For The Love Of Mike
Submitted by Sarah D. Bunting on February 21, 2008 – 12:08 PM5 Comments
My recap of the Knight Rider pilot/reboot is up on TWoP now.
Okay, bad guys of television and film, listen up: if a given hostage is the only means you have of attaining your goal, and if she knows that, threatening to kill her is dumb, and this is a perfect illustration. Only Sarah or her father can code-break for you, which she must know, and you’ve just told her that her father’s already dead, so now she also knows that if you kill her, you’re fucked. There are things you can leverage against her here — safety of loved ones, low pain threshold — but if she knows she’s no good to you dead, why would you threaten her with…death, which is the only outcome you can’t afford?
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Great recap. My only comment on it is that I think the reason the FBI agent was established as a lesbian – in addition to the “giving an excuse for showing a hot, barely-covered chick in bed” one – was to rule her out as a potential love interest for Mike T. Which I can get behind, given that the show already set up a potential love interest for Mike T. and tried to establish him as a lady-killer in general (I mean, two women in bed? In the guy’s first scene? Overkill. Skanky overkill.). I’m sure there was some “look at us, we’re so progressive, at least where lesbians are concerned” thinking, but I think the primary reasoning was to simplify the romantic picture.
And now I really want to read a TWoP recap of “Knight of the Phoenix I/II”…
Seconding what Marion said, and also… if it were a male FBI agent in the exact same scene, would it have felt so gratuitous? (I’m not judging anyone’s prejudices here, since I felt it was weird too.) Such a shorthand scene to establish a couple of character traits – she surfs! she’s an FBI agent! she lives in a house no FBI agent could possibly afford! she’s kinda slutty! – is a pretty common ailment in pilots. The whole scene felt random and lame and lazy lazy lazy (especially since they used the same trick for Mike); if anything I’m pleased that her sexual orientation was just thrown in there in such an offhanded way, instead of them making a huge deal about it.
@Adam: I wanted to like the offhandedness of it, but then it seemed kind of…pointedly offhanded, like, look how progressive we are! A lesbian! And now we’re going to talk about something else because It’s No Big Deal!
“Aren’t you worried about leaving someone you just met alone in your house?”
“Not really.”
“Is this because I’m a lesbian?”
“No, it’s because I’m heavily armed. Ta-ta!”
I didn’t see this, but I read the recap and Sars, dude, I didn’t even know I remembered “the man, who does not exist” line until I read it and heard it in my head for the first time in, what, 20 years? Aw.