Knight Rider cheesy?

[steventje]

Hello,

Why is Knight rider so cheesy, corny?
You read it everywhere, but I find it a good show.
Ok, it is no present-day television with difficult plots or story lines, but very black and white.
You know immediately who the good and bad guys are, there are no complicated plots and you don't have to thnk much
I always liked the easy going of the show, ....
What do u guys/ girls think about the cheesiness of the show?

[trissybabes]

I think a lot of it has to do with the way the whole thing is delivered - it's the tone and humour of the writing more than anything else. The whole idea of someone having a "relationship" with a talking car was still very "lightweight" sci fi in 1982 and not taken very seriously, I think even Mr Larson would acknowledge that.

The Hoff is corniness personified but latterly knowingly so. For that, the man deserves a medal!

A lot of the humourous scenes are also done in quite a slapstick way too (filler scenes from the Pilot for example) and the music from season 1 in particular has not dated terribly well!

There's nothing wrong with being cheesy though - a lot of TV when you look back at it is the same, it just depends on the feeling and zeitgeist at the time the show is produced. KR appeals to a broader audience than Dallas for example, as it has something kids can really enjoy.

If you look at it's contemporaries, I would say they rate thus:

Knight Rider - Knowingly Cheesy (Mainly thanks to the whole scenario and Hasselhoff)

The A-Team - Knowingly Cheesy (corny lines and situations, delivery of lines etc)

Airwolf - Cheesy from Season 3 (Season 4 is cornier than a field of corn compressed into a packet of cheesy puffs! However, again, Jan-Michael Vincent wasn't cheesy, but Borgnine more than made up for it!)

Blue Thunder - Cheesy (thanks to Dana Carvey and the whole Rolling Thunder thang - however, James Farentino isn't cheesy)

Street Hawk - Unintentionally Cheesy (They tried to play it straight but a bike that can do 300mph?! Plus, Rex Smith, bless him, didn't mean to be but was very cheesy).

[Knight Racer]

I felt the same way about how campy the show was in the begining.Compare a season one episode to a season 3 or 4 and you will feel the same way.I used to purchase episodes from Columbia House and I was like,"Wow was trust doesn't rust really this campy?"

[Sue]

At the time it aired most of us were kids. Back then we had no trouble believing that cars could talk and turbo boost. And we even believed, through our little tear streaked faces, that a car had a life and could potentially die. Today as adults we hold new shows and movies to a much higher standard. But we are secretly hoping that they will make us feel like that kid again.
Say what we will about the original show now, we cannot deny the fact that we are all here wasting countless hours discussing it. So obviously it had a powerful effect.

[Knight Racer]

Yeah but what really gets to me was when we were kids we enjoyed it because we almost believed kitt was real.We didn't know anything about pecial effects.Now that we know there were a dozen cars each doing a specific stunt,William Daniels in a booth recording lines,a seat which had a driver see through the headrest.It kind of takes away from the effect we all used to feel.

[Judd]

I never quite understod the defination of cheesy myself. All TV shows, or any work of art, is a product of it's time. Knight Rider was a family friendly, action series from the 80's. The conventions of television were different than they are today. Our world has changed since then. The TV audience has changed also. Network advertisers want an older audience (18-49) watching. Family shows on network TV are rare. In my view Knight Rider isn't cheesy it's just a product of it's time and a reflection of it's intended audience when it was produced.

[CJaguar442]

To me today’s TV is cheesy. nothing original is on at all, the networks destroy everything that is good such as Journeyman, Crossing Jordan, Bionic Woman, New Amsterdam, etc. all there is on TV today are reality shows. If the new knight rider does not get 10 million in ratings or higher on NBC: the real network 23 it will follow the same fate as the rest I just mentioned so let’s pray that NBC finds god next season. Not to be pessimistic I am just saying that the networks today have no tolerance for sci-fi or any good scripted series anymore.

[PHOENIXZERO]

Bionic Woman and original.... Does not compute......

I did like Journeyman and New Amsterdam though neither are really original or new concepts, but blame their canceling on networks not having patience or properly marketing shows or just blame the public who seem to be much more interested in crap like American Idol and similar shows or the dozen crime dramas on TV now.

[CJaguar442]

Actually they are original because they are scripted and not a reality show. But you missed the point I was making. nab is once again putting shows to compete against show it could not compete against aka moving time slots such as journeyman/ Monday night football

Actually that is how the original knight rider, quantum leap was cancelled due network stupidity
Type: six sigma fails in media into Google

The point was that networks have no tolerance for sci-fi especially NBC

Do you what I meant by NBC is the real network 23?

Do you what max headroom was?

http://fatalerror.wordpress.com/2008/01 ... -in-media/

[Sue]

Yeah but what really gets to me was when we were kids we enjoyed it because we almost believed kitt was real.We didn't know anything about pecial effects.Now that we know there were a dozen cars each doing a specific stunt,William Daniels in a booth recording lines,a seat which had a driver see through the headrest.It kind of takes away from the effect we all used to feel.

Sigh, yes so true. As Deanna Russo says on her myspace. “We can no longer live as rats. We know too much.”
That was very deep Deanna.
That quote hails from 1982 same year as KR. How fitting, and a good year to be a kid!
-I like her taste in movies. Great minds think alike.