I was, and always shall be a fan of the “Knight Rider” series. - That being said..

 
 
    This show could have been great, it could have owned the ratings. Instead it fell sadly short of all of our expectations. There are many places to start looking for problems with the show, and figure out why it failed, so I’ll just pick one at random and go from there. For the record I am always slow to place blame on actors and actresses. In TV shows such as this one, I don’t see them as having the power to dictate character changes or attributes. So the majority of my criticism is directed at the writers and directors.


“Michale Knight!” opps, I mean “Mike Traceur”...

    Ju
stin Bruening plays Michael in the show. He’s a nice enough guy, very likable. This was in my opinion his characters down fall. He was to nice. His character is supposed to be former special forces, recently back from hell. Putting such a dark knight at the helm of the worlds most powerful super car, would have been fun to watch. However, Justin portrayed a very friendly, easy going, almost boy-scout type character that just didn’t fit his supposed background. The former Michael Knight was an ex-police officer, which David Hasselhoff fit and portrayed perfectly. Justin would have also fit perfectly into the ex-police officer roll, sadly they missed the opportunity, trying to make him more than the original, and fell embarrassingly short of the mark. As a son of the original Michael Knight in the show, he would have been great. As an ex-special forces warrior with a dark past, he falls short, he just doesn’t have or portray the darkness needed - think someone more like Vin Diesel.


KITT...

    KITT, should be the worlds most powerful, fastest super car. This should never be a question. KITT should never have any challenge when racing or pursuing another car in any way. Sadly they dropped the ball here as well. There were a couple of episodes where KITT actually expressed some difficulty in either winning a race, or catching another car. I don’t care if it’s a sports car, this shouldn’t have been challenging. That was half the fun of KITT! - It’s like taking away Superman’s powers, that’s half the fun! I don’t want KITT to have to have to “try” to win the race, I want him to feel insulted that there was ever a question that he couldn’t blow the doors off of any car out there. I want him to be annoyed that he had to hold back!

    Second, the show started off with KITT being able to access just about every computer related system in the world. It was great! The world’s most powerful supercomputer easily accessing any computer system it wanted, and it fit the idea of a super-car / super-computer that has no equal. The problem is they took the majority of that stuff away from him, when they changed the direction that the show was going in. Basically, the show started out with KITT working for the government, instead of working outside of it. - I don’t want to hear that he no longer has access to the governments data bases. I want the most powerful AI to act like other computer systems are mere toys when compared to him, and bend them all to his will!


Third, and this is a big one, a Mustang should never transform into a F-150! In case you missed that, a Mustang should NEVER transform into a F-150! - The name of the show is “Knight Rider”, not “Transformers”! Having the mustang tweak a little bit for “battle mode”, is cool. Having the “nano-skin” be able to repair itself and even change color is cool. - But, when a comparatively small mustang transforms into a huge F-150 extended crew cab, we have crossed over into absurdity, and totally lost the audience.



The cast...

    Although I grew to like them all, they were either wrong for the show, or played wrong. Case in point, I have come to like Paul Campbell, however, his portrayal of the character “Billy Morgan” was poorly directed. He’s supposed to be the “super smart tech guy”, with “multiple phd’s”. First, he looks way to young to have such accolades. Second, he was also annoyingly wimpy. I know he’s not supposed to be the fighter in the story, but how about just being a man. Seriously, it was pathetic. 




Bruce Davison played as Dr. Charles Graiman, the creator of KITT. I liked him. I thought he played the part well. Sadly, when they changed the direction of the show, they cut him. Older people may not be the supermodels that Hollywood loves to cast in to every possible role. However, they do bring realism and depth to both the characters and stories that they play in. In my opinion having some older people in command central would’ve been nice. Stories need brains as well as beauty. They are their to offer the wisdom, that the rest of the characters are horribly lacking.



Smith Cho played, “Zoe Chae”. She was hard not to love in the show. If there was a gripe it was only that you weren’t really sure why she was there, or where she came from. Her character supposedly spoke multiple languages, something we rarely saw used, or explained. She was also a pretty good fighter, again never explained. She had the makings of a former CIA operative. - Sadly that either wasn’t the case, or was never explored. I feel like they missed some huge and interesting possibility with her.



Deanna Russo played “Sarah Graiman”, the good doctors daughter and understudy. She also was Mike’s illusive love interest. It would have been more fun if she played harder to get. It also would have been nice if she stayed the smart daughter of the genius. Instead they tried to make her the main girl in charge. I don’t just mean the lead female, I mean the boss.

Before anyone gets ready to call me a sexist, hold your tongue. I have seen other females take charge and do it well. She however, did not. It wasn’t believable. Again, I feel that age contributed to this.









As for the rest of the crew....

Anyone playing government related characters were, well just plain awful. - Enough said.

 

WHAT WENT WRONG?



    I have many fond memories of Knight Rider as I’m sure many of us do. So, I was super excited when I heard that NBC was bring it back. I subscribed to the season pass on iTunes, and hoped for great things. - *sigh* -