The scene: A ritzy hotel somewhere in Southern California, probably San Diego. A beautiful young woman named Summer Quinn is preparing to jump off the roof of the building as a ghostlike gentleman urges her on.
The plot: When the ghost was a mortal many moons ago, he had signed a suicide pact with a star-crossed lover, in the very same hotel. If they could not have each other -- and in this case they could not -- then they would together take their lives with a tragic leap off of the roof. The man did so and became a ghost. The woman changed her mind at the last minute. Summer Quinn, who is staying at the hotel with her lifeguard troupe, unfortunately bears a startling resemblance to the woman, and the ghost decides he will take his revenge on her. It almost works. But her lifeguard friends save her at the last, breath-taking minute.
Not exactly the stuff of high-quality drama. But not an atypical plot for Baywatch -- the ever-popular, hour-long drama about a group of lifeguards working a Los Angeles beach.
Despite plots which are sometimes downright laughable and a group of actors who make lead man David Hasselhoff seem a thespian, Baywatch has become the most watched television show in the world -- up and running in 142 countries, including China and Lebanon, with a weekly audience of 1 billion, considered the largest in television history.
Maybe it's the 30 breasts which make their way onto the opening credits. Or a cast which boasts some of the most beautiful women in America in some of the sexiest outfits, or lack thereof, on television -- blonde vixen Pamela Anderson, who plays lifebabe C.J. Parker, foremost among them.
Or is it the show's lusty cameramen, who obviously find these women as irresistible as the rest of the world?
The only one thing for certain is that Baywatch has hit something right -- a fact as confusing and terrifying to the American intelligentsia as a child's fascination with Barney is to his parents.
The show's success, however, is no mystery to this country's television critics, who have been watching the dumbing down of TV, and thus American culture, for decades.
``I thought it was going to be a big success from the start,'' said syndicated television columnist Marvin Kittman. ``It's a totally mindless show -- the quintessential American TV show.''
Still, four years ago, most of Kittman's colleagues thought Baywatch was destined for the same TV wasteland as such failed shows as Logan's Run, Fox's Max Headroom, and Friday the 13th: The Series.
That's because, after a one-year stint on NBC in 1989, starring Hasselhoff as Lt. Mitch Buchannon -- a former Navy Seal struggling to raise his 13-year-old son as a single parent -- along with Parker Stevenson, the show was abruptly canceled. It ranked one of the least-watched shows on the small screen that year, coming in 74th out of 111 network shows in 1990.
But Hasselhoff knew a good thing when he saw it.
Discovered by an influential talent agent when, at 23, he happened to wait on her at a Los Angeles restaurant, Hasselhoff, the son of a Brinks armored executive, had gotten his first break on the ABC series Police Story. That guest spot led to his long-running role on ABC's The Young And The Restless. But Hasselhoff really came into his own when he played Michael Knight, of Knight Rider -- the badass American spy working for the Brits with an effeminately vocal car named KITT.
An action adventure show like Baywatch, where Hasselhoff could star as a somewhat regular, all-around good guy on a sunny California beach must have seemed a considerable step up for a classically-trained actor who had spent the last five years of his life playing a wanna-be James Bond stuck talking to his auto.
Come hell or, er, bay water, Hasselhoff decided he was going to save the show -- and managed to convince All American Television, which made its name with The Richard Bey Show, to buy the program and throw it onto the syndication circuit. The actor had made the show buyable by paring its budget down from $1.4 million per episode to $750,000, and agreeing to cut his own salary in return for a share of the profits.
Meanwhile, Hasselhoff insisted on creative control -- taking such sexy stars as Pamela Anderson and Yasmin Bleeth, and mixing them into plots he has described as ``ones Michael Landon would approve of.''
After its relaunch, the show was immediately picked up in the U.K. and Germany -- where Hasselhoff has managed to become a singing sensation -- and eventually, the rest of the world. In the states, Baywatch has doubled from a 4.3 Nielsen rating in 1991 to a current 8.4.
On the way is a spin-off, Baywatch Nights, for which Hasselhoff is reportedly receiving at least $5 million, a line of Baywatch Barbie dolls, suntan lotions, towels, swimsuits and a CD-ROM. Hasselhoff will, of course, get a good share of the take from all of this.
Plots under Hasselhoff's direction range from the goofy to the socially conscious -- from the ghost episode mentioned above, to a more recent one where Mitch and his crew of lifeguards halt a well-meaning, criminally insane female environmental activist's efforts to blow up an oil rig. More recently, ``real life'' issues like gang violence and terminal illness have been making their way into episodes.
But it was, no doubt, the show's low budget which made it attractive, and cheap, for All American Television -- not to mention a cash cow for Hasselhoff.
And, television business analysts say, it was All American Television's brilliant expansion scheme, which found the markets in China and Lebanon, coupled with Hasselhoff's international fame as a singer, which made Baywatch the number one show in the world. Hasselhoff, who never became a singing sensation here, has released six albums abroad and enjoys particular popularity in Germany --one of the resurrected Baywatch's original markets. His song ``Looking For Freedom'' became the anthem for the reunification of East and West Germany. (Ironically, Hasselhoff's big pay-per-view American singing debut was ruined by O.J. Simpson, who picked that evening to lead the cops on a nationally televised chase on the L.A. Expressway).
The Baywatch distributors knew they would have to take Hasselhoff's popularity for all it's worth, and that's exactly what they did.
``It's not that they've necessarily done anything different from anyone else -- it's just that they've been extremely aggresive, especially internationally,'' said Tim Duncan, Executive Director with Advertisers Syndicated Television Association, the main trade for syndication advertisers. Of course, as Duncan was quick to point out, Baywatch didn't become a sunsation overnight --it took it five years to enjoy its current status.
