Deadly Maneuvers
Deadly Maneuvers
Original Air Date: 10-01-1982
The opening sequence of this episode also differs from later ones in that there is no voiceover, but there are more sound effects than in the pilot.
a little more of the OP porn
lay open that dash for us
It also introduces the new concept of KITT going into a trailer, complete with a cockteasing little glimpse of his undercarriage, and presents a new human.
it's hard not to love Bonnie
this is very meta, because you're looking at KITT's onboard monitors through one of KITT's onboard monitors
The episode proper begins at what we soon learn is Englehart Army base.
STOP
KEEP OUT
A dude in Army green sneaks into the ammo bunker, goes into a locked room, and there he sticks his hand in some wet blue paint.
one of the lesser-known functions of the Army is to protect our freedoms by pureeing smurfs, because they are communists
The man is very upset by this. He leaves the bunker and is not seen, but then drops his flashlight. This brings security running. He flees into the night. There follows an extremely brief jeep chase, in which the base security shoots his tires and runs him off the road and over a cliff.
Later, in the daytime, Michael and KITT are cruising down the road. KITT is advising Michael to slow down, lest he crash. Michael blows him off, and it is quickly revealed that KITT is driving and Michael is playing a video game.
the most productive use of a state-of-the-art supercomputer
It turns out that KITT is way better at Atari games than Michael, and Michael does a sour grapes about this and about computers in general, which miffs KITT slightly and Michael must mollify him.
the zen of KITT
They pass a woman in an Army uniform, who is standing by the side of the road next to her stopped car. Michael tells KITT to switch to manual because they are stopping. KITT correctly guesses that this means there is a young lady nearby (implying that he can't see her for himself, which is odd), and reminds Michael that they have a mission waiting. Michael goes to chat with the woman, whose name is Lt. Robin Ladd.
she has a nice smile, don't you think?
Of course, she has no idea what is wrong with her car, only that it "won't go." In a magnanimous exchange of gender stereotyping, Michael offers to take a look at the car and she is grateful for the assistance.
remember that she only knew it "won't go," not that it was spewing clouds of steam that probably stink of coolant
Michael quickly diagnoses a bad hose in the car and offers to give her a lift. She immediately accepts a ride from a strange man who found her by the side of the road and tells him that she's going to Englehart. While she grabs her stuff, Michael notifies KITT that they are not only going to give her a ride, they are also going to tow her car.
KITT is not amused. He has many complex and delicate systems, and is not a tow truck. Michael blows off his concerns.
prostituted
Later, they drop Robin's car off, without revealing precisely how KITT managed to tow anything given that he has nothing like a hitch. Michael then proceeds to drive Robin to the base, and on the way they exchange some personal small talk. Michael claims that he's into "something like insurance," while Robin has spent the last two years in Germany. She's kind of coming home to Englehart; she used to live there when she was an Army brat, and now is assigned there.
In a cute and obvious little attempt to head off a stereotype, Michael guesses at first that it's her mother who is an officer. Robin assures him that the stereotype holds, and it's her dad. She is a week early and wants to surprise him. Michael flirts by commenting that if they'd had officers like Robin when he was in uniform, he never would have left. Which makes his question about whether or not it was Robin's mother who was in the Army all the more hilarious.
They pull into the base, and for some daft reason Michael goes in with Robin to surprise her dad instead of driving away with his manly duty fulfilled. However, when Robin goes into her father's office, some other dude is there. This is Sanderson. She is aghast that she just walked in on a strange superior unannounced and starts to apologize, and when she asks where her father is he refers her to General Duncton. Michael again goes with her, for no reason whatsoever.
this is what a turtle looks like when you take the shell off
Duncton and Robin have known each other since she was little, and they have a happy reunion until she asks about her father.
Michael is sporting the Belt Buckle of Truth
Duncton has to break the news to Robin that Colonel Ladd is dead, his jeep having flown off the road and into a gorge. Robin grieves.
There is a funeral service, where Duncton speaks. Michael, for some reason, is still sticking around and sits next to Robin. He's wearing the most awesome funeral outfit I think I've ever seen in my life.
blue jeans with a huge belt buckle, black cowboy boots, an off-white dress shirt, a brown corduroy tie, and his best brown velveteen sport coat complete with suede patches on the elbows
After the service he goes up to Robin to offer his condolences and to flirt a little by asking about her future plans. As they walk and chat, they pass some other officers, and apparently there is some talk going around that Robin's dad was drunk; Sanderson is denying this rumor, instead advancing the theory that he was just old and decrepit and lost control. They notice Robin and realize that wasn't something you say in front of a dead man's daughter, and silently slink off.
