Michael tracks down a poison dealer nearby a beach cafe and catches him in the act of a sale, but the man (Sonny Martin) gets away after spraying a lethal amount of the poison onto a girl, killing her. KITT scanned the license plate on Sonny's van back to a delivery service in town, so Michael investigates. When Sonny realizes Michael is in the building, he tries to get away and does, but leaves a vanfull of poison in the road. Paul Reinard is Sonny's employer, a man who makes the deadly poison from a rare orchid. Reinard has one of his women poison Michael's drink at the cafe, but Michael's friend Cindy drinks it instead without Michael knowing it. Michael questions Reinard after he sees one of Sonny's employees wearing an orchid, but gets nowhere. On the way back to see Cindy, Michael is attacked by Sonny again but after a short chase he catches Sonny, who reveals that Cindy drank the poisoned drink. Michael goes to Cindy, who collapses while auditioning for a part in a musical. With even more resolve, Michael heads back to Reinard's greenhouse but finds the orchids burned and Reinard away in Mexico. KITT recognizes a bust in Reinard's greenhouse that originates in Choloxa, so Michael heads there and gets the drop on Reinard, but quickly finds that the odds are against him. Michael is poisoned but manages to escape and chase after Reinard, who is heading back to LA with a fresh batch of the poison and a small vial of the antidote. Michael has KITT divert the plane so he can catch up, and when he does, he has KITT clip the plane's wing tank, destroying it. Michael manages to gets the antidote, after which the medics cure both him and Cindy. As the episode ends, Cindy gets a job on broadway and Devon toasts Michael on a job well done.
THOUGHTS: -Very nice episode. Hard edge to it, excellent pacing and some great chase scenes.
-There's a wonderful scene when Sonny is "interrogated" by Michael and Devon, where Sonny keeps jerking them around until Devon finally pops and grabs Sonny by the collar and you can tell he wants to punch him!
-Fun stuff with KITT and "Arnold"! Unfortunately in the edited version of the episode, the scene where "Arnold" puts his dumbell of KITT's hood and KITT retorts is cut out. (Michael is away from KITT, visiting with Cindy. "Arnold" puts one dumbell on KITT's hood and sits on the hood, watching himself in the reflection as he works out. KITT tells him to "get both dumbells of my hood," Arnold gets up and says there's only one dubmell on KITT's hood, and KITT replies "now there's only one dumbell on my hood." And Arnold tells the car that whoever is in there "better be pretty big!")
-And of course KITT's jokes. "I once heard about a man who won so much money in Las Vegas, they're still looking for his body!"
New feature on KITT: +Maybe I didn't notice it earlier but KITT's microjam function has another button labelled "microlock" in this episode, which locks up the delivery van's breaks.
FAVORITE QUOTE: "I stopped for gas the other day and the service was so slow that by the time they filled me up, my upholstery was out of style!" -One of KITT's jokes
NITS: -Cindy ingests the orchid's poison through juice and can't even walk later on. Michael is INJECTED by the poison into his circulation and still has enough strength to drive KITT into the wing of the plane, then get the antidote from Reinard.
-Sonny wears a glove to protect his right hand from the razors on the hubcaps, yet his left hand isn't gloved even though he holds the hubcaps with it.
-Michael evades the blades by ducking behind a truck. Then he steps out into BROAD DAYLIGHT! Why didn't he stay behind the truck? And what if he didn't find that piece of wood he used to stop the last hubcap?
-The footage of the plane's wing tank getting hit by KITT and the explosion afterwards comes from "Knight of the Phoenix, Part 2." They even added the part of Marisa just to account for the extra blonde woman (who was Tanya Walker in the original episode).