They have taken my favorite television station TRIO off of the air and have replaced it with something called Sleuth. Instead of getting to see your favorite indie rock videos interspersed with old-school favorites like Mr. Bill, you now get unfathomable programming choices, like marathons of Knight Rider (leaving you only to contemplate the powers that be. Is there some demographic out there really that bent on nostalgia programming? I cannot believe). While I may have liked seeing Hasselhoff drive around in a car with his bouffant blowing in the wind at age five, even going as far as to request his presence on a birthday cake, it seems all changed around now. I take it all in, just to be sure.

Today’s episode reveals that Bonnie (the mechanic) has been indoctrinated by some “intellectual” group, and now the powers that be want to use K.I.T.T. (the uptight, Trans-Am manifestation of Alex Trebek—which is definitely some kind of oxymoron, totally oversought by the writers of the show) in some kind of heist, which will earn them money to carry out other nefarious acts in an overall plight for world dominance. “Pull over to the curb,” they tell K.I.T.T. “This seems highly irregular and disconcerting,” K.I.T.T. replies. Can you believe? I almost laugh out loud. The sides have been drawn, though. The archetypes of Good vs. Evil present—the same kind of worldview perpetuated by my grandmother. “What if they come and get my information?” she asks you. They? You question her, all of the sudden remembering those Knight Rider episodes, the shadowy element of evil. I can’t really tell you what happens next, but it seems fairly predictable. It’s some kind of inverse fantasy world vis-a-vis Stanely Kubric in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and you know that the producers of Knight Rider were smoking a whole lot of weed and watching that same movie some years earlier. They pretty much knew that it would appeal to a whole bunch of 8 year-olds, because basically, who doesn’t want to see a jacked-up car who talks like Alex Trebek totally whip ass of the bad guys.

I just don’t know, though. K.I.T.T. really annoys me. It may just be my neo-Luddite stances talking, but I hope for a car crash. Something. I want the bad guys to win and for K.I.T.T. to be subverted. I will go so far as to admit that those people were not dumb, though. There’s some pretty intense stuff going on there, underneath the surface. You kind of have to look. It's all there if you aren’t just totally distracted by the insanity of their hairdos.