt to vicariously reclaim some shiny piece of the childhood of their owner. Actually, if anything my standing as a full-fledged adult makes this maturity impediment worse, because now, for example, if I find myself gazing hungrily at an absurdly overpriced perfect working replica of a Jedi lightsaber, the size of my checkbook allows me to do something about it.
However, my sickness is not limited only to expensive toys. I indulge in other conceits of childhood when time allows, such as the watching of cartoons and even nostalgia-driven forays into television programs from my youth…which brings us to the topic of record for today. My recent perusals of the DVD shelves brought me with a startled gasp to the Knight Rider: Season One box set
I loved Knight Rider growing up. It has each one of a young boy’s Four Elements of TV Show Asskickery, including:
- A high-tech sports car that goes really fast.
- I lied. There’s only one Element of TV Show Asskickery for young boys.
It goes without saying that the car is the one element of that show that endears it to a generation…the rest of it, including David Hasselhoff, you can pretty much take or leave (despite what David would perhaps like to believe). For the uninitiated, the car, named K.I.T.T., is a black Trans Am with an indestructible skin, a host of James Bond-like gadgets like smokescreens, oil slicks and turbo boosts, and most importantly of all, an artificially intelligent CPU which can drive the car by itself and talk to you with the personality of the high school principal from Boy Meets World. Now, the invention of such an advanced A.I. being would even today be a momentous event simultaneously inspiring awe and fear throughout all humanity and stirring up a hornet’s nest of metaphysical controversy. But the human cast of this show take K.I.T.T.’s existence in a stride of indifference, as though finding out that the car you’re riding in can think for itself and insult you in a drawling British accent is a matter of importance for all of 20 seconds. Still, for the audience, K.I.T.T.’s personality and ability to drive himself are the deal-makers; without these there’s no show.
Actually, even with K.I.T.T. there’s barely a show. Like most of its peers, Knight Rider in all its 1982 glory does not really stand the test of time and falls somewhat short of living up to my time-inflated childhood memories.
The plot is laughable cheese, and most every episode shares exactly the same one: Michael and K.I.T.T. cruise along (to the royalty-evading accompaniment of amateurish re-recordings of Eagles and Fleetwood Mac road songs) into some Southwestern backwater where the leather-clad adonis and his flashy sports car stick out like sore thumbs and immediately attract the ire of the xenophobic but well-meaning sheriff. They quickly discover that some evil establishment entity is trying to exploit the downtrodden common folk just trying to eke out their honest American living. This is explained to them by the town’s beautiful, strong-willed widow (with a poorly dubbed voice loop that never quite jives with the movement of her lips), whose husband’s death/disappearance was invariably because he Found Out Too Much. Her fatherless but brave son isn’t quite old enough to understand everything that’s going on, but serves as the proxy for all the young boys like myself in the television audience by gaping enthusiastically when K.I.T.T. first rolls into town and begging for the ride we all want so badly in real life. In the end, of course, the cause of good prevails, the bad guys go to jail, and Michael drives off to his next assignment amid a flurry of pledges to return and follow up on both the townsfolk’s new era of prosperity and the blossoming romance with the beautiful widow…neither of which, of course, he ever does. (That would require Continuity, which prior to the 1990s did not exist on television.)
If it all sounds relentlessly corny, I assure you it’s worse. And yet, even on fresh viewings, Knight Rider retains a degree of charm…at least for me. Sure, the car still kicks all varieties of ass and makes no apologies for it. But as a 21st century viewer burned by the cynicism of modern realistic drama where the side of good often fails, people die, and life sucks, there is some comfort to be found in the refuge of a relic from a more innocent era in television, when the bad guys were guaranteed their comeuppance by the end of the hour. Even the most discriminating among us sometimes just want the happy ending, and in the right mood, Knight Rider’s ham-handed “one man can make a difference” message can be a guilty pleasure.
Now, Hollywood, about that “Greatest American Hero” DVD set…
