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Knight Rider “Deadly Maneuvers” (part 1 of 3)
Let’s return to 1982, when Reagan was president, there was war in the Falkland Islands, and Belushi died. The Clash had a big year with a hit album, and a somewhat, er, less masculine group had an even bigger hit with ”Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?”
(Why, yes. Yes, we did think about hurting you, George, thanks to the cloying pop songs you got stuck in our heads. But, as it turned out, the humiliation of that whole community service thing sort of took the edge off.)
Ultimately, you ended up hurting your own fool self.
Another big event from 1982 involved a tall, swaggering, former soap opera star roaming the country and fighting crime in an indestructible, talking Trans-Am. It’s Knight Rider, of course!
In the first episode after the pilot, “Deadly Maneuvers”, the Hoff winds up in a mess involving a pretty girl, an incompetent United States Army, and the worst weapons security policy that ever existed. “Deadly Maneuvers” has a lot more talk than action when compared to the pilot, but still has its share of “what the…?” moments, making it a quick, relatively enjoyable piece of fluff. Let’s get started!
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Mark M. Meysenburg
Mark teaches at Doane College, a liberal arts college in Crete, Nebraska. Most of his teaching involves computer science, but Mark also occasionally teaches mathematics and the history of science; he has also been known to offer three week courses on the worst movies ever made. Mark's bad movie obsession was kindled in the early 1980s by the Medved brothers, then fanned to full flame by late-night showings of Plan 9 from Outer Space. Who could have predicted the long term effects of satin-pajama-clad, mincing alien menace? Mark's other interests include homebrew beer and wine, and practicing and teaching martial arts.
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