"On the sparkling shoreline of Southern California, a small group of lifeguards patrols its surfside beat - a patch of soft sand, less than a mile long and only several hundred feet wide. Their workdays are packed with action, while their off-duty hours are filled with matters of love, relationships, and compelling human drama. Through it all, the whole world is watching."
Thus begins the weighty Baywatch Press Kit that now looms before me on my desk, topmost in a teetering pile of paper from which I can run, but never hide. As a journalist and observer of pop culture, I've grown to really resent press kits. At first, they were a thrill. I loved the insider information, I loved the smooth and shiny folders - so perfect for carrying my writing samples! But most of all, I loved the photos. Black and white 8 x 10's, color slides, color 8 x 10's - hey, big spender!
After a while the romance died. I've become sick of knowing where the executive producers went to college, or who's going to die at the end. I could never dream of filling the dozens of empty folders that litter my office with pleasant fictions - I'm too busy going to movies, or befriending soulless publicists. I still love the pictures, but I'm pretty damn sick of the sludge that accompanies them.
The Baywatch kit, as Trouble and Attitude's readers can find out for themselves, is no more or less inane than any other self-serving propaganda. Of course, most television shows aren't as markedly low-brow as Baywatch.
Ostensibly the continuing saga of a bunch of pretty surf cops and their adrenaline-fueled duties, Baywatch features so many gratuitous bikini shots of Pamela Anderson jogging down the beach that I've mistaken it for the Spice network.
Strangely enough, this is what passes for "family entertainment" in over 110 countries of the world. The show's producers like that phrase a lot, and when confronted with the suggestion that they are, in fact, serving up soft-core, they're quick to point out that Baywatch airs on Saturday afternoons in many markets, a time slot usually reserved for children's programming. Saturday afternoons - perfect for unshaven, hung-over Daddy to watch the kids to while enjoying a little hair of the dog that bit him. David Hasselhoff, Baywatch's star and one of the show's executive producers, has told interviewers that he won't allow his own children to watch the program.
If the kids aren't watching it, who is? No one I know will admit to indulging in the show's guilty pleasures, even when they're really bored. Yet Baywatch boasts a (presumably exaggerated) figure of over one billion viewers, or slightly less than 20% of the world's population. My guess is that a lot of wanna-be Americans, probably in Europe, have become entranced with the program's portrayal of The Good Life, American Style. Or maybe it's the miles of shaven California leg, since we all know Europe is nothing but cathedrals and nude beaches. They should be used to seeing bathing beauties wearing even less than those luscious lifeguards.
But I've neglected the Hasselhoff factor. Although widely regarded as little more than a bad hairdo with legs here in the U.S.A., David Hasselhoff is inexplicably happenin' in much of the known world. The cult of Hasselhoff started in Germany. Riding high on the success of his breakthrough series, the improbably dumb "Knight Rider", Hasselhoff released a little-known album entitled "Night Rocker" in 1985. It crashed and burned at home, but some tourist must have bootlegged a copy and brought it back to Deutschland, because before you could say "Entschuldigung", David was collaborating with noted German composer/producer Jack "This is my real name" White. Their cumulative effort would soon top the German charts. (Readers will note that "Night Rocker", the seminal Hasselhoff recording, is conspicuously absent from the musical resume in his biography.)
Before long Hasselhoff had taken the Netherlands and France. The rest of the world soon followed. Of all the Allied nations, only the U.S. and Canada offered any notable resistance to the Hasselhoff regime. In June of 1994, a live Pay-Per-View special of Hasselhoff in concert aired across this continent. North American viewers, in the spirit of strong moral values and exhibiting unusually good taste, chose instead to watch the Los Angeles Police Department chase O.J. Simpson and Al Cowlings in a white Bronco for several hours. Here's to freedom of choice!
What makes Baywatch work, of course, is the heady mixture of cops and flesh. It's a scientifically tested, proven formula for success. People will still flock to the latest James Bond films, regardless of which British has-been is wearing 007's well-cut pants. The only things that matter are the guns and the girls. George Lazenby, who played Bond in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", had it all figured out. He became so entranced with the perks of the role that he went rather batty; he began packing a piece and seducing women indiscriminately, convinced that he really was Bond.
