American series-making at its worst?

jhoeboer-1

I just watched an episode of the Knight Rider 2008-series and after about 10 min I couldn't help but laugh while at the same time trying to suppress the pain in my brains.

This show has so many glaringly obvious problems. I love the old show and although it also had the occasional badly or cheesy written episode it always did it with heart. You cared about Bonny and Devon and you liked them as characters.

The new show: 1. Poor script writing with characters dropping in and out in ways that make it nearly impossible to suspend disbelief as well as loopholes in the script so big even KITT couldn't turbo-boost over them.

2. Very! poor dramatic implementation of dialogue. Example: Michael and his esteemed colleague are in KITT while napalm heats up the car to the point where they'll either die of overheating or running out of oxygen. Does the scriptwriter try to convey the panic of that moment? Not at all. Instead, we are "treated" with smug comments from totally irrelevant "team" members whose only job seems to be making said smug comments instead of actually energetically working out a plan to save their lives from getting snuffed out.

This could be mistaken for tongue in cheek comedy but in my eyes its just a sign of inadequacy.

3. Over the top reliance of the director on fast camera movements and CGI effects to past it all together. Seriously, after watching the show for 15 min my eyes were basically hurting. It's like they were trying to make a 45 min long videoclip instead of reserving the fast-paced action shots for when it really mattered: the action scenes.

And what is it with US film/series makers and their ill-conceived ideas about visible lasers in broad daylight in a dust-free environment anyway? I know it's supposed to be a semi-scifi show but really they should give the people in the US film industry a speed course in basic physics.

4. Totally irrelevant characters. It's great one geek has 6 Phds in advanced sciences and its equally great another character can speak 9 languages but despite all of these "assets" they're totally irrelevant to the show and more a nuisance than anything else.

The end result? I give it 4 for effort but for the rest they failed miserably. And that's even without knocking the developers on the head for the blatant "lets do some product placement for Ford" kind of thing.

score 4/10

jhoeboer-1 1 March 2009

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2030655/