BAYWATCH, MOTHERFUCKERS

to the lookout!

So, there is this streaming channel on Roku TV that’s just Baywatch, 24/7. All Baywatch, all the time, just rolling through all 11 seasons again and again and again. And we’ve been watching it a lot in this house. A LOT.

Which is how I know that BAYWATCH (2017), far from being a pointless exercise in boobs and butts, is actually a hilarious spoof of itself and the TV show it’s based on.

This is evident from the very first scene of the film, when The Rock is carrying a near-victim out of the water and BAYWATCH slams across the background behind him and four dolphins fly up out of the water in a synchronized, ridiculous cinematic formation. And it’s all in slow motion, obviously. (I wish I could find a gif of this moment online, but alas, I cannot.)

I just have a hard time taking any review seriously that seems to have missed this giant fireworks display of BAYWATCH, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!!!!!! It’s the first scene. They wanted to make sure you got it (but you missed it anyway, somehow).

this movie is the story grizzled old david hasselhoff’s mitch buchannon tells in bars when he’s reminiscing about his glory days on the beach and the whole time he’s just hoping like hell nobody was actually there to remember the swim cap that tied under his chin or the crew socks pulled all the way up or the world’s least graceful beach sprint ever or even, god forbid, the time he got locked out of his house in the middle of the night by an orangutan wearing a nightshirt

Are the characters one-dimensional? Yes, just like the TV show.

Is the plot full of holes? Yes, just like the TV show.

Are there gratuitous boobs and butts? Have you seen the show? The moment we crossed over into full-on “everyone is hot, nobody is sexy” can be pegged to Baywatch Season 7, which is also when we found out the answer to “how many nearly-identical half-naked and extremely tanned mostly White men does it take to carry a limousine with multiple people inside out of a 30-foot-deep inlet” is equal to the depth of the water.

Oh, here’s the swim cap that ties under the chin:

Is the plot literally unbelievable? One time on the show, an electric eel gets loose from the aquarium after an earthquake cracks some tanks, and despite the fact that electric eels are freshwater fish and would absolutely die under these conditions, the eel grows to an enormous length and starts murdering swimmers with electric shocks and Mitch ends up killing the eel with a portable defibrillator in an underwater cave. Despite numerous scenes of the eel (actually a moray, not an electric eel at all) gnawing on people’s legs and arms with the gigantic teeth in its gigantic mouth, there is never a single drop of blood shown onscreen.

There’s a scene in the movie where everyone’s eating lunch and the established lifeguards are telling the trainees how wild working in Baywatch can get and they run through a litany of absolutely bonkers things like jewel smugglers hiding diamonds in surfboards that are just actual TV show plots (I had to confirm this with my partner, because he’s seen most of them while I haven’t yet, but I can confirm the diamonds in surfboards is season 3, episode 14).

Look, you don’t have to think this is a great movie. You don’t even have to like it. You do, however, have to get your head out of your ass if your primary criticism is that it takes itself too seriously, because that is the exact opposite of what this movie is about.

I mean, look at this! This is not serious!

i dare you to say one thing without the ocean in it

At the end of the movie, they do a typical Baywatch slo-mo beach run, all lined up with their little floaties, and Zac Efron trips. He face-plants right in the sand, awkwardly rolling and flopping around like a dead fish, the thing you always think might happen when you’re watching the TV show but never does.

that hair gel is 100% semen-based

I mean, Baywatch itself is just Paw Patrol for adults, or since it came first I guess Paw Patrol is Baywatch for kindergarteners. How seriously can you take that?

Baywatch is a show where I can leave the room while David Hasselhoff is opening up to another character about a rescue from his past that traumatized him, just a lot of intense staring out over the ocean with tears in his eyes, and then when I come back there’s a Jeep on the screen and oops it’s exploding for some reason.

not a jeep but you get the point

It’s a wild show, is what I’m saying. I’m watching it right now, as I type this, and David Hasselhoff just called another character a Power Ranger right before they broke into a shed and said character found an old-fashioned diving helmet and put it on while David Hasselhoff told him about some calendar he’d found.

