Unwarranted Nostalgia

Okay, i have to admit, nostalgia compelled me to turn on the TV at nine o'clock last night for the return of Knight Rider. I could've cared less that KITT (Knight Industries Three Thousand instead of Two Thousand, clever huh?) had been upgraded from a Trans Am to a Mustang Shelby. I was more interested in seeing how David Hasselhoff would get shoe-horned into the new plot as Michael Knight while his vigilante burden fell on the shoulders of the younger, sexier, roguish "ex-Army Ranger and failed race-car driver", Mike Tracer! (Michael - Mike, clever huh?)

It started out okay with a tasteful modern rendition of the old theme song... and KITT taking off on his own to find the daughter of his murdered creator.

Well, I didn't last past the first commercial break. It was brutal. I don't even know who she was or how she fits into the plot, but one of the main characters was introduced surfing at dawn before she proceeds to strip off her wetsuit in an outdoor shower scene before returning to her bedroom and her one-night-stand lesbian lover to suit up for a day at the office as... an FBI agent. Get it? Young. Tuff. Sexy! No, I'm not making this shit up.

Cut to Mike Tracer, (our hero remember?), being woken up in the middle of the day by a couple of thuggish money collectors bashing down his door... oh, wait, there are two women in his bed! What a guy! He's young. Tuff. Sexy!

CLICK.

Struck

All weekend people were telling me the strike was over. And it looks like they may be right. There has been a lot written and reported on with regard to the writer's strike, a lot of it hyperbole. I followed much of it.

The shift in perception seemed to come after the Golden Globes went from being an orgy of red-carpet arrivals and celebrity self-aggrandizement to a perfunctory press conference awards presentation with poorly written jokes. Which raised the spectre of an Academy Awards show cancellation. No one wants that.

TV writer Denis McGrath has a nice analysis on his blog, Dead Things ON Sticks. His observation that 'The weary inevitability the screwing of writers has always garnered has lifted.' may be our most significant, hardest-won gain.