Yes, damn you, Rotten Tomatoes! Damn you and your damn “Squish-o-meter” algorithm or whatever it is you used to assign the new Baywatch a miserable 20% rating, thus making it impossible for me to look at myself in the mirror with a straight face and go off in search of some agreeable retro soft-core raunch. I guess I’ll have to catch up with “Mitch Redux” and the rest of the gang on Netflix or whatever.
Back in the heyday of the “real Baywatch” I had too much self-respect to watch a full episode of the show. Besides, when you’d seen the opening credits, you’d seen it all, right? But I did have a close encounter with one episode, thanks to a less than compelling 1996 vice-presidential debate between Jack Kemp and Al Gore, for which I should have received points just for starting to watch. Anyway, Jack and Al were beginning to pall on me, so I switched to Channel 50, DC’s “trash channel” (pretty much) back in the day, and encountered two surfer dudes headed for [wait for it] “Dead Man’s Cove”.
Well, the dudes hit the waves, wiping out pretty spectacularly, and the current carries one dude’s board towards an underwater cave! Interesting! Then, just as the board reaches the cave’s mouth, this huge tentacle reaches out and grabs it! Intense!
We jump cut to CJ (Pamela Anderson) and Caroline (Yasmin Bleeth). CJ is driving a Baywatch command vehicle, as I guess they’re called, while Caroline is walking, pretty aggressively it seems, and we get the following dialogue:
CJ: “Get in, Caroline!”
Caroline: “No! I still have 300 calories to burn off!”
CJ: “Caroline, I think you have an eating disorder! I think you’re bingeing and purging! I know what’s like! But I got help!”
Caroline: “Leave me alone!”
Another jump cut, this time to Baywatch headquarters, where the two surfer dudes are filling Mitch (David Hasselhoff,1 of course) in:
Surfer dude: “My board disappeared, man!”
Mitch: “I’ll check it out.”
Okay, that’s some serious service. But Mitch’s day is just starting. CJ fills him in again:
CJ: “I think Caroline has an eating disorder, Mitch! I think she’s bingeing and purging!”
Mitch: “I’ll check it out.”
By this point I was missing Al and Jack, so I went back to them for a good three quarters of an hour, coming back just in time to hear Caroline say “Wow! Almost ending up as breakfast for that giant piece of sushi has given me a whole new perspective on eating! I’m getting therapy tomorrow!”
- Word can spell “Hasselhoff”. I confess I was ready to go either way on this one. ↩︎
