Knight of the Phoenix acts 5 & 6
Act 5 opens with Devon, in a mansion that does not at all resemble the one that will be later used for these scenes, on the phone with Michael, who is in jail. Michael assures him that it is a trumped-up charge and that Tanya and her crew seem to be almost running the town. Yeah. They run Silicon Valley. You heard it here! Devon of course wants to know what happened to KITT and is outraged when Michael has to admit that he has no clue where KITT is at the moment. He does, however, think that Tanya got him towed to Comtron to be checked over.
Devon is so wealthy, even his phone has its own house
Michael asks Devon for help, which Devon thinks is pretty rich considering that Michael couldn't get away from him fast enough and then lost the uber-expensive supercar. Devon thinks it over, though, and promises to come help, and then makes a mysterious statement about resorting to "other means, temporarily." When Michael asks wtf that means, Devon hangs up on him. Michael is taken back to his jail cell. I never did personally figure out what Devon was talking about.
Meanwhile, at Comtron, they are attacking KITT with everything from welding torches to diamond-bit drills but have been unable to crack him open. As Gray gripes about this to Tanya, Wilson comes in with what he thinks is an explanation.
it was a slow week at the FBI
Wilson ran Michael's prints when he was arrested and got this result. In jail, Michael gets into a conversation with one of the truckers, who was apparently arrested at the same time he was; the trucker wants to know what Michael's fancy car is made of. Michael blows him off.
Tanya is worried - this means that they are in the gunsights of someone very powerful. Wilson counsels patience, since they are close to getting all of Comtron's secrets, but Tanya wants to pull out now and take only the biggest prize: plans for a bubble memory chip. She'll pull the data from the computer and they'll fly out tonight. Wilson again advises Tanya not to panic. The fact that Michael is whiling away his time in demolition derbies and in jail says that he has nothing, otherwise he'd be at the sheriff's office handing over evidence. But Tanya is sure that there is something especially dangerous about Michael. She saw it when she looked in his eyes.
and he looked into her eyes, and the abyss looked back into him
Tanya wants Michael dead before he can cause any more trouble, and she sends Wilson to get Michael out of jail so that this plan can be carried out.
It's unfortunate for them that this conversation takes place right in front of KITT.
Back at jail, the trucker again tries to initiate a conversation by asking Michael if this is his first time in jail. According to Michael, it isn't; he was with intelligence in Vietnam and once got caught by the Viet Cong. He "had to punish them." Someone should have told all our other POWs that it was that easy. The trucker tries to make nice by apologizing for what he and his friends did, and advises Michael to make another phone call because nobody has shown up for him. Surely, Michael has friends on the outside.
Yeah, says Michael. He has one friend. But they're not on the best of terms at the moment.
alone at last
At Comtron, Michael's only friend wakes up.
let's get dangerous
KITT reactivates all his gizmos, and in a particularly nice little sequence, you can see him scanning the inside of the building on his onboard monitors. All is clear; he starts the car and smashes out of the building.
it was kind of dumb of them to park him right behind a set of glass doors
Back in jail, Michael is still chatting with the arrested trucker. Some exposition is released into the wild: all of the truckers were hired by Wilson and are from out of town, and are probably criminals. Michael ponders this and then dozes off. Wilson arrives in a Comtron car, and speaks with the deputy on duty; he has a court order to release Michael into his custody. As the deputy is signing off on this and preparing to hand Michael over to Wilson, KITT comes to the rescue.
walls are just doors that haven't yet reached their full potential
Michael falls onto KITT's hood.
if I told you he was humping the car's hood here, you couldn't prove me wrong
The trucker thinks a drunk must have come through the wall and shows that he's ultimately a good person by asking Michael to check if the driver is injured. Michael decides that he doesn't care how KITT accomplished this feat. He does say thank you, at least, as KITT opens the door for him. KITT graciously says, "You're welcome!"
The deputy and Wilson come back to investigate that almighty racket, and while Michael jumps into the car Wilson opens fire. Fortunately KITT is still bulletproof and they back out of the jail through the hole in the wall and escape into the night.
Wilson and Gray follow in their car. Wilson figures out pretty quickly that there's no way they're going to catch KITT, but he knows where Michael is going.
