Knight RiderWith season 1 of the show now finished, I thought it’d be interesting to do an overall review, mentioning what I thought did and didn’t work.

There’s no denying it was a bit of an uneven season. Probably more than a little due to the conflict between Gary Scott Thompson’s idea for the show versus what the studio wanted. It was obvious on-screen how Thompson’s original plot ark with KARR and Mike’s past had been gutted in favour of the standalone episodes. However I don’t necessarily think its fair to say that the Knight Research phase of a show (as opposed to the reformed FLAG towards the end of the season) was entirely a misstep.

Yes, there was the feeling of “terrorist of the week”, however some episodes were very strong such as Knight of the Living Dead (nice character piece for KITT and KARR hints) and Hard Day’s Knight (wherein Mike is poisoned and must figure out what the villains are after before he dies).

There were definitely still problems though, and I’d say the chief of them was a bloated cast. While I liked Yancey Arias as Alex Torres, his character automatically pushed Carrie Rivai into the background as he was the main Government contact.  He also took over Charles Graiman’s main role of running the operation, resulting in many episodes where Bruce Davison had little to do.

This for me was one of the key things that improved once the show rebooted and the FLAG era of the show started. With fewer cast members to juggle, the screentime seemed more balanced. And with only Mike and KITT in the field it really allowed writers to focus on their relationship, and we saw the banter between the two grow, and its here the show really showed its strengths.

The show also excelled at its action scenes, and these were something we saw grow in confidence as the show went on. Be it either Mike and KITT being chased with a bomb in KITT’s boot, KITT vs KARR or the bank robbery at the beginning of Exit Light, Enter Knight, they really did pull off these set pieces well.  

Special mention must also go to the fight choreography. Whenever Mike was needed to get into a physical confrontation with someone it was always well put together. There was a real sense that this Michael Knight was not someone you’d want to end up in a fight against.

At this stage season 2 is still very much in doubt, with most fearing the worst.  I really feel the show deserves a second chance though.  While the ratings didn’t set the world alight, they did maintain a solid viewership while up against big names like American Idol and repeats of Lost.  And more than that, there was a real feeling, that after the to-ing and fro-ing early in the season, that this was a show that had found its feet.  Owing a lot to the original Knight Rider towards the end, the relationship between Mike and KITT was there, the cast had really settled into their roles, and the confidence of the production team in terms of the kinds of scripts they were after and the big action scenes they could do was there.  From the episode Don’t Stop the Knight onwards I really enjoyed every episode.  Only really Fight Knight fell a bit flat, and even then it was enjoyable enough, just not on a par with the rest of the episodes around it.

I’d really like the show to get a shot at seeing what they could do with a second season.  Even if its only a short 13-episode order, as long as NBC gave it some backing in terms of advertising (something noticably absent as the show went on).  It’d be fun to see what kind of audience they could build up now they’ve found their feet.