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RSS'Knight Rider': Michael fights with the kid from 'Home Improvement'
Does it seem weird to anyone that tonight's Knight Rider started with our thinned out team turning their headquarters into a frat house? I thought they were supposed to be out there saving the world. Apparently that now requires a foosball table and an easy chair with a cooler in the armrest.
The gang had also decided that they're all terribly stressed out and would be taking vacations in shifts. I guess that's better than them all taking off at the same time, but obviously, the only guy they actually needed was the one driving the car. Pretty much everyone else could take all the time off they wanted, KITT could do the heavy lifting brains-wise, and Michael could take care of the rest. It almost goes without saying that Michael was the first guy to take a vacation... with KITT. Yeah, brilliant planning. I guess it's good that it was Michael who found trouble this week, rather than Billy uncovering some sort of illegal arms smuggling, this way Michael's vacation didn't get ruined by anyone but Michael.
And, boy, did his vacation get ruined. He went to this old bar from his past, Sonny's, for a nice quiet evening, only to find that Sonny was dead, his hot daughter Julie was running the place, the bouncer was too nice, the place was full of armed and dangerous people, and there had been some suspicious fires breaking out lately. Michael took a position as a bouncer there, quickly breaking the nose of the kid from Home Improvement. No, not Jonathan Taylor Thomas, the older brother, Zachery Ty Bryan.
The kid's daddy, not Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor, showed up moderately annoyed the next morning that his son had been hurt at his old buddy's bar (apparently Not The Tool Man and Sonny were buds). That was all well and good, except that it clearly wasn't. There was no way that Zachery Ty Bryan was going to appear twice, the second time with Not The Tool Man and that he and/or his dad weren't going to be the cause of Sonny's troubles.
Sure enough, when Michael and KITT followed a methane trail from the most recent fire, they were led back to Phil Driscoll's development company (Driscoll being Not The Tool Man). At least they didn't make us hold our breath for that revelation. Nor did we have to wait too long to learn from Julie that Phil had offered to buy her place right after her dad died.
It all seemed so nice and easy, but it wasn't, as we'd find out later. Yes, Driscoll and/or his boy were evil, but the methane trail turned out to be nothing but a red herring leading in the right direction. Odd, the KNIGHT folks just got lucky there.
The really odd thing though was that after Michael went to track down the car Sonny died in (there had been an accident the KNIGHT team figured was foul play), Michael was almost gunned down by a bunch of people with really big guns. Oh, Michael escaped, and he escaped in awesome fashion. Truly awesome fashion. He hopped into KITT, and after a brief chase, he had KITT spin 90 degrees while breaking and then turbo boost. KITT did this ridiculous sideways flip thing onto an overpass. But, the cool escape didn't explain how there could be so much money at play that there was a team of hitmen after Michael.
As it turned out, Sonny's was sitting on a bunch of methane gas, making the mineral rights to the place worth a fortune (and meaning that, if I understand the show, that the Driscolls just happened to walk through some of it on the way to their company). Phil Driscoll may have known that, as Driscoll Development had a survey done back in the day. However, today was today, and Phil was dead due to some sort of massive heart attack. Clearly that made Terry (Zachery Ty Bryan) the bad guy, it also meant that the fires at Sonny's were just an accident, and caused by the methane under the place. It was just bad luck that they started right after Sonny's death. Okay...
Michael may have blacked out at the end of the fight with Terry, but Terry was already down for the count at that point. With the bad guys eliminated, Michael's vacation, and this episode, came to a close.
Okay, foolish plot aside, let's admit it was a fun episode tonight. There was the kooky wrecked car artist, and the whole Zoe/Billy back and forth. Those two deserve their own show, which leads me to...
The Question of the Knight -- if Zoe and Billy got their own show next fall, you'd watch, wouldn't you?
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Zap2it Twitter Talk 
As silly and two dimensional as the original series may have seemed at times, it was much better written - the plot holes you described here were never present and everything in the episode was relevant to the story. The other problem is that I actually would prefer to see Billy in the driver's seat than this Michael and it's bad when the co-stars are more interesting than the star. They should've worked with the 'Hoff and Glen Larson.... They knew what to do....
L***er, week after week I read your review of KR thinking you might actually have something *positive* to say about this show. Clearly you do not like it, you're p*ssed over the fact that you got stuck reviewing it, and you go out of your way to try and slam every. little. thing. that the show has to offer. You are a Tool, man.
Wow, last night was the weakest episode in the last 5-6. I couldn't believe Michael was getting his butt kicked by Zack. Mike's a special forces superman; and gets slapped silly.
Biggest disappointment, when the "hit team" was after michael in Kitt, KITT was out of weapons. Since when? KITT has been shown to be a regular armory of weapons and they had to run from the bad guys who were i SUV's. What about KITTs emp, missiles, machine guns, and laser weapons, etc. Or the fact he could have just driven through them?
Let's just face the plain, simple truth of it. This show is just plain awful. Now, I still watch it because there's not much else going on on Wednesday night (other than Lost), but even I know that it's just not a good show. The actors are okay, but they've been given some of the weakest writing I've seen on TV in a long time. I can't believe that what we have now is the "restructuring" that some executive somewhere thought was a good idea. Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! However, I will point out one good thing about the show. It's good background noise to have on while I'm on my computer. I can look up every once in a while and still not be lost because every episode consists of either Mike explaining some aspect of human nature to KITT, Smith Cho's character teasing (unconvincingly) poor Billy, uh, I mean whoever his character is on this show, or Sarah flirting with Mike on KITT's viewscreen. Like I said, it doesn't change and it means I don't have to pay attention. What a badly run show! So sad - it could have been so much better.
Jack, I actually requested this show as soon as I saw it was available. I'm thrilled to recap it every week and I'm not joking at all when I talk about the awesomeness of the sideways turbo boost (or any other turbo boost). The show has flaws, but I think there's stuff to like in it (and that I comment on the good as well as the bad).
Maybe KITT was out of weapons because he was on vacation since Michael did take him on his time away and it should be a time to relax and not think about the possibility of trouble turning up.
I mean whoever his character is on this show, or Sarah flirting with Mike on KITT's viewscreen. Like I said, it doesn't change and it means I don't have to pay attention. What a badly run show! So sad - it could have been so much better.