SHARKS AND WORD SALADS ON BAYWATCH

BAYWATCH: SHARK'S COVE year: 1992 cast: Blake Gibbons, Billy Warlock, Belinda Balaski rating: ****

“Are we gonna walk with the Cowardly Lion, and we can get some snow, maybe, and angle ourselves at the moon?”

Beware of the first season of BAYWATCH on DVD… it’s really the second season… Under the steady eye of David Hasselhoff’s Mitch are still, from the actual original season, Erika Eleniak as Shauni McClain and Billy Warlock as Eddie Kramer... Only Parker Stevenson, who co-starred in a legitimately good lifeguard movie aptly titled LIFEGUARD in the seventies, is missing – there needed only one chief on the beach and that was Mitch Buchannan!

Blake Gibbons as Bobby Kramer reaching out to an invisible victim

“Jack and the Beanstalk might eat Peter Rabbit before the kidney beans open up and slide off the curb to play golf…”

This particular revisited episode is from the second season (although you can find it on the first season DVD), and centers on… no, not Mitch but… junior lifeguard Eddie, who reunites with his older brother, Bobby, a schizophrenic who speaks "word salads," a term explained by his doctor as randomly spouting confusing sentences out of the blue, like: "We'll surf a little bit; have some French Toast." or best yet, “The inch of the curve lets you see the praying mantis, Eddie.” 

"This is only the beginning of your career, and merely a guest spot... You'll move on... Or not..."

On the peripheral is a mystery involving a shark attack… Straight out of JAWS with a ripped-off John Williams theme playing from a Casio keyboard, a pretty girl and her boyfriend take a midnight away-from-the-beach-party swim, and she's attacked and pulled under water… Later on, Shauni investigates and finds out a thing or two.

This story pales to the brother's tale, and although the title of the episode is SHARK’S COVE, the real stuff centers on the oddball dialogue of Billy’s big brother Bobby, played by character-actor Blake Gibbons – it took some creative writers (or perhaps actor improvisation) to come up with these lines, including this pop culture laden diatribe: “I guess in Chimichanga Mesa there was a massive explosion to the ovaries, and you damn well better know that Mr. Ed knows who shot Liberty Valance… But I don’t know.”

Belinda Balaski, Cult Film Freak's second interview ever, plays a worried mother

At one point, Eddie leaves his brother Bobby alone on the beach… Bobby, wanting to be a lifeguard and, after stealing his brother’s garb and orange floaty, is given his first task – to find the missing son of a panicked woman, played by one of Cult Film Freak’s favorite actresses, Belinda Balaski, who became cinematic fish lunch in PIRANHA and wolf supper in THE HOWLING…

When she desperately asks the “lifeguard” for help, Bobby replies: “Maybe grasshoppers are on operating tables and mom ran away with the tin man." After which, Belinda’s shocked reaction is priceless.

Bobby Kramer (Blake Gibbons) stressed about his new "job" on the beach

All joking aside, playing the part of a rambling skitzo, Blake Gibbons does a realistic acting job in one of the all-time great pre Pamela Anderson BAYWATCH episodes… Blake is a character actor who still turns up on the big and small screen, and is best known for his reoccuring role as Coleman Ratcliffe on GENERAL HOSPITAL...

And if you haven’t guessed already, this entire write-up is merely an excuse to transcribe those wonderfully strange word salads, appearing here on the web for the first (and probably last) time ever… So always remember: “The points meet, and there are too many hamburgers.”

Billy Warlock with Blake Gibbons

Blake Gibbons looking like a jock version of Jack Black

Hasselhoff, do you take this Jaekel to be your lawfully wedded lifeguard?