Robin asks Michael, since he is supposedly in insurance, his opinion on how plausible her father's accident really was, if he was healthy and sober and on a familiar road in a familiar car. Michael thinks it would be good to find out and they make an appointment to meet up later.
Michael returns to KITT, and KITT has some bad news: his alpha circuit is out of alignment as a result of giving Robin's car a tow.
did Michael really just connect Robin's car straight to KITT's alpha circuit?
Michael tries to blow this off, but KITT asks, "What if it was your alpha circuit?" which makes me wonder what the analogue is in humans. The prostate maybe? Michael caves and tells KITT to notify the home office.
Later, at the gorge, Michael does some tests with KITT while Robin observes, checking for how a car would move if it went out of control where Col. Ladd supposedly lost control of his jeep. They come to the conclusion that an out-of-control car would plow into the hill, not go over the cliff. However, Michael has found an explanation for what may have occurred instead.
that's awfully shiny for used brass
They depart. Up on the hill, an Army dude named Perkins is watching through binoculars with two buddies. Perkins thinks it's time for another funeral.
Back at the base, Michael and Robin sit in KITT and ponder. Michael asks if her dad ever said anything to her about something being up, and Robin says no, if he found something out it must have been very recently. Robin will check out his quarters, and Michael decides to riffle his office.
Robin gets out of the car and leaves, and Michael consults with KITT on how to get into the post in a funny little exchange to which I can't do justice in print. Eventually Michael spots a food vendor nearby and decides to get into the post disguised as one. KITT goes into surveillance as Michael approaches the vendor and hands over a couple hundred dollars in exchange for borrowing the vendor's gear for an hour. He also bribes the vendor into pretending that Michael is his nephew if anyone asks.
Almost immediately, Michael runs into a couple of MPs.
these are not the candy bars you're looking for
You know they are MPs because of the huge "MP" on their helmets. Michael is not very convincing to them, and they ask to see his health card. He doesn't have one, so they haul him before their CO.
this gentleman of color, like the one in the last cap, is military police, which is to say they are cops
Major Raney thinks Michael is a suspicious character, especially given the cards in his wallet. "Michael Knight, Speedy Repairman. Michael Knight, Quick Carpet Cleaner. M. Knight Enterprises. Swedish Massage While You Wait." (lol) Michael claims to be a victim of the recession (there really was one in 1982, a serious one) who has to take odd jobs to make ends meet. Raney goes off to check his story that he's the food vendor's nephew, leaving him alone with two subordinates.
They immediately grab for some candy bars and go to face the corner like naughty little boys.
or maybe they're masturbating and just don't want Michael to see
Michael, meanwhile, had spotted an interesting thing on Raney's desk
convenient that this file was in plain sight
While the MPs are occupied with their candy/mutual masturbation session, Michael slides the folder under his candy tray. Raney soon returns; the food vendor held up his end of the bribe, so Raney calls Michael legit and lets him go, warning him to get a health card next time. Michael picks up the candy tray with the file folder beneath it and trots out.
On his way out he runs into Perkins, whom he has never met and therefore doesn't recognize, but Perkins recognizes him. Perkins heads to the ammo bunker and alerts two dudes there that Michael (whom he calls "Lt. Ladd's civilian") was snooping, and they need to deal with him. The act ends.
The next act opens that evening. Michael and Robin come out of a local greasy spoon, complaining about the food. They have apparently had a date, and not even a working date because they don't start "comparing notes" until they get back to KITT. On the drive back, Michael shares some info he got from the accident report, that Col. Ladd had blue paint on his hands. Robin has no explanation for this; her father was not handy in the slightest.
They reach the base and Michael drops Robin off, actually getting out of the car first and walking around to open her door for her and give her a hand out of the car. He does this fairly consistently through the series.
chivalry was not dead in 1982
As he walks her back to her quarters, she broaches the idea of giving up on this investigation, since they haven't found much of anything. Michael, remembering the empty brass he found at the gorge, advises her to sleep on it first before she throws it in. He then leaves after making it explicit that he's staying in a motel. Incidentally, they failed to dub in KITT's turbine whirr here, and it's actually missing through most of the episode.
