Whoa! The Son of Knight Rider delivers another Best-So-Far episode! Too bad there aren't many left, the show could have actually evolved into something likable.
Had this been made in the 1980s, this would have been a groundbreaking episode. Unfortunately this is made in the 2000s and while a perfectly watchable episode compared to the abominations in the first half of the season, it still suffers from the same core problem that almost all episodes before it - it recycles if not immediately recognizable, then at least familiar, ideas, scenes and plot elements from movies and TV series that we've seen before. Also, the title is a full-blown spoiler.
In all fairness, the first of the recyclings, that of the famous shoot-out outside of a bank in Michael Mann's masterpiece, Heat, is actually a neat subversion of the viewers' familiarity with the movie. Viewers who've come to expect nothing less than total idiocy from Knight Rider quite likely experience extreme frustration when viewing the sequence. "Why the frak are they shooting their way *into* the bank?" While it later turns out there was a method into this madness, which proves that the shooters *are* clever, the scene still suffers from TV budget, uninspired direction and the "no blood" policy of the show. "Sanitized" violence is more harmful than realistic, bloody violence.
However, after surprising us, the episode goes downhill - quite literally, in the end - from thereon. The recyclings come faster than you can list them and the bad guys make mistakes that prove they *are not* clever, which contradicts the beginning. Also, when revealed in full, their "masterplan" is just needlessly overcomplicated and therefore risky, which equals stupid. Their "professional" characters are *inconsistent*. Which means once again that the writers thought they were cleverer than they really are.
From midpoint an experienced viewer can predict pretty much every "twist" that comes because they've seen it before elsewhere. It's not easy being original these days, but here simply too much of the good stuff has been stolen from better works and on top of that, a heap of clichés pile up. Still, this beats the previous episode by claiming the title of Best Episode So Far to itself. Even if it's only a 5/10.
Had this been made in the 1980s, this would have been a groundbreaking episode. Unfortunately this is made in the 2000s and while a perfectly watchable episode compared to the abominations in the first half of the season, it still suffers from the same core problem that almost all episodes before it - it recycles if not immediately recognizable, then at least familiar, ideas, scenes and plot elements from movies and TV series that we've seen before. Also, the title is a full-blown spoiler.
In all fairness, the first of the recyclings, that of the famous shoot-out outside of a bank in Michael Mann's masterpiece, Heat, is actually a neat subversion of the viewers' familiarity with the movie. Viewers who've come to expect nothing less than total idiocy from Knight Rider quite likely experience extreme frustration when viewing the sequence. "Why the frak are they shooting their way *into* the bank?" While it later turns out there was a method into this madness, which proves that the shooters *are* clever, the scene still suffers from TV budget, uninspired direction and the "no blood" policy of the show. "Sanitized" violence is more harmful than realistic, bloody violence.
However, after surprising us, the episode goes downhill - quite literally, in the end - from thereon. The recyclings come faster than you can list them and the bad guys make mistakes that prove they *are not* clever, which contradicts the beginning. Also, when revealed in full, their "masterplan" is just needlessly overcomplicated and therefore risky, which equals stupid. Their "professional" characters are *inconsistent*. Which means once again that the writers thought they were cleverer than they really are.
From midpoint an experienced viewer can predict pretty much every "twist" that comes because they've seen it before elsewhere. It's not easy being original these days, but here simply too much of the good stuff has been stolen from better works and on top of that, a heap of clichés pile up. Still, this beats the previous episode by claiming the title of Best Episode So Far to itself. Even if it's only a 5/10.