It's unclear how much (if anything) KITT tells Michael on the trip to Comtron; my guess would be nothing, as illogical as that seems. They pull in next to the Comtron building, where Michael decides it would be easiest to get in via the roof. He wonders aloud how he's going to get up there, and KITT asks if it's all right to respond. This time Michael is quite anxious to talk to KITT, so KITT instructs him how to use the seat eject function to launch himself up to the roof. KITT says it would also help if he opened the sunroof first. Michael is all hah-hah, smart-aleck car.
This works quite smoothly, and Michael reaches the roof. He does not thank KITT, but KITT appears to take no offense. A security guard comes out moments later and uses his radio to tell everyone else that "it's back!" and it's parked in the south parking lot. Tanya is with the other security guards and hears this, and runs off.
Michael breaks into Comtron through the ceiling. Finding a company directory, he locates Tanya's office.
Outside, Wilson and Gray pull up to find everybody gathered around KITT, who has his sunroof closed again and therefore need fear nothing. Tanya wants to know where Michael is, and Wilson lets her know that Michael busted out of jail (oddly not mentioning KITT's role). Wilson doesn't think Michael can get into Comtron without being seen, but Tanya is not so sanguine and decides to head up to secure the chip design immediately. Before running off she tells everyone to shoot to kill if they see Michael.
In Tanya's office, Michael starts to nose around and finds the most lolriffic computer on the planet.
I honestly do not remember computers ever looking like this
Before he can do anything else he hears someone coming and hides. It's Tanya, and she's wearing this blue thing that shows every bounce of her clearly-unrestrained breasts as she crosses the room; it was so bouncy I found it impossible to cap it without motion blur. She has a gun, but sets it down on the table in order to log into the computer. She copies the plans to a 5 1/4 floppy disk (lol technology!) but before she can leave the phone rings. It's probably Wilson, because she tells whoever it is that she has the plans and will be flying out from the airport shortly so the pilot needs to be alerted. While she's chatting, Michael picks up the gun and is holding it on her when she turns around.
He is quite pissed. He thanks her for organizing the evidence for him, and she tries to bribe him (with money or sex, or maybe both, it's unclear). At this point Michael does something insanely stupid. He has a completely unbreakable cover here, with a new face and even new fingerprints, so of course he has to out himself to Tanya by alluding to that "starry night in Nevada" when she shot him. Maybe it was his flashback that made him do it.
It takes Tanya only seconds to figure out who he is. She pleads with him not to do this, tells him that it was all Wilson's fault because he gives the orders, and if he goes along with her they can both be rich. Michael is not fooled. There's no way Tanya could be offering him money if she isn't the leader of the gang herself. Tanya owns up to being the ringleader, but again offers Michael money (and possibly sex) if he'll join her. He refuses.
They are interrupted by a guard. Tanya tells the guard to shoot Michael and darts away. The two men exchange gunfire and Michael is hit in the shoulder but somehow manages to escape (the guard that shot him seems to just vanish). Downstairs, the rest of the security team, including Wilson, hear the gunshots; Wilson orders all of the roaming guards to check in. Michael attempts to descend a stairwell but hears some guards coming up and must retreat back to the third floor.
Michael got careless with the poster paint
One of the guards comes up the stairs, where Michael ambushes and quickly overpowers him. As Michael swipes the guard's uniform, Tanya, her bosom flopping, runs out to the parking lot and gets into a car. Michael finishes changing and retrieves the unlucky guard's radio just in time to hear Wilson demanding that Baker check in. Michael realizes that he's in Baker's uniform and says, "Nothing here!" but Wilson recognizes that this was not Baker's voice.
Another guard is in the parking lot drooling over KITT.
forget it, you'll never be able to afford a car this sweet on your salary
Michael comes racing out and attempts to get to KITT by claiming to be Baker. Shockingly, the guard buys it and asks what's going on; Michael tries to send him up to the administration building. His cunning plan, however, is spoiled by Wilson breaking in over the radio to alert everyone that "the suspect" is in Baker's uniform. BUSTED! The other guard pulls a gun on Michael and alerts Wilson over the radio. Wilson promises him $10,000 (cash!) if the guard holds Michael there.
Thrilled, the guard holds Michael at bay. Michael, still bleeding, says, "Sorry. Don't look behind you." The guard is not going to fall for that one! However, there is something menacing behind him. KITT's headlights come up and he lunges toward the guard, who throws up his hands in surrender as a demonstrably-empty car threatens him.
