einsijo Review of Baywatch Nights

Baywatch Nights (1995–1997)

"The nights will never be the same again!"

[3 July 2005]

Although there has been almost a decade since this show was aired it will always have a place in my heart as one of the most unintentionally (or not?) hilarious shows I've ever seen on TeeVee. At the time the Baywatch craze was at an all time high and the original show had scores of followers (Including my sister). yet, It just didn't seem to appeal to me as much. That changed with the spin-off. During it's first season it was a detective drama where the Big H and some chick cracked cases far away from the beach, the scantily clad women, idiot bathers and submerged nuclear bombs. It immediately hit home with my young naive soul, showing a tougher side of Mitch, being more "cool" and less "girly" in my opinion than the original was. Unfortunately it wasn't very unique and memorable so I don't remember much about that first season. That changed when the bizarre second season started. Tired of regular vanilla detective work (and low ratings from disinterested TV surfers) the Big H changed pace, switched chicks and started and upgraded from Private Eye to a Paranormal Eye. From there the episodes turned from the "Cliché detective show" to a more extreme "X-files on Crack", featuring several oddball episodes including "Hasselhoff and Paranormal-chick get chronologically cloned to save themselves from mutated Brazillian-body-snatching-snails" and "Frozen Viking who floats to LA and wreaks havoc when he thaws out" (this one gained extra publicity in my country as it incorporated a real incidence, the 1996 glacier-run of Vatnajökull glacier, to explain the origin of frozen Viking). At the time this show aired in Iceland it became one of my favourite shows, which is understandable since I was only about 11 at the time and had considerably lower standards than I have today. Of course, today I doubt this show, like many other TV failures of the same caliber, can still be found anywhere. But If I ever happened across a reasonably low-priced tape or DVD of the episodes I will probably buy it, if only to smirk at the outlandish plots and sub-par acting. And in the end, who doesn't love Mutant Brazillian Body-snatching Snails?