As Michael and KITT pull away from the base, the two dudes from the ammo bunker follow him. One has an assault rifle.
in his defense, he doesn't know yet that KITT is bulletproof
Down the road a ways, KITT starts to nag Michael, first about the mission they've been blowing off (Michael says it's his responsibility, which is exactly what KITT is worried about) and then about his alpha circuit. Michael gripes that KITT is never going to forgive him for that, but KITT denies having the emotional capacity to hold a grudge. However, he's never going to forget it.
this is not KITT's best look
Meanwhile, the truck following them pulls alongside and tries to run KITT off the road. This has about as much effect as you'd expect; KITT is mostly annoyed that Michael doesn't appear to be retaliating.
Under prompting, Michael takes action. He does a bootlegger turn, drives for a while until he gets up behind a semi hauling cars, then does another and is now on a direct heading toward the truck that was following them.
this is honestly something you never want to see in your lane, ever, but that's doubly true when his scanner is off and he can't see you
The dude with the assault rifle hangs out the window and attempts to shoot KITT. Michael swerves at the last second and sideswipes the truck, ripping the passenger door almost off the hinges and damaging the rifle.
and this didn't crush the dude's shoulder when it happened?
The next day, Robin is doing something indeterminate with a computer which involves sending/receiving data from the Pentagon. Duncton is there and he praises her facility with the device, but Robin knows he didn't come there to check out the computer, he is there to check out her. He agrees. Creepy. Michael barges in, because it's totally easy for a civilian to get into a military data center at will; he wants to talk with Robin. Duncton greets him and inquires not-very-subtly why he's still hanging around. That's a damned good question, actually.
his smile hides his cold, dead eyes
Michael makes a joke about how he likes olive drab, and Duncton skedaddles with no further interrogation. Robin sends her assistant, Webb, on a break, and then Michael tells Robin about the murder attempt last night and how he now totally believes that her father wasn't killed in an accident. Robin thinks they should tell Duncton and get the MPs to investigate, but Michael trusts no one. He asks for a map, and he and Robin head out to KITT to consult it.
They figure out that Robin's father must have been coming from the munitions complex when he died, and Michael folds up the map. Robin says that he can't go in there, and he agrees, because it's still daytime. He gives her the map and Robin gets out of the car without trying to dissuade him further.
KITT then alerts Michael that "the home office has arrived" and is waiting nearby.
the home office
They meet up with the semi.
still a little unfinished inside
There we meet Bonnie. Devon is Very Concerned about KITT's signal and they came as quickly as they could, which makes Michael roll his eyes. Bonnie consults with KITT, and he admits, sounding almost guilty about it, that it's his alpha circuit. Bonnie is confused, as the only way KITT could have damaged his alpha circuit would be by doing something stupid, like ... towing another car. KITT refuses to implicate Michael, for which Michael is very grateful.
Michael prays to KITT, the only god that will hear him
Bonnie gets to work repairing KITT. Devon calls Michael up to the front of the trailer and starts to reprimand him for not getting on the assignment he was given the day before. Michael tries to explain himself, but Devon is unsympathetic; Michael says that someone tried to kill him last night, and Devon says that he has an alibi. Once KITT is repaired, however, Michael engages in a cute bit of word trickery and simply leaves.
That night, he sneaks into the ammo bunker that we saw at the beginning of the ep.
nobody will notice this!
Michael gets in with basically no problem at all and without even bothering to sneak. Security = not very tight. He finds the room with the blue paint and realizes that some of the weapons are being repainted. Blue, according to a chart on the wall, means armor piercing, but yellow, which is what is under the blue repaint on the altered weapons, means tactical nuclear weapons. The chart on the wall also says that armor piercing = caliber of 90 mm, whereas tactical nukes = caliber of 80,110 mm (in other words, they're used on the Death Star). I can see where someone might mix those up quite easily if the colors were wrong. Michael then leaves the same way he arrived, without encountering any security of any kind.
Meanwhile, back in the data center, Robin finds something on a printout on the Pentagon-linked computer that bothers her. She tries to take it to Duncton, but Sanderson is in Duncton's office. So she gives it to Sanderson (it turns out to be a printout of the artillery inventory), and he promptly pulls a gun on her. Apparently he is in on it. Sanderson basically confesses to killing Robin's father and calls in Perkins to dispose of Robin.
