For one glorious moment in time, Baywatch was the most-watched show on the planet, turning Pamela Anderson, Yasmine Bleeth, and Carmen Electra into stars, but even those three paled compared to the popularity of David Hasselhoff. The star of Knight Rider found the perfect role for his second act as Mitch Buchannon, a veteran lifeguard who often said it was the only job he ever had, but secretly wanted to be a detective.
Baywatch Nights, the 1995 spin-off, let Mitch live his dream as a detective straight out of a 1930s pulp novel, solving murders, finding missing people, battling sea monsters, uncovering an alien conspiracy, exploring a parallel dimension, and even going 20 years into the future. Baywatch Nights is a bizarre fever dream that would never, ever get made today.
Baywatch Nights Is The Strangest Spinoff In TV History
Baywatch Nights is really two shows: the noir crime thriller of Season 1 and the X-Files knockoff it became in Season 2. Hasselhoff’s Mitch wasn’t the only familiar face. Garner Ellerbee (Gregory Allan Williams), the police officer from Baywatch since the beginning, established a private detective agency and brought in his buddy Mitch to help him, alongside Detective Ryan McBride (Angie Harmon’s debut, known today for Law & Order and Rizzoli and Isles). Legendary musician Lou Rawls not only played the owner of the nightclub that housed the new detective agency, but also performed the opening song, “After the Sun Comes Down,” which played over the opening montage of mostly daylit scenes.
Right away, fans were incredibly confused when the opening montage had Mitch running in his Baywatch red trunks and then fading in wearing a white Miami Vice-style suit. In 1995. Multiple shots of Hasselhoff behind a car were supposed to remind fans of his time on Knight Rider, but it had nothing in common with the campy, light-hearted show it was spinning off from. Faced with cratering ratings as the first season went on, the studio, The Baywatch Company, retooled into a monster-of-the-week format even further removed from the original beachside drama.
From Noir Detective To Paranormal Investigator
A Vampire In Baywatch Nights
Season 2 of Baywatch Nights is one of the worst shows to ever make it to air. Or one of the best, in practice, this was close to a 90’s version of Kolchak the Nightstalker. There was no myth arc, no character development, and no real point to the series other than that X-Files was exploding in popularity. The lack of commitment went all the way down to keeping Mitch as a character on Baywatch, making him a lifeguard by day and a paranormal investigator by night.
David Hasselhoff in Baywatch Nights
Episode 4, “Strike” starts off with Mitch saving a young man from drowning when a strange lightning strike causes the two to start sharing their feelings. Spoiler: he’s an alien, and instead of letting himself be captured by the government, he chooses to go back to his home planet. There’s no ambiguity. There’s a bright, white light, and he fades from sight as he teleports back home. Again, this is a Baywatch spin-off. With aliens.
A Viking From Baywatch Nights
A later episode is somehow even stranger: Episode 13, “Frozen Out of Time,” pits Mitch against Vikings, and, of course, it ends with David Hasselhoff getting into a sword fight with a broom. Four episodes later, and the team is hunting down a werewolf. At the same time these episodes are airing, Hasselhoff is still playing Mitch on Baywatch, and somehow the topic of aliens is real, and vampires, and werewolves, and yes, even mummies, never comes up. You’d think “I’m friends with an alien” would make great water cooler conversation at work.
Baywatch Nights falls solidly into the “so bad it’s good” category. There’s no question that at the time, it was a massive flop and one of the least successful spin-offs of all time. Describing it today will make people question your sanity, and yet, there are more episodes of Baywatch Nights than there is Stranger Things.