Review: Knight Rider - 'Journey To The End Of The Knight'

As I watched the masterpiece that was "Knight Rider" Wednesday night when I was doing show prep for SyFy Radio, only one thought came to mind.

When is "Bionic Woman" coming back?

While that line definitely adds a little bit of humor to a dire situation, I'm actually being serious. If Ben Silverman, the head of NBC, came to us, the genre audience, last spring and said, "Either watch 'Bionic Woman' or here is what we'll give you," I would've started the first fan campaign ever devised to save a crappy show.

What stinks about this is that I want to like "Knight Rider." I mean, this was the show that replaced "Dukes of Hazzard" for me as a kid, because I thought a talking Firebird was far more interesting than two yokels driving around a Dodge Charger that didn't even have doors that could open.

Sure, watching those old episodes of "Knight Rider" might be painful now, but give me (the real) Michael Knight and Devon Myles any day. Hell, give me KITT vs. Bionic Woman, and I'll be far happier than I am of this new series.

And before I get into the so-called plot of "Knight Fever," you might be asking yourself, "What the hell is Michael Hinman doing reviewing television episodes? This guy never reviews television episodes."

Well, I'll tell you. Of all the reviews we write every week, of all the staff members we have available to write those reviews, no one wanted to write reviews for "Knight Rider." No one.

I mean, this is a staff that would jump at the chance to start reviewing "Flash Gordon" or "Cleopatra 2525," but they wouldn't touch the new "Knight Rider" with a 10-foot pole. So, because I'm the last one standing, I'm the one holding the mop. So buckle your seatbelts, because you're in for a crazy ride.

Michael Knight/Traceur (Justin Bruening) rolls his Ford Mustang version of KITT into an isolated bar in the middle of the desert where people with fancy cars like to hang out. Because only 19 people live on the planet Earth, Mike runs into an old special forces buddy named Sean Owens (Johnny Messner) who just happens to be the bartender.

"Hey, I thought you were dead!" Sean exclaims. Mikey, who had to fake his death so that those bad guys we had forgotten about wouldn't continue after him, shrugs it off. But wait, here was someone who was with him in the Special Forces who just might have more answers than a tattoo on a car hood could give. Yet how many questions did the great detective Mike Traceur ask to his pal-we-knew-would-turn-bad Sean? Zero.

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