TV

On the heels of the disappointing revival of a cheesy 70s series centered on magical technology (Bionic Woman) comes this show introducing us to the Talking Car 2.0. There was more expectation going into Bionic Woman, coming from the same production team that brought us the better/faster/stronger Battlestar Galactica. With Knight Rider, there wasn't much hope of the show being all that smart or edgy, but maybe, I don't know, fun. Alas, no.

Someone needs to tell the broadcast network programmers to wake up and smell the cable. In this era of cinematic television, schlocky and campy are two dwarfs that just aren't going to work anymore. The story and dialogue of this two hour premiere were worse than awful -- which, at least, may have provided some cheap laughs and potential drinking games (everytime someone says "Hi Kitt," for instance). They were just flat and formulaic, as if spit out by some teleplay-writing software. So, of course, the head bad guy speaks with a vaguely British accent and there's a will-they/won't-they, Sam-and-Diane romantic tension set up between the improbably beautiful professor's daughter, Sarah (Deanna Russo) and the hunka-hunka tough guy, Mike Tracer (Justin Bruening) that grudgingly saves the day.

Much of what you see in the premiere plays like a two-hour commercial for Ford, the car company which provides the new super-computerized car in the form of a Shelby Mustang, not to mention all the vehicles that chase the "KITT 3000" around, or at least it would if there weren't so much clunky dialogue being thrown around. That's going to be a hard vibe for this show to shake -- that of being an extended commercial -- and one the producers may not even be interested in trying to shake since it's an impression that's only intensified by having an actual Ford commercial featuring "stars" of the show air during the show. It's not much of a break when the commercial looks and sounds just like the show.

In this day and age, I would say "Who cares" if it sounds like a commercial so as not to sound like a cranky old hippie to millennial hipsters. And really I'm not objecting on some stale "sell out" principle. I don't care if the show seemed like a commercial or in fact was financed by Ford, if the results were cool, smart and/or fun to watch. Let's call it the lip-synching rule: just as today's audience of pop consumers don't care that their favorite acts may lip-sync and value live-music-video spectacle over live-in-concert authenticity, today's audience of viewers isn't turned off by overly commercial, it's turned off by undercooked cool.

Which brings us back to Knight Rider. Nothing captures this show's undercooked cool more fully than the voice of the car, provided by -- cue the lonely bugle playing a slow, sad Taps -- Val Kilmer. Oof. He's so monotone, so deadpan. Maybe it's his method approach to playing a robot, but listening to him talk is about as interesting as listening to the automated voice telling you whether your flight has been delayed.

I'd offer a spoiler alert here, but the term "spoiler" implies that there is something worth preserving that may be spoiled and that just doesn't fit here. So, the "twist" delivered in the denouement of this series debut is that Mike Tracer is the son of Michael Knight, the original driver of the original talking car. Sure enough, David Hasselhoff shows up in the final few minutes to offer a few sentimental lines. It's a short, stupid moment in a long, stupid debut. Here's hoping the new Knight Rider runs out of gas soon.