David Hasselhoff hangs loose    as Mitch Buchannon.

David Hasselhoff has stumbled upon the perfect formula. He revolutionized television back in 1989 by creating Baywatch. After tripping up a few years later with Baywatch Nights, Herr Hasselhoff has gone back to his roots and created Baywatch Hawaii, as close to perfect as you can get in Baywatch-land. While the original series gave us a revolving cast of hot young people (and Newmie) on the rather dreary beaches of Los Angeles, Baywatch Hawaii takes it to a whole new level. The show centers on lifeguards setting up an international training center in Hawaii. The end result is hot young people with sexy accents in some of the most beautiful locations in the world.

Baywatch Hawaii also reaches new levels of absurdity. I know I'm asking for trouble concentrating on the plot of this show, but I'm a film geek, I can't help it. Did you ever play that game where someone write a few lines of a story, covers up everything but the last line, and passes it on to someone else to continue the story? That's how the plots of Baywatch Hawaii run. And apparently the people getting these scraps of story know nothing about lifeguarding. There is no other way to explain some of the gross inconsistencies that I have witnessed. For example:

Mmm... Jason!

In the episode titled Gold from the Deep the gang goes on a treasure hunt and comes across an old boat with a torpedo that never exploded sticking out the side. That's really the plot, I swear. Jason, Allie, Nick, and Sean scuba down to explore the wreck, which is approximately 200 feet below the surface. Jason, who is really hot AND on a spiritual quest, finds a really important Hawaiian artifact and is trying to bring it to the surface just as the torpedo starts slipping and is about to explode. Sean, who cares more about the lives of his team than really important Hawaiian artifacts, forces Jason to surface by ripping off his scuba mask and mouth piece. Jason swims angrily to the surface, sans air tank (remember that, it's important) and everyone is fine.

The very next episode is called Bent. (If you ever get the chance to produce a television show, I suggest calling an episode Bent.) In Bent, the team has to rescue a professor and his really whiny student from an experimental submarine. Here's where the problem starts. As people are volunteering to scuba down to the sub, Jason says he isn't certified to do a mixed air dive, even though he had no problems diving in the last episode. Did they forget the entire plot of the last episode? I came up with a couple reasons why Jason was able to dive for treasure (it was a training dive, he had special supervision, they invented some other kind of air), but not able to dive for an experimental sub. But I shouldn't have to come up with explanations for basic plot points; that's the writer's job.

Stacy Kamano as Kekoa

I couldn't spend long thinking about this because the main plot was beginning to take shape. Nick, Allie, and Sean somehow figure out that the air in the sunken sub is contaminated and try to rig up their own air tanks to the sub. The sub is about 200 feet down (the same depth as the treasure in the last episode) and our heroes have not been under very long when they start trying to hook up the air tanks. They are immediately concerned about needing to decompress and worry that if they don't go to the surface right away they'll get the bends. No one said anything about decompressing or the bends on the treasure hunt. Anyway, Sean and Allie start to go up, Nick keeps screwing around with the air tanks, one thing leads to another, Nick comes straight up from 200 feet, gets the bends, and dies. Why didn't that happen to Jason? What did he do differently? Doesn't anyone on the Baywatch production team remember the previous episode?? Not that I want Jason to die, but they could at least get their facts straight.

What does all this teach us? Well, nothing really, except maybe that I'm insane. If you ever watch Baywatch Hawaii, DON'T try to follow the plot. You'll be confused enough by the crackhead editing and the poor line delivery. Although the show has a few faults, I do encourage you to watch Baywatch Hawaii, if only to see the attractive actors run a whole lot. What else are you going to do at 7:00 PM on a Saturday? --Meredith Riley
9/15/00

Cast photos are copyright © Pearson Television Ltd
and are from the official Baywatch site.