I may be the only one who's pretty excited for the two-hour Knight Rider reboot airing this Sunday night...or I may be the only one who's admitting it.  But I'm trying to manage my expectations, because many of the things that made the original KR so awesome won't be present, including:

1. Hasselhoff.

2. Devon and April/Bonnie's "oh, Alice" reactions to the old-married-couple banter between Michael and KITT.

3. Garthe/Goliath.

4. KARR, an even bitchier queen than Kitt.

But we'll still be able to fashion a drinking game around KITT freaking innocent bystanders out by talking and driving himself, locking prospective car thieves in the back seat and delivering them to the authorities, jumping over large crevasses with the help of creative camera angles, and so on.  And KITT is now voiced by Val Kilmer, which I for one think is awesome.  Will Arnett is great, he could have made it work, but...the gig did seem like kind of a weird fit for him.  Not beneath him exactly, just kind of...down-market. 

Kilmer, on the other hand, is perfect.  Notoriously difficult to work with and notoriously hammy?  Perfect recipe for this dish.

Tags: hasselhoff, knight rider, val kilmer, will arnett

There's a lot of great stuff happening on TV this fall. But there are a few things that are just driving me nuts and I've got to get them off my chest.

First, Knight Rider. The show has got issues, but it is breaking one of my cardinal TV rules. No. 14: Thou shalt not name TV characters the same name as one of their previous characters. It's just needlessly confusing. Especially in the case of Paul Campbell on the newly incarnated TV series. Campbell used to star on Battlestar as Madame President's right hand man. He was Billy. Adorable and helpful! He died too soon, but even that was really sweet. Now he's sort of another kinda geeky guy manning a computer on Knight Rider and he's named Billy. Not cool. Just hurts my head. It's far from the worst problem with that show -- really, you don't want to get me started -- but it is the one that currently irks me the most.

Tags: 90210, knight rider, paul campbell, prison break, south of nowhere, wentworth miller

That is, free until his next stint in rehab or jail: Reuters says that the role of Michael Knight in the Knight Rider will be played by...David Hasselhoff! (The series will focus primarily on Michael's son, but no one cares about that no-name chump.)

The series reboot is kind of a crapshoot of late, no? For every Battlestar Galactica, there are several Bionic Womans. I was a bit young to have watched the original Knight Rider, and watching the original today...it didn't really hold up for me. I might give the new one a shot, though...if only to see if Hasselhoff's chest hair has also gone all salt-and-pepper. Hee.

Tags: david hasselhoff, knight rider