Sep 25, 2008 10:24 AM
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San Francisco, 11:43 PM
Tue Feb 9
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We've already told you that the first episode of Knight Rider was hardly a shining example of science fiction - or even television - but it's clear from the show's promotion that NBC aren't so concerned about the quality of the show. I mean, when you use "HOLY KITT" as your tagline, that's pretty much a good indicator of the where the line has been drawn.
It's not that I'm saying that it's not funny for NBC to just replace "shit" with "KITT" for their magazine ads (top) and bumper stickers (above), just that... well, it's not that funny, really. It's a bad sign for two reasons; one, it tempts headline writers for bad reviews ("What a load of KITT" etc.), and two, its the kind of lazy, lowest common denominator humor that'd appeal to - wait, the kind of people who'd want to make movies about their cars so that they could win their own KITT (movies that will be shown during Knight Rider)...?
Suddenly, it all makes sense: Knight Rider is NBC's SF show for the mythical American Heartland, a show full of traditional values and none of that smug bi-coastal liberal elite intellectualism. Somewhere where an Iraq War vet gets treated like the hero that he is, and can keep kicking bad guy butt without having to worry about ambiguous morality - Kind of like 24 with more wheels and less comedic ridiculousness. It's a potentially dangerous tactic - mainstream SF shows have kept to the more liberal nerd end of the spectrum for years, after all - but if in a television landscape that allows Jeff Foxworthy to have a career comforting people that they're smarter than eighth-graders, it's one that has the potential to pay off big. We wish them luck - but we're not necessarily going to be sticking around to watch for much longer.
Knight Rider Ad Graded [THR Live Feed]
Send an email to Graeme McMillan, the author of this post, at graeme@io9.com.
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