Let me apologize up front to lovers of dairy products, but this post is not about the 30 minutes I spent perusing the cheese counter at the local Fairway. Although that was some of the sexiest cheese I've seen in my life and, hey, a whole counter just dedicated to cheese!! But I digress...
So, anyhow, the cheese I'm referring to is that wholesome, embarrassingly entertaining cheese that can only be found by watching 80s television shows.
The best return - for both the embarrassment factor (as in "I can't believe I'm watching this") and the laugh factor (as in "I'm sure that they didn't intend this to be funny, but I think I just peed a little")- is the genre of 80s programming featuring the "super vehicle". Think Knight Rider, Airwolf, Street Hawk and Blue Thunder (listed in order of watchability, from the most watchable to the least). These shows all involve some form of travel that has been tweaked into a high-powered, crime-fighting machine.
Knight Rider: A police officer is shot in the face and left to die. A millionare conveniently happens to be watching him and rescues him, saving his life, giving him a new identity and a new face, and a super car that talks to him and helps him fight crime. I almost picked the Emmy-winning (yes, really) Airwolf as the most watchable of these shows, but then it occurred to me that it's always better not to hassle the Hoff. Plus, this show goes to fun, campy places (not usually intentionally, I'm afraid) that the darker Airwolf never touches.
Airwolf: A broody ex-military type is one of the test pilots for a government-sponsored super helicopter. When the chopper is stolen, he's called upon to help the government get it back. Instead of returning it to them, he hides it away and uses it to force the government to find his MIA brother. Of course, why steal such a nifty toy if you aren't going to use it, so he teams with a private agency and uses his super helicopter to fight crime. This works out admirably since it apparently occurs to no one to follow Stringfellow Hawke (our hero) to find the secret location of Airwolf.
Street Hawk: A cop who is (apparently) a motorcycle-riding prodigy suffers a knee injury that turns him into a desk jockey. Lucky for him, he's apparently the best motorcycle rider in the area and the only one who can handle the super-secret super motorcycle that has been created by some organization or other... They fix his injury and stick him on this motorcycle to fight crime under the secret identity of "Street Hawk" (because a motorcycle that can go 300mph, operated by a guy who recently suffered a serious, potentially career-ending injury, is always a good idea...).
Blue Thunder: Also a helicopter show, but in this case the super chopper belongs to the police department and is used in the line of duty to fight crime. (I'm a little foggy on the plot, as I was unable to sit through an entire episode.) This show actually beat Airwolf to air by a couple weeks, but a little head start didn't help. In fact, even the presence of Dana Carvey and ex-football players Dick Butkus and Bubba Smith (don't mock - they were actually pretty big at the time) didn't salvage the show.
Funny, isn't it, that the most plausible of these shows is also the least watchable? Then again, plausibility was never a big concern for 80s television, which is probably why it's still watchable today. I mean, take a show that has a serious, believable premise. That realism is likely to be very dated today, and probably not as believable. On the other hand, a show that was never seriously believable isn't going to disappoint - it's probably still unbelievable, making its attempts to be meaningful all the more entertaining.
Has reality ever had a place in televison? Look, even the reality shows are unrealistic! As for Blue Thunder. I never liked it, but I wonder how much of that was my age at the time. I would always prefer Knight Rider. I think that makes sense. Michael had KIT!
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