It doesn’t even matter why, this is a show that had a CJ (Pamela Anderson) interlude basically every fourth episode in the seasons she was on the show. Several minutes each time, just Pam on screen doing…something. Once it was photo shoots (that episode had more than one interlude), right now it’s her running on the beach and working out and also pouring water on herself for some reason while she thinks about a guy she can’t decide if she’s still in love with or not. Yesterday I watched one where one of the other lifeguards was trying to talk her into joining him on a treasure hunt and asked her “what would you do with $50,000?” and there was a fade transition and apparently what CJ would do with $50,000 is wear evening gowns and stare at the camera, and smoke cigarettes in loungewear and dangly earrings and stare at the camera, and roll around naked in silk sheets and stare at the camera, and also it’s black and white for some reason? I seriously have no idea what this interlude was supposed to tell us about CJ’s aspirations, because everyone knows she would be a marine biologist or a veterinarian if she didn’t love saving human lives so much.

seriously, she loves animals and once saved a sea lion who’d been shot (with a bullet gun, not like a stun gun or a spear gun)

(Mike Piazza has just been told by CJ to be careful of his baseball bat, because he’s on strike and decided to spend that time on the beach in a Dodgers jersey and hat swinging a bat, because everything and everyone in this show exists solely on the beach. The celebrity cameos are another incredible 90s thing about this incredibly 90s show. A brief and in-no-way-inclusive list: Little Richard, Hulk Hogan, Jenny McCarthy.

That reminds me, I’ve had a beef lately with the idea that because a movie or tv show is very of the moment in which it was created, whatever that moment is/was, it is automatically less-than when compared to timeless classics. I disagree! Sure, it’s not the same thing, but time capsule movies/shows are their own category of incredible. I don’t think something has to be pulled out of its own time and space in order to be truly great. In fact, I would also argue that all pieces of work in this medium are, by definition, timeless, because they’re all about emotions, not details. Oral storytelling changes over time and that’s fine, because those stories are telling the same story with different details, and cinema is the same way. Humans have experienced human emotion for as long as we’ve been humans, and films made now and 100 years ago are all about the same emotions. But that’s probably a subject for another post.)

Anyway, the CJ interludes are important background context for this moment, because it’s referencing so much more than just generic Baywatch slo-mo:

she always looks wet, but not too wet

So what I’m saying is, if you want to enjoy BAYWATCH (2017), watch the show first! And then when you think, why does this show think David Hasselhoff is a super-cool sex god? you can fire up the film, because the film depicts the Mitch David Hasselhoff struts around the beach like he is (he’s actually not). That Mitch is not The Rock, 260 pounds of pure muscle, tattoos, and the whitest teeth on the beach.

REFRIGERATORS? SERIOUSLY?!??

This is as cool as that Mitch Buchannon ever gets:

Ladies.

Speaking of beach, I lost track of the number of times a character in the movie says “Get the fuck off my beach”, which is definitely one thing that was missing from the original version that had to be syndication- and family-friendly. I mean, I did watch the extended cut, which included a scene of a character getting their entire genitals stuck in a beach chair, so I suppose they might have also thrown a few extra fucks in that cut, just for good measure.

Am I just writing a love letter to Baywatch? Maybe. My January has been rough, but you know who’s always there for me, just like the opening theme song says? Baywatch, motherfuckers.

This channel is the best of streaming and cable combined. You get to choose what show you watch, and it never ends, but you don’t have to choose an episode or decide whether to start another one or not—because it goes on without you. The Baywatch channel is going to celebrate and enjoy Baywatch regardless of what you do. It is, quite literally, always there. No oven timers required.

The channel also keeps advertising…something that’s happening “all February long!” At first I thought it was just a promo for “please keep watching Baywatch”, i.e. “February is cold and boring but also Valentine’s Day so snuggle up with your sweetie all month long!” But the promos are advertising something that starts on February 5th.

What’s the difference between what’s happening right now and what’s going to start February 5th? Who the hell knows? This mystery is, in fact, an extremely meta thing for the Baywatch channel to do, but I can’t really explain that, it’s an IYKYK thing.

So I guess I’ll find out what “Summer Lovin’” is on February 5th. Until then, remember, whenever you’re in trouble, just yelp for help.

jason momoa is ready to save you, but only if you’re in hawaii, sorry californians

UPDATE 2/15: It took me a minute to figure this out, but what actually started 2/5 is that during primetime, the channel replaces three episodes of the cycle with three out-of-order episodes that involve characters having sex or going on dates or being in love or anything else you could call “Summer Lovin’”. When those three episodes are over, they go right back into the cycle, to the episode they would be on had they not taken a Summer Lovin’ sidebar. I don’t actually watch the channel much in primetime. But I’m sure these episodes are the Lovin’-est of the Summer (if they really wanted to go meta they’d just air episodes with Summer Quinn but that would limit them to seasons 3 and 4, as Hawaiian Wedding never makes an appearance on the Baywatch Channel and neither does the 2017 movie).