Well, I might as well start off this entry with the bit I wrote about the return of “Knight Rider” to series television in my Fall TV Preview:
After the incredibly disappointing TV movie earlier this year, which played like a two-hour-long car commercial with a really bad script, there is absolutely no rational reason for my including this within my top 10, but, dammit, sometimes nostalgia wins out over common sense. It is almost certainly telling that the powers that be couldn’t manage to get us a copy of the first episode prior to a network conference call to promote the series, and I will be the first to bail out if the premiere is as bad as the movie was, but – God help me – I can still remember how much enjoyment I got out of the original series, and I cannot for the life of me shake that off.
Well, NBC finally managed to produce an advance screener of the first episode, and…well, it’s not as bad as the movie, but it’s still a far cry from “great,” that’s for damned sure.
It’s one thing to turn on the television set and turn off your mind, but based on its premiere episode, it looks like “Knight Rider” is shaping up to be about as scientifically plausible as…uh…wow, I’m trying to think of a sufficiently ridiculous example, and I just can’t come up with one that I’m comfortable with. Suffice it to say that your average automotive engineer would probably find this the most hysterical hour of television to emerge in the past few decades.
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