Episode: “A Knight in Shining Armor” – Series Premiere (Season 1)
Premiere Date: Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
Rating: 0.5 out of 4 Stars
Quick Synopsis: A flaming pile of KITT.
Long Synopsis: They are after a package, but another group looking for Mike Tracer messes things up. Later, while trying again, a woman from his past takes the package, but he has no memory of her. He starts trying to figure out what happened to him in his past.
Review: Knight Rider the series is actually worse than the two hour movie from last spring, if you can believe it? The opening sequence is one of the worst bits of television I have seen in quite some time. It is so bad that I am having trouble putting it into words. Let’s just say that it makes last season’s Bionic Woman reboot look positively brilliant by comparison.
I had medium hopes for this reboot of the reboot of the series when former Las Vegas showrunner, Gary Scott Thompson, took the helm. That show was always a campy rollicking good time. So, I was hoping that this would be too, but my hopes were quickly dashed. Even before we made it to the opening credits.
There are so many problems, like the new things KITT can do. Man, I thought the Transformer people were working on Fringe. Also, Val Kilmer still doing the voice just doesn’t sound right, the dialogue is terrible, special effects aren’t all that special, and the need to provide eye candy to try and cover up all the previous things mentioned. And, I’m still talking about the show’s opening.
The one thing I will give it is that it sets up a kind of interesting back-story for the lead. A guy trying to find out about a past he can’t remember isn’t all that original, but it can make for interesting storytelling.
Overall, it should be avoided, but you may need to watch for yourself to fully appreciate just how incredibly bad it is. Given the competition, ABC’s Pushing Daisies, CBS’ The New Adventures of Old Christine and Gary Unmarried comedy block, The CW’s America’s Next Top Model and FOX’s Bones, in the first hour of primetime on Wednesdays, I don’t see Knight Rider lasting long. It may have a decent opening, due to curiosity and no Pushing Daisies yet, but the fall off in ratings between the first half hour and the second half hour is going to be sizeable, not to mention the week to week numbers. But, stranger things have happened.
Knight Rider premieres tomorrow night, Wednesday, September 24th on NBC.
Terrible acting, not realistic, poor attempt to include comedy in the plot. This TV show is a slap on the face to the orginal Night Rider. Geared to age 10-13 is more like it…. un-realistic scenes like the car morphing into a TRUCK! …God who’s idea was that? The guy get’s his finger choped off…puts it in KITT and whala “I feel no pain” …uh yeah. NBC forgot to consider their target audiance.
I’ll be very surprised if this makes it to season two. NBC had a good oportunity to bring this clasic back and did a good job screwing it up.
I disagree with this Chris, I enjoyed the show and it was nice to see that they used a person that was related to the original Michael Knight in the show by making him his son and saying that he would be in the show from time to time to see his son. I have not seen it on tv for a few weeks now and I hope they didn’t take it off the air. I miss watching it, it is the ONLY GOOD show on on Wednesday night. I thought it was kinda of neat when the car morphed into a truck and different. If you really think about it in an realistic terms cars don’t talk or drive themselves. To me that’s what made the show great, I wish I had a car like that, but it’s not real and either is TV. Speaking of real TV I hate those realality shows, there boring. Please bring back Knight Rider if you took it off the air. I also enjoyed the actors, it wasn’t just the car that made the show and my mother liked the show too. The word that I used to discribe what I thought of the car, I couldn’t think of another word to use that was better and different from the original car is what I ment about it. The only thing I think they screwed up on was killing her father that made the car. I also believe that My mom and I aren’t the only ones that enjoyed the show. For the ones that didn’t like it, properly like those reality TV shows that I find are boring. Thanks and please think about bringing it back if you took it off the air. If you didn’t please tell me when it’s coming back on air. Thanks again Ms. Brenda Fielder
Brenda, Well, Life was the best show on NBC Wednesdays, IMHO, but it doesn’t really matter now, as NBC announced this past Monday that it isn’t being renewed for a third season and Knight Rider will not be back for a second, as well.