As the show's producers knew from the start, you're not going to get television executives anywhere--no matter how underdeveloped programming may be in their country --to buy something that has nothing to offer. And according to the academics who actually study this stuff, at least one of the things Baywatch offers is America on a sun golden platter.
Firstly, there's the strictly American production value--Baywatch boasts a slick, MTV production, with slow, sprawling camera shots. Typically, halfway through an episode, the show will segue into a music video featuring the show's characters. Cameras often focus on appealing images of surfers or the glistening lip of a wave.
Then, there's the way the show portrays America to the foreigners who adore it.
``Its dealing with very American problems like gangs, yet it also includes these very stereotypical images of Americans in California,'' said Amelie Hasty, an instructor at University of Minneapolis' Television Studies Department. ``Also, it always has a happy ending, which is American as well, if you think about it.''
But no matter what, time and time again, it always comes back to the sex for Baywatch and its unprecedented popularity.
``People all over the world like to see girls on the beach in bathing suits,'' Duncan said. ``In Britain, for instance, when given a choice between a sheep dog trial and literary criticism on the BBC and California girls in tight bathing suits, a lot of them are going to go with the bathing suits.''
The same holds true for Americans, explaining how the show has slowly crept into the ratings game here.
Ask anyone who's ever seen Baywatch what it is that it offers, and they'll no doubt refer to its female characters' wondrous curves. After all, the show is affectionately known by many as ``Babewatch'' -- which Anderson herself admits to calling it --``Buttwatch,'' or even ``Boobwatch.''
Anderson, whose nipples are often erect as she runs across the beach with a phallic red floatation device in her hands, is regularly touted as one of the most buxom babes on television. Co-star Bleeth is considered no slouch either.
``Basically, if you're watching Baywatch with the sound on, you're doing something wrong,'' said a television business reporter at a major New York City daily newspaper who requested anonymity.
It is precisely the T&A image, however, which Hasselhoff is trying to move his show away from, and that seems to pose a world of contradictions for the syndication wunderkind.
For instance, Hasselhoff refused to allow anyone from his staff to interview with Trouble & Attitude, saying the magazine is too racy for his show, which All American spokesperson Mike Weinstein called ``a real family show. It's extremely popular with children.''
But then, in a recent interview, Hasselhoff himself told a reporter for London's Sunday Times that he doesn't let his own children watch Baywatch because it is ``too steamy.''
In fact, Baywatch is so ``steamy,'' the British Broadcasting Standards Council upheld three complaints--brought by feminist groups--about its depiction of women.
Some of that steaminess could come from the fact that two of Baywatch's leading ladies actually got their start in Playboy magazine.
Erika Eleniak, who played lifeguard Chaunce McClain until recently, was discovered by the show's producers after posing as Playboy's Miss July in 1989 -- a fact which the magazine reiterated in its April issue.
Then there's Pamela Anderson -- who was first discovered by Labatt's Beer at a Canadian Football Game, where her inadvertent appearance on a giant-screen stadium television wearing a tight Labatt's beer shirt drew howls from the audience and a model's gig with the beer company. Her Labatt's job lead to a spread in Playboy, which led to her spot on Baywatch, and a recurring roll on Home Improvement. It is public knowledge that C.J. Parker got her breast enhancement with the Playboy money. She graced its pages again last fall, long after she arrived on the Baywatch set.
Meanwhile, Anderson has not been behaving in the least like a cast member of a serious family show these days. The bombshell has been giving the gossip pages plenty of material--with a very public break-up with Poison's lead singer Brett Michaels to a very public, rush rush marriage to Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee, who she had only known for one week. This spring, she was alleged to have made love with Lee in the bathroom on a very public American Airlines jumbo jet.
``Let me put it this way -- the fact that she showed up with Tommy Lee on her arm at [the popular Greenwich Village S&M club] The Vault just the other night should speak for itself,'' said A.J. Benza, a gossip columnist for the New York Daily News and a regular on the E! Television Network's Gossip Show, who has written about Anderson extensively.
In interviews with the press--which, given the grilling this magazine went through, and the vast number of puff pieces written about the show, are obviously tightly controlled by the executive producer and his minions--Hasselhoff and his own staff obviously feel the need to refer to what they call the ``T&A problem.''
``There's a lot of girls on Baywatch, and I'm really sorry but, there's a major audience for that out there. They're not naked and they're not having sex on the beach,'' he told The Commercial Appeal magazine last June. But, he has stressed repeatedly that his show is watched because of its gripping, Michael Landon-esque plots.
Nonsense, says Kittman:
``This is a guy who was out-acted by KITT the car on Knight Rider,'' he said. ``I don't think anybody follows the stories. It's like being on the beach, lying there and seeing what passes by your eye -- maybe they'll occasionally throw sand in your eye with a plot, but basically, it's nothing.''
Whether nothing continues to work remains to be seen. Most bets are in that it will --with All American putting its money down on that by recently signing Hasselhoff to a new, two-year contract, and bringing him on with Baywatch Nights.
It definitely seems a safe bet.
With the biggest box office receipts this year coming from movies about morons -- Forrest Gump, Dumb & Dumber, Tommy Boy-- Baywatch doesn't have to worry about its mindless plots. And, men and women have enjoyed looking at hard, naked--or in this case, half-naked--bodies since time immemorial.
As Kittman said, ``Baywatch speaks a language that is understood by all, the Esperanto of the flesh.''
