Jul 17, 2008 03:30 PM
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The new Knight Rider series will be every bit as cheesy as last winter's TV movie, judging from the script for a road-racing episode. The good news is, KITT is a car of many talents. Including a 3-D "inkjet" printer that can create a fake key for any car, a special spray that can stop bleeding, and a "cylon laser." Oh, and the ability to help you pick up the hottest girl in any bar by feeding you exactly the right poetry. Click through for insanely bizarre details from the Oct. 8 episode, "Journey To The End Of The Knight." Spoilers ahead.
First of all, the script pages we managed to get copies of are "casting sides," which means they're used for audition purposes. But they appear to be actual pages from the episode, and we've got almost the entire script for this freaktacular outing into the world of "racing for pinks."
We start out in a bar. Michael Knight parks KITT (who looks unimpressive next to some of the fancy rides parked out front, causing a drunk guy to sneer) and goes inside, where his old army buddy Sean yells "Heads up" and throws a basketball at him. Sean heard Michael was dead, but he isn't, leading to a weird joke about "the guy they lost in basic training" who had to do the whole thing over again. Sean buys Michael a drink, but Sean himself is a teetotaler because of the terms of his parole.
Later, Sean and Mike are shooting hoops in a mechanical basketball game. Sean says he heard Mike went back to Iraq. Mike says he's done with the army... or it's done with him. Instead, Mike is racing again. This is shocking news for some reason. Sean thought Mike retired, but "the collection agencies didn't get the memo," Mike says. And he's heard there's a lot of money to be made racing. But Sean says it's hard to get in with the right crew. Finally, there's a coin toss, and I guess Mike wins, because Sean tells him: "You're in." It's apparently not that hard to break into competitive racing after all.
Then Mike gets his eye on the hottest girl in the bar, a 21-year-old wearing a miniskirt and 7-inch heels. (It says 7 inch. Really.) Apparently her name is "Celine the Ice Queen," and she's taken. But Mike says, "When has that ever mattered?" He uses his earpiece to contact KITT, who's about to be puked on by a drunk guy. KITT's "cylon eye wakes up." (The script actually says "cylon eye.") KITT scrolls through a menu: "Shock Level: 1-10" and selects "10." The drunk guy gets a hair-raising jolt before he can puke on the car's nice finish. "Sorry, Michael, I was interacting with one of the locals," KITT says.
Then KITT gets down to business: using his surveillance capabilities and database to get all the dirt on Celine the Ice Queen. She's a Libra and her favorite poet is Pablo Neruda. So Mike slides up to her and her "attitudinal girlfriends," and introduces herself. Celine says she's not interested. Mike tosses some negs: "Neither am I. I'm just trying to win a bet." His friend bet him that Celine is just one of those hotties who's totally superficial. But Mike bets there's more to that than that. Like... is she a Libra, by any chance? And as the poet Pablo Neruda said... And then Mike has to stall while KITT searches through his poetry database to find the single cheesiest line of Pablo Neruda's verse ever. The ice queen totally melts on him. Mike claims he did his grad school thesis on Neruda. Celine says he's not like the other guys, and he says that's because he's not from around here. He's here to race. "Driving fast is like poetry in motion." You could even say it's like Pablo Neruda... on hot wheels! This totally seals the deal with Celine. She tells Mike she can read minds too, and she knows what he's thinking. And the answer... is yes. Sweet! But then her boyfriend Ian shows up and "gets in Mike's grill."
Mike tries to be all friendly and invite Ian to have a beer and get to know each other. Ian's all like, "Maybe we'll become buds, take fishing trips together. Or maybe I'll just kick your ass." Ian takes a swing at Mike, but he gets the upper hand. Then Sean pulls out a shotgun and says "No fighting in the bar." And Ian's brother, Johnny Chang, shows up and tells them to get their rides set up. "That's the way we settle things out here: race for pinks." (Pinks = car registration?) A whoop goes up in the car. Sean tries to warn Mike that this is "Johnny Chang and his brother Ian. You don't want do this." But Mike is all, "Let's race." Just as he's about to race, some guy named Torres calls him and asks if he's made contact with Johnny Chang yet.
Ian's car is a lime-green Lamborghini, and he's not too impressed with Mike's Mustang. "I'm scared," he jokes. "You should be," Mike says. Celine explains the rules of "racing for pinks." There are no rules. They race to the tower and back, and first one back "wins pink." Celine flashes Mike a suggestive smile. Yeah baby! KITT reminds Michael he's the legal property of Knight Industries, and Michael can't actually transfer the title in him to Ian if he loses. Michael tells KITT to win, but make it look like a real race. But then Ian actually starts to win: turns out his lime-green Lamborghini is pimped out with twin turbos and direct injection NOS, which make it faster than KITT. Mike orders KITT to turn on "attack mode." KITT TRANSFORMS, tires widening and stuff. The attack engine HOWLS. KITT passes Ian and Mike gives Ian "the chin." Then Ian crashes his Lamborghini into a pick-up truck, barely getting out before it explodes. Mike's doing his victory dance when he notices KITT's dashboard is burned out and smoke is pouring out of him. Oops!