Michael jumps into KITT and they zoom away, having accomplished precisely nothing aside from catching a bullet in the shoulder. We can't even say that he learned about Tanya's flying-out plans because KITT already learned that back at the beginning of the act. The act ends as they rush the guard post at the end of the parking lot. The guards try to stop them with gunfire, but KITT = still bulletproof.
this security car attempted to block KITT's way, and for the crime of trying to stop its king, KITT sentenced it to death
The final act begins with Michael asking KITT, "Are you there?" KITT asks where he would go, and Michael sorta-kinda-doesn't-really apologize for his earlier behavior, on the grounds that he might be dead soon.
is it weird that KITT is able to remotely read Michael's blood pH?
KITT reassures him that his vital signs are still good, but he needs immediate medical attention. Michael, however, is not ready for that yet. Calling KITT "pal" for the first time, Michael says that they can't stop now, and then asks if there's any way KITT can get ahold of Devon. It turns out that KITT can, in fact, call Devon on the "microwave mobile line," which makes all of those long-distance pay phone calls earlier in the episode even more hilarious.
I want you to remember that this was 1982 and phones in cars were uncommon, let alone phones in planes
Devon is en route to Millston in his private jet. He quickly figures out that all is not well with Michael and asks KITT what is going on. KITT reports that "Mr. Knight" has been injured and is deteriorating rapidly; KITT thinks he should take over. Michael vetoes this, and also vetoes Devon's suggestion that he hang up the investigation and go save his own life.
Michael fills in Devon about what Tanya and her buddies are doing, and when Devon offers to contact the local police Michael says no, the police are bought and he should contact the FBI and state police instead. Devon wants to know if Michael can make it, and KITT declines to voice an opinion since Michael is right there.
Meanwhile, Wilson and Gray have found a helicopter and are in pursuit. Wilson is on the radio passing instructions to the truckers who are not in jail at the moment. One of them pulls a Comtron truck around to block the road.
sure, that'll stop KITT
Michael decides to just plow through the truck and accelerates toward it at 90+ mph. The trucker is amused at first, and then not amused at all when it becomes clear that Michael has no intention of stopping. KITT is also somewhat flabbergasted at this "plan." But, since Michael is determined to go through with it, KITT offers to "activate the turbo boost." Michael acts like he's never heard of this before, so KITT just does it and the car leaps through the trailer.
does this cloud of dust and debris make me look fat?
How, I wonder, does Michael think KITT jumped over those cars in the demolition derby? I mean, it's not like that happened a year ago ... it was that morning!
Michael is suitably impressed with the car's abilities, but when he tries to talk to KITT again (calling him "buddy" for the first time), KITT is silent. This raises some concern until KITT notes that they aren't speaking to each other. Michael is just relieved that KITT is uninjured.
This provokes a cute little exchange in which KITT marvels that Michael actually gives a shit. "Yeah, I care," says Michael, and then immediately forbids KITT from telling anyone. I reckon he's still ashamed of KITT, but KITT is just happy that he's not the only one emotionally invested in this relationship.
Wilson in his helicopter radios to the trucker whose trailer was just demolished, and the trucker must report that KITT went straight through. "Have you been drinking?" asks Wilson. "Not yet," says the trucker, "but I plan on it!"
So Wilson spreads his call more widely: anyone who rams KITT head-on will get a $15,000 bonus. No takers. Wilson raises the stakes to $25,000, and finds a trucker willing to try it.
In some manner Michael has been listening to this exchange, and he asks Devon if KITT can actually take a semi head-on. Devon is unsure; KITT suggests they reach the airport before they reach the truck. Wilson watches from above and now has a shotgun.
because that will help with a car that is bulletproof and can fly through trucks
KITT is starting to get alarmed, and again tells "Mr. Knight" that he should take over. Michael, looking worse by the moment, refuses to relinquish control. KITT appeals to Devon (now calling him "Michael" when talking about him) but Devon reinforces KITT's subordination by declaring that as long as Michael is conscious KITT must obey him. Michael says some things that indicate that he may be starting to buy into Wilton's Lone Ranger idea.
he's thinking that he might not get a season contract if he keeps dissing the series premise
From the helicopter, Wilson and Gray observe the semi and the Trans Am approach one another on this queerly deserted road, and gloat about how much paste Michael is about to become. However, Michael pushes the magic button, and KITT simply sails over the truck.
