Knight Rider - "Knight to King's Pawn"

Well, that was some major changes. Torres is dead too?!? I'm surprised there was even a body left after the way KITT smashed through KARR's cockpit like that.

I had read they wanted to bring the show back to its roots in an attempt to boost ratings, and I have to grudgingly admit that I think they handled the change pretty well. They've brought back the Foundation (I still have no idea what "SSC" stood for), and even acknowledged Wilton Knight in the process. Which I'm surprised about; I assumed he had been retconned out in the reboot.

Of course, now I'm confused as to if it is a reboot anymore... so now it turns out that Mike Knight was KARR's original driver, which would explain why Charles Graiman contacted him in the TV movie when someone tried to take KITT. But does this mean that they tried to fix the original KARR or they started the project over with a new KARR? I have a hard time reconciling this show's backstory with the TV movie that launched it, and I'm not sure even the producers know what continuity they want to use.

Ah well. Back to the Knight Rider 2008 mantra: Just look at how hot Zoe is and try not to think about it.

KARR himself is of course very cool. I immediately recognized Peter Cullen (aka Optimus Prime) as his voice, and as I strained my memory banks I seemed to recall the original KARR having a similar voice. So I checked online and sure enough, he was the original KARR, so he is in fact reprising his role here. And now that the new KARR actually transforms into a giant, weapon-firing robot, having Optimus Prime's voice is even more cool.

We'll see how well the new direction works. I was enjoying the old direction just fine, I just wish it had a few more ties to the original show. Based on their bringing back FLAG and acknowledging Wilton Knight, maybe they'll start doing that now.

And lastly, this was a pretty good title for the episode, since Torres was using everyone to reinstate the KARR project. I haven't quite got what they were going for with most of the titles for this show, but this one worked really well.