Perkins handcuffs Robin and hauls her out to a jeep, which is witnessed by Webb, Robin's assistant. Perkins takes Robin out to a field and locks her into a tank that has a big white X on it. The camera pulls out to reveal what this is about as the act ends.
this must be where they test out all the new municipal regulations, because otherwise they would have spelled it "ordnance"
The third act opens with Michael again coming into the data center to look for Robin. Webb is there and tells him that Perkins arrested Robin the night before, so Michael runs to Raney to demand an explanation. Raney has no idea what Michael is talking about; Perkins isn't even an MP (wouldn't Webb have known this?) but instead works in munitions. Michael runs to hop into KITT and they race off.
KITT was just thinking about how much more beautiful he is than that gun
what a pretty car
Meanwhile, our villains are loading "armor piercing" rounds into a truck while discussing how they have customers waiting. KITT comes screaming around the corner, finally sporting his turbine engine sound.
yeah, I'd run, too
The villains split, with two going in one direction and Sanderson going in the other. Michael and KITT split up, too, with Michael first knocking the fourth guy cold and then chasing Sanderson, and sending KITT, like a 16-foot bulldog, to handle the other two. They cleverly run into a dead end and KITT pins them up against the wall.
WTFLOLBBQ
Sanderson runs into the room with the blue paint and the chart, and finds a convenient assault rifle just laying around in there. However, it is not loaded, and by the time he gets a magazine slotted Michael is upon him.
making new friends
Michael wants to know where Robin is, and Sanderson not only denies knowledge, he claims Michael is going to be in trouble for assaulting him and, oddly, destroying government property. What property? Maybe he means the truck and rifle that Michael and KITT broke the night before, otherwise that makes no sense. Getting nowhere with the choking tactic, Michael steps back and instead threatens him with a small tactical nuke by starting to unscrew the top to let the radiation out.
Sanderson folds and tells Michael that Robin is at the test range locked inside a target vehicle. Interestingly, he calls it "ground zero," because this was before "ground zero" gained a permanent and singular meaning. Michael locks him in the little room and races off.
Outside, KITT is being sexually harassed by the guys he has pinned against the wall. Or maybe he's the one sexually harassing them. It's hard to tell. Either way, some harassment is definitely happening out there.
as you look at this, remember that KITT feels like baby skin
Michael calls KITT to heel and forces the three guys at gunpoint into the building. He locks them in, then ditches the gun, because Michael Knight is like MacGyver and does not need a gun.
They zoom off to the test range, where a lot of stock footage is playing.
these guys look like they know what they're doing, because they do
Robin is trying to escape from the tank, but is unsuccessful. The live fire test begins, putting her into grave danger. KITT crashes through a barrier and enters the range. Michael tells KITT to get him a military frequency; KITT offers to call the Pentagon, but Michael has lower ambitions and wants to talk to Duncton. He gets through immediately and tells Duncton all about the plot he's uncovered and about the danger that Robin is in right now. He asks Duncton to put a halt to the test firing.
So much for trusting no one. Duncton gets on the loudspeaker and tells all personnel that the black, unmarked car on the test range is a remote-controlled drone target vehicle and the crew that takes it out gets a three-day pass. PWNED!
I love these long-distance shots of KITT
Michael and KITT quickly notice that they are still targets and conclude that Duncton is not their friend. As the explosions get closer to KITT, Michael asks KITT if he can take a direct hit. KITT would prefer not to discover the answer to that one.
Meanwhile, the gun crews are running out of armor-piercing rounds, having apparently not planned ahead very well. Two non-villain guys head back to the armory to retrieve more. KITT continues to evade weapons fire, and is able to locate Robin (he calls her, very properly, Lt. Ladd) with his scanners inside one of the tanks.
The non-villain guys arrive at the bunker and discover the "armor piercing" rounds that the villains were loading into the truck. Pleased that they don't have to look any farther, they load some up. Duncton, irritated that KITT and Michael are not dead yet, orders heat-seeking missiles be fired at them.
heat seeking missiles, seek heat!
KITT's radar picks this up and he notes that they can't dodge homing missiles. Michael heads for some underbrush and sets it on fire using KITT's "rocket booster."
