MONDO EXTRAS

Sorry about that! But now that I've bitched about it once, I don't have to do it again. Probably. Back to the car chase already in progress. KITT plans to take mountain roads to try to lose the guys in the Focus.

Frat Pad. The collision with the garage door has broken a critical rod of some sort, which means Mike can't race the car, which means he can't collect prize money, which means he can't pay his "investors" the ninety grand he owes them. Mike's like, so, what, you're going to break my legs now? No, the bearded investor says; Mike was an Army Ranger, he'd probably kick Beardy's ass. His silent-lummox sidekick, however, is happy to do the honors. Lummox lurches at Mike, they fight, and Mike's about to win when Beardy points a gun at Spindly and gives Mike his motivation: "You have until midnight to get me my money." Mike asks for more time, but Beardy's given Mike more than enough already, and when Mike asks how he's supposed to get that kind of money by midnight, Beardy snorts, "Have a bake sale, what do I care." Hee. Come sit next to me, Beardy. If Mike doesn't get the money, Spindly meets his maker in the Nevada desert; if Mike still doesn't have the money 24 hours after that, Mike joins him. Beardy and Lummox leave. Mike and Spindly exchange defeated looks.

In the chase car, Pointedly Evil burbles about the "urban legend" that says Graiman helped Wilton Knight build a remote-control car 25 years ago, a car with the most advanced AI yet seen. Smoke doesn't see what they need with a thinking car. Pointedly Evil: "It's the next step in Prometheus." Prometheus, Schmometheus -- has Smoke never driven from New York to Chicago? Indiana has many things to its credit, starting with my own grandparents, but thrilling interstate is not on that list. Also: go out for a few beers on a Friday night, and your own car drives you home and parks itself, and you can send it out for Starbucks the next morning. You don't want it, send it out to Brooklyn; I'll find a use for it. At the moment, though, it's currently engaged in a chicken game along twisty blacktop, inches away from vertical drops, in and out of oncoming traffic, on a road that looks awfully familiar, probably because it's appeared in so many episodes of L.A.-based shows like CHiPs that it practically has a SAG card. Sarah: "Um. Are you gonna slow down?" KITT, accelerating to 102 mph: "Negative." Hee, Kilmer went all Iceman on that delivery. Asian Henchman is doing a creditable job keeping up given the speeds involved (and the fact that Anthony Crapp is seconds away from, well, crapping himself), and Sarah is evidently trying to distract KITT with dumb questions like "What are you doing?" and "Are you crazy?", but KITT is staying ahead of the tail, explaining to Sarah that GPS and satellite imagery help him navigate without crashing. "Did my dad get a chance to, um, test this?" KITT, unperturbed: "Not extensively, no." Hee. Sarah freaks; KITT is unemotional; lather, rinse, repeat. The chase continues, Anthony Crapp telling Asian Henchman to let it go already before they get killed, Asian Henchman calling Anthony Crapp a bitch, and Sarah tells KITT to get on with it; he would end it on the next pass, but it might kill the guys in the chase car. Sarah's like, "I'm a compassionate person? But...so what?" Heh. As it was back in the day, KITT's primary directive is the preservation of human life, but Sarah points out that preservation of her life is his directive right now, so make the damn pass already. He does. The Focus gets hung up by, but does not actually crash into, a tractor-trailer.