Later, Sarah is all upset that Mike nearly got himself killed with his bad judgment, but her dad says she needs to trust him because he's the one out there risking his neck. She insists that she and Mike are just friends now, but dad doesn't believe her. And then he gives her some fatherly advice: "When you stop hurting, you stop feeling." Thanks, dad.
At the same time, Johnny and his crew are in trouble: they promised their buyer a Lambo and now it's trashed. Not only that, but it belongs to Mike now. Mike offers them a deal: he needs a sponsor, so he'll race for them instead of taking their Lamborghini. Everybody wins. But they're all like, what are you going to race? Your burned-out Mustang? When KITT shows up, good as new. With Sarah, who's dressed as a hot sexy mechanic. Woo! They go back to the bar, and Sarah and Sean bond. Then Ian tries to slash Mike with a knife, and Mike kicks him in the balls. Yeah! Johnny shows up with two machine pistols, and tells Mike he can race — if he steals Johnny a new Lamborghini first.
It turns out there's a Lamborghini that's a perfect match, but it belongs to a gangster named Dmitri — the "Ukrainian Hugh Hefner." Sarah volunteers to be the one to steal the car, because she's well-trained and looks good in a bikini. Perfect logic! Meanwhile, Celine and Johnny both snoop around Sarah while she's working on KITT.
KITT uses his "3-D object generator" to create a fake key for the Russian gangster's Lamborghini. It's like a 3-D inkjet printer, making the object line by line. Cool! Sarah psychs herself up to steal the gangsters' Lambo by blasting loud rock music so she can get into the Grand Theft Auto frame of mind. Mike is all annoyed, saying "Is this really the time to get your funk on? Those Russian gangsters are real!" She's like, snap.
Then Dimitri catches her checking out his car, and she seduces him. He asks if she's ever had sex in a half-million-dollar car, and she says yes, actually. Then she decks him and steals his car. There's a huge car chase involving Russians with hummers and machine guns. KITT selects a weapon: black ice. He squirts a "super vicious liquid" that makes the Russians skid out of control. But later, they think they have the drop on KITT. They decide to ram him off a cliff, but it turns out to be a HOLOGRAPHIC PROJECTION and they drive right through it, going off the cliff. KITT turns off his holographic projector.
Then Sarah randomly decides to make out with Mike on KITT's hood while blasting some loud rock music, because that was on her list of things to do before she died. (Not with Mike, specifically. Just in general.) And then she gives Johnny the keys to his new Lambo. Rawk.
Mike is finally going to have his big chance to race, but something goes wrong. Ian tries to capture Sarah, out at the garage, but she elbows him and gets away. She hides by hanging from a light fixture, hoping her Jimmy Choos don't fall and give her away. Meanwhile, Mike goes to rescue her and gets bushwacked with a wrench. He wakes up buried up to his neck in the sand. Johnny and his boys are driving toward him brandishing baseball bats and preparing to play "homicidal polo." He has a look of "wide-eyed terror." Eep!
Luckily, KITT helps Sarah and Sean track Mike down. KITT transforms into a 4x4 Ford pickup to go out into the desert. Really. Ian wants to be the one to kill Mike, but Celine the Ice Queen protests. So Ian says she can watch him die up close and tosses him out of the car. She tries to dig him out, but no use. KITT flies out and slams into Ian's car. Ian shoots and hits Celine, who's injured. KITT sprays stuff on Celine to stop her bleeding, and then rushes her to hospital, where she's totally fine.
But then — shock horror! — Mike's old army buddy Sean turns out to be a traitor. He puts a shotgun to Mike's head. Mike ends up handcuffed to a railing. But he manages to swing around and scissor kick Ian, catching Ian's head in a leglock that won't let go. Johnny tries to shoot Mike and ends up shooting his brother Ian instead. Johnny says "Nooooooooooooo!" (It's in the script.) Then he starts shooting wildly and Mike goes for cover.
Meanwhile, the bad guys have KITT Inside a truck and are trying to steal him. Something is draining off KITT's power. When all seems lost, KITT does a "Terminator-esque" thing and reroutes power thorugh his back-up systems. The "POWER LEVELS" readout goes from 2 % to 100 % and the Cylon light throbs to life. (It says "cylon" again.) KITT's Cylon light becomes a super-laser, shooting through the truck. YEAH!!!
Johnny's about to put a bullet in Mike's brain, when KITT flies out of the truck, soaring across the desert and smashing into the container where Mike and Johnny are. There is a MASSIVE FIRE BALL. And then Homeland Security shows up and carts off Johnny. "You really stepped up, Mike. Great job." Says Torres, the random Homeland Security guy. But there are still lingering mysteries, to do with some tattoo or something.
Send an email to Charlie Jane Anders, the author of this post, at charliejane@io9.com.
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
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