PENG
Needless to say, Wilson and Gray are not sure they believe what they just saw. Wilson decides that the smart thing to do now would be to bring the chopper lower and shoot the bulletproof car that flies at will with his shotgun.
I see no flaws in this plan
The slug bounces off KITT and strikes the helicopter, much to Gray's annoyance. Now trailing smoke and fire, the two villains make for the airport.
They land next to a small jet. Tanya has just pulled up in a car and is still wearing the blue thing and no bra. Wilson alerts her to the fact that Michael is on approach and therefore obviously isn't dead yet. Tanya wants to stick around and make sure Michael dies, but Wilson overrules her and hustles her into the jet. KITT races onto the runway, because it's totally easy to get a car onto an airport runway without facing any kind of security or gates or anything.
KITT again attempts to take over, and again Michael tells him no. They drive straight at the plane and manage to clip its wingtip.
I like the thing trailing the ground, like a string of flaming snot
The plane stops and everyone bails out, Tanya and her bouncing blue bosom in the lead.
sadly, this was the best shot I could get of it.
They have good reason.
I'm to believe this passed FAA inspection?
Wilson wants to head for the hanger and find another plane, but Tanya has a better idea.
she watched this car shrug off torches and diamond-tipped drills, so naturally a snub-nosed revolver is the key
Michael tries to warn her not to fire, and Wilson also calls out a warning as to the bulletproof-ness of KITT, but she fires anyway and manages to shoot herself in the chest. She is dead instantly, and her knowledge about who Michael was in his former life is dead with her.
That loose end tied up and with the police arriving in fleets, Michael lets KITT finally take over. KITT decides to take Michael straight to the hospital, and all of the cops and FBI and what-have-you just let him zoom away from the scene of major devastation and at least one death and don't even attempt to detain him.
sexy
Later, in the hospital, Maggie is visiting.
and she's wrapped herself in the shower curtain
She tells Michael that Buddy really needs a man in his life. You see, she thought she could raise him as a single mother, but she's realized that she is totally inadequate to the task. She even calls herself stupid in as many words for not spending the past couple of months searching high and low for a man to bring into the family.
After beating herself up a bit, she hints in a not very subtle fashion that she's hoping that Michael is not really leaving. Michael assures her that he will come back to visit. Because occasional visits from someone they knew for all of two days will totally fill in the man-void in their lives. She also mentions that Buddy wanted to get a last ride in Michael's car, which allows Michael to mention that there might be a problem with that.
KITT would be hiding his face right now, if he had a face
It turns out that Michael managed to damage the indestructible car.
this is the last time Devon will be allowed in the driver's seat
While KITT is being towed to the airport and, later, in the jet, Michael and Devon discuss whether or not this is going to turn into a regular series.
hopefully Devon will use a lighter hand with the eyeliner from now on
Michael has, by this point, totally bought into Wilton's creepy plan to fake his death and assign him a new identity so that he can carry out the old man's dream, without having consulted him first. Really, he's just sold on KITT. "The world's most fantastic car," he says, the camera careful to show him from the waist-up only. Devon and Michael have a drink on the plane and the credits roll.
The interesting thing about this episode, beyond the obvious action-adventure, the introduction of the world's most fantastic car, and the fact that it kicks off a series, is of course the gender regime.
Maggie and Tanya are opposites, but they fit into the same misogynist paradigm.
Tanya is not a creative person; instead, it's the men who are creative and who design valuable things which she then steals. She does not steal the way Michael Knight would steal something, either. He would just break into the building and swipe it if he needed it (active agency). Tanya instead uses sex to manipulate the creative men into giving her access to the products of their male genius (passive agency). She is overtly sexual, and also evil.
Once she meets a man who is not interested in her sexually (and who therefore cannot be manipulated), she makes killing him her top priority. She is so intent on murdering Michael that she ignores all evidence that firing a bullet at KITT is going to have adverse consequences, and thereby accomplishes her own death. It is her obsession with a man that kills her.
Maggie, on the other hand, is as I have mentioned before: she slots neatly into all of the "good woman" tropes. She is a single mother, but not by choice or due to bad judgment, but because she is a widow. She is not interested in being sexed up by a man she just met (she's actually not sexual at all), and she passively accepts whatever happens, even when it's a man she just met stroking her hair. Maggie demonstrates very little agency of any stripe; her sole contribution to the plot is to provide Michael with some information about Tanya and about the demolition derby. About the only action she undertakes on her own is to dump a drink into Michael's lap.