"rocket booster" is their code word for "flaming ejaculate"
This works to distract two of the heat-seeking missiles, while the third one hits the food vendor's truck in the culmination of a not-very-funny running joke about how his truck's thermostat doesn't work properly.
Our Heroes now make their way to the tank and free Robin.
always a gentleman
They hightail it out of there, heading toward the guns. Robin now acts like she's never seen KITT before and asks if this is "a car or a space ship?"
I seriously can't get enough of these
As the "armor piercing" rounds get closer and closer to being used, KITT slides all around the field dodging shots, and is briefly actually on fire.
KITT's going to start asking for danger pay
Just before a tactical nuke disguised as an armor piercing round can be used in the live fire test, KITT roars up and scatters Army dudes. A cease-fire is called as, apparently, people figure out that the unmarked black car is not actually a remote-controlled drone. Duncton runs away to escape in an armored personnel carrier, but KITT destroys one of the carrier's tracks with his "rocket booster."
I'd like to see fanfic in which this is what happens when KITT has an orgasm
Duncton jumps out of the personnel carrier to randomly make a run for it, and Michael catches him. Robin runs up as well and, in a very nicely acted fit of grief and anger, she rips the insignia off Duncton's collar.
The epilogue has Devon in Duncton's office with Michael and Robin, dressing down Michael for being random and destructive (honestly I didn't think he was all that random and destructive, but oh well). Robin tries to take responsibility, and Devon disses this because it's typical for Michael to jump to a young lady's rescue and that excuses nothing. Devon does become more likable later in the series, you have to trust me on this. Raney comes in; it turns out that he's the acting commander, since everyone above him is in the stockade, and he's called this meeting.
The phone rings and Raney answers; he says they want to speak to whoever from the Foundation was responsible for this. Michael offers to take it, on the grounds that he was just told that he was operating on his own, but when Raney says that it's the White House Devon grabs the phone instead. This amuses both Michael and Robin. Later, Michael and Devon head out to KITT to leave, and Michael pitches his case for this being a Foundation mission and therefore his expenses should be reimbursed. Devon resists this suggestion, and the episode ends by showing a GO ARMY bumper sticker on KITT (which I'm sure KITT appreciated).
The gender regime of this episode is much less offensive than the one in the pilot. Sure, there are a lot of stereotypes, but they are more excusable than the ones in the pilot.
Robin is the only female character of note in the entire episode (Bonnie and Webb have maybe 3 lines of dialogue each) so she has a lot of weight to pull, probably too much for any one character. She is mechanically incompetent and winds up a damsel in distress, but she is not nearly as passive and soft as Maggie. She is a lieutenant in the Army (no small feat) and commands at least one subordinate. She is also the one who initiates the investigation - if Michael is the weapon, she's the one who pulls his trigger - and she uncovers the plot utilizing her own resources, independently from him.
She is sometimes emotional, but never irrationally so. Her emotions are mainly focused around her father's death, something that any normal person would find distressing. She has one "little girl" moment when the bad news is first broken to her, but it isn't excessive, and the actress is really good and pulls it off without looking weak.
The script is scrupulous about not unmanning the men, however. Robin's subordinate is another woman; it wouldn't do to have her commanding a man. When Robin is kidnapped by Perkins, she barely resists. You'd think that, as an officer, she would have at least some combat training, but if she does we never get to see it.
It was also interesting how Devon, in the epilogue, handwaves Robin's agency. He's blaming Michael for everything (whatever "everything" is) and Robin tries to step forward and take responsibility for it. It's a cool moment for her; she looks exactly like a military officer taking proper responsibility for what a subordinate has done. Devon doesn't buy it, though. To him, Robin is just a "young lady" who is responsible for nothing; she can't help being young, pretty and female, after all, and those are the characteristics that made Michael jump to her assistance. It's curious how the script handles this, and it's unfortunate that Raney interrupts the scene before we are allowed to see how Robin would have responded to Devon.
The extreme imbalance between male and female characters is at least plausible, as the majority of the action takes place on an Army base, where women were uncommon in 1982.
There is not much to KITT in this episode. He is little more than a vehicle, a way to get from A to B, with some onboard gadgets that assist Michael in the test range. The AI portion of KITT could have been cut out completely without significantly degrading the plot; as a personality, KITT is mainly comic relief. He provides no significant advice or information. He mother-hens Michael a couple of times and is otherwise just a car.
And that's it for Deadly Maneuvers.