Ten Wheel Trouble
Nitcentral's Bulletin Brash Reflections:
Knight Rider:
Season 3:
Ten Wheel Trouble
Ten Wheel Trouble
Joe Flynn gets into a barfight with Phil Janetty. Janetty had recently left the groups of independent truckers Joe was working with and got employment with John Shatner, who heads his own trucking company. On the road following the fight, Janetty is killed when the brakes on his truck fail and send his truck over a cliff. Michael visits Joe's family and eventually finds Joe on the road. Though Michael believes Joe is innocent of cutting Janetty's brakes, he puts Joe in the safest place possible - the local jail - for the time being. This enrages Joe's young sister Sally, but eventually she learns to trust Michael. In the meantime, Curtis Martin, who has been working for Shatner all along, keeps his place in the independent truckers' meeting when Michael says he will drive Joe's truck. Curtis plaes a smoke bomb inside the truck when the meeting is over and Michael barely makes an escape into KITT before suffocating. Shatner visits with Monty Lindon, the man who holds the independent truckers' account, and attempts to scare him into releasing the truckers and joining with Shatner's operation, but Michael soon arrives and convinces Lindon otherwise. Michael sets up payment of a $50,000 bond via the Foundation and plans to be there during the first run of produce by the independent truckers. Knowing Shatner and Curtis will try to end the run, Michael bugs Curtis' truck. Sally sets up the schedule for the run (she was the one who did it for Joe before) and joins her mother in the convoy. The run goes smoothly until a cement truck arrives along with Curtis and some goons, but with KITT's turbo boost and some other special driving, Michael is able to capture Curtis and retrieve a full confession (after showing him KITT's recording of the events) fingering Shatner. As the episode ends, Joe and his family are reunited.
THOUGHTS:
-Nice episode. I liked how they fit so many of KITT's functions (Turbo Boost, Ski Mode, Anharmonic Synthesiser) into one show.
-KITT has "unlimited memory." His current storage capacity is 50 million k's, with the ability to add 1 million a day as necessary.
New features on KITT:
+Telephone Tap
+Telephone Monitor
(The above features have been used before, but didn't have their own buttons)
Star Trek Actor Watch: Christopher McDonald (as Joe Flynn) played Lt. Castillo in "Yesterday's Enterprise" (TNG).
Star Trek Actor Watch: James Cromwell (as Curtis) played Zefram Cochran in the movie "Star Trek: First Contact" and the episode "Broken Bow" (ENT), as well as Minister Hanok in "Starship Down" (DS9), Jaglom Shrek in "Birthright, Parts 1 and 2" (TNG), and Nayrok in "The Hunted" (TNG).
FAVORITE QUOTE:
"Spanking? You know buddy, that doesn't sound like a bad idea!"
-Michael to KITT, when KITT first reccommends that an irritated Sally be dealt with logially but then if that fails, to spank.
NITS:
-The shot of KITT exiting the FLAG semi comes from "KITT vs KARR" and has been used several times this season (including the previous episode, "Knight & Knerd").
-Somehow KITT gets a camera angle of Curtis from the opposite side of which KITT is traveling!
By Brian Kelly on Wednesday, April 16, 2003 - 4:47 pm: When Janetty drives over the cliff, the footage comes from an episode of "The Fall Guy" of all places.