Something that really strikes me is the conversation in the car after Maggie tries to dent KITT and Michael has to take her home. Michael speculates that Maggie got the job that she did, at the bar, because the Comtron people come in there all the time and she is trying to collect intelligence on what went wrong. Maggie retorts angrily that she did it because she needs to feed her son.
The subtext can go either of two ways. The first relates to agency. Michael, in the same position taking the same actions, would have done so out of a sense of active agency, taking his fate into his own hands and perhaps gaining some kind of upper hand over his enemies. Maggie immediately rejects the insinuation that she has a similar kind of agency; instead, her motive is a small, simple, woman's motive of care and nurturance.
The other relates to sensibility. Michael says, by implication, that he would have taken that job in order to accomplish some grand and no-doubt complex scheme. Maggie rejects that, saying instead that her goals are practical, down-to-earth, and related to most important objective of all: achieving the good life. She's not going to get to the good life waiting tables at a bar, but she can get closer through that method than through unemployment. By this interpretation, her anger at Michael is an anger at his impracticality and his implied accusation that she is just as impractical; she is rejecting his attempt to impose irresponsibility upon her.
These are not mutually exclusive interpretations, and they both work on different levels.
At the end, this soft and passive woman (who is, I'll note again, presented to us as the positive role model) realizes that she cannot go it alone in the world. She needs a strong male presence in her life. She frames this as the idea that it's her son who needs the strong male presence, but this can be easily unpacked as an assertion that she is the one who lacks something and therefore cannot provide it to her child.
The men, on the other hand, have their own gender regime, one that dovetails in a nice misogynist fashion with the female regime. Wilton Knight is the paradigm-maker here. He is fabulously wealthy, but we are explicitly assured that he is an entirely self-made man. He is a genius who has been responsible for some unspecified technologies (that he lost to Tanya's wiles) and for the very specified technologies of the Knight 2000 supercar. He has inspired the complete and unquestioning loyalty of Devon, who is the very picture of a proper English gentleman; Devon is the kind of character who would never grant his loyalty lightly, and therefore Wilton is enlarged by having such a distinguished minion.
Michael, of course, is the elemental force of active agency. He may do smart things and he may do dumb things, but he's always doing things. In that conversation with Maggie, he perhaps-naively assumes that she is like him; it's actually charming that he doesn't seem to be aware of the gender regime in which he is entangled.
KITT is the final piece. KITT defines the boundary between the male regime and the female one. As an AI, KITT is technically genderless, but he has a male voice and is referred to by others by male pronouns. He is more passive than the other male characters, but is capable of positive action when it's needed. What defines KITT as a boundary character is his perfect subordination. Other episodes will more fully explore the meaning behind that, and I'll save most of it for then.
For now, I'll note that KITT cannot truly exist without Michael, just as the (biological) women cannot truly exist without the men. Tanya has a lot of active agency, but nevertheless she would be nothing without men to steal from. Maggie says explicitly at the end that a life without a man is not a whole life. The men, on the other hand, are perfectly capable of living whole and fulfilling lives without women. KITT therefore falls on the feminine side of the divide in this respect. However, he is explicitly defined as male, and, let's not forget, he is a smokin' hot black Trans Am with bulletproof armor and the ability to jump over semis, a masculine machine if ever one existed. So he straddles the line rather than falling fully into either category.
In this respect, KITT is fairly subversive, as a defined-as-male character falling into a largely (but not wholly) feminine role. I thought for a while about the relative dearth of recurring female characters in this show, and wondered if it would have been better if KITT had been more conventionally defined as female (I'm confident the show would not have been as popular had this been the case, but ignore that). I decided that it's better this way. Defined as male, KITT is pretty subversive, especially for 1982. In a way, he kind of reminds me of that Star Trek:TOS episode in which Kirk is mind-switched with a woman, and Shatner spends half the episode playing a woman in a man's body. That episode is egregiously misogynist, but there's a lot of subversion in having a male actor, Shatner, cooing into the ear of another male actor in his "role" as a woman. KITT is not doing the same thing, but there is a similar level of subversion in it.
So that's Knight of the Phoenix. There are a lot of production errors, most of which I did not point out because I'm not really trying to nitpick. Now I really need to finish my term paper.