David Hasselhoff should be mindful of Lazenby's fate. Baywatch is like a beached Bond film, minus the nifty devices. And in a recent episode, I was struck by the way he blurs the line between his television show and reality. (This problem actually manifested itself early on, in the title of his immortal first album.) During a long montage in which Hasselhoff and a pretty blonde walked on the beach, ran on the beach, and lay on the beach, an uptempo Hasselhoff rock ballad played at unusually high volume. Later in the episode, the same pretty blonde lay dying in Lt. Mitch's arms as Hasselhoff the rock star crooned a sorrowful elegy to lost love, no doubt singing his character's very thoughts.
It's not unusual for contemporary shows to feature a contemporary pop soundtrack; it is strange that, when Hasselhoff sings, all dialogue and distracting action halts. For a few magic moments, the show reminds us that it's not just anybody on that little screen: it's a Very Famous Person. As executive overlord of Baywatch, Hasselhoff can insert his musical opinions throughout the show to complement (or compensate for) his acting skill. One wonders if, in his live concerts, he leaps out into the audience to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to crowd-surfers.
Here in North America, Hasselhoff is probably the least popular Baywatch cast member. Former and current Baywatch babes Nicole Eggert and Pamela Anderson are perennial tabloid headline-makers - witness the huge "Current Affair" media jamboree that accompanied the latter's recent surfside wedding to Heather Locklear's abusive ex, Tommy Lee. Anderson and Eggert are quintessential California girls, regardless of where they actually hail from. They're buxom, blonde, and beautiful in that perverse living doll way. They wear teeny outfits, keep their mouths shut most of the time, and mask whatever intelligence they possess behind a helpless "but I'm just a girl!" demeanor. Their on and off-screen personalities are tailored to placate and mesmerize the lazy male ego, and they do a fine job of it.
Baywatch provides eye candy for the female viewer as well, lest anyone should accuse the show of being geared exclusively towards men. Right now the cast includes a skinny Fabio clone, who I'm apparently supposed to find appealing despite the fact that he looks like the kid who took first place at every science fair with a bad bleach job and a fake tan. As if that weren't bad enough, he's Australian, too! I thought the American love affair with all things Aussie had reached the "just friends" stage, but I guess the success of films like "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" and "Muriel's Wedding" has paved the way for the next wave of embarrassing Oz knockoffs. Remember "Young Einstein", Yahoo Serious' starmaking vehicle? How about Cheech Marin's pitiful "Shrimp on the Barbie"? (And this from the country that gave the world "Breaker Morant".) Of course, Aussie actors have no problem blending into the Baywatch scene, because everybody knows that Australia is exactly like California, only bigger - and with even more impenetrable dialects.
When you get right down to it, Baywatch is simply the latest example of television's long love affair with the beach and all it represents. The "Beach Party" movies of the early sixties spawned a number of knock-off endeavors, in addition to rescuing the drowning careers of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. For some reason, the American public is willing to embrace just about anyone willing to wear a bathing suit on-camera--even those who are barely palatable fully clothed. (Remember, we're talking about the show that wanted Fergie to do a guest spot.)
This tradition of career resuscitation has landed more than a few fading stars next to the pounding surf. Look at Hasselhoff, whose recognizability rating was about the same as my Aunt Helen's at the time of the show's inception. (Except in the Fatherland, of course.) Yasmine Bleeth had booked herself a one-way ticket to oblivion on the soap opera / Psychic Friends Network train; now, she's proudly hailed as the first Baywatch Brunette.
Gidget. Gilligan's Island. Hawaii Five-O. The Beachcombers. What unites these shows, other than flimsy premises and improbable plot twists, might be dubbed the four S's: Sun, Sand, Skin and Surf. Add Smut, Stupidity, Sentiment and Stars and you get Baywatch, proof positive that sleaze spells success in the international market.
