Wow! We are on the 17th episode already! There aren't many first run episodes left! Only five to be exact. I'm still wondering where most of the other cast members are. Here's to high hopes that the cast members who were left out of the second half will at least make appearances in the few episodes that are left over.

This week's episode, Full Throttle has two main plots. Neely's (Gena Lee Nolin) trying to find an apartment. With Mitch (David Hasselhoff) helping her out by staying at the Buchannon residence, Neely is eager to find an apartment. Mitch doesn't want her to go, but she feels that he has done enough for them. Suddenly Mitch seems afraid of being left all alone. This is not good. This is not good at all! Mitch should know by now that he would never be alone. He still has his son. The two are extremely close and would do anything for each other. It's not as if Hobie (Jeremy Jackson) would just move away and never come back. Being such a lucky kid to have always had his dad to himself, Hobie has always returned home with big hugs telling Mitch how much he's missed him. I missed this main focus of the series very much. They moved away from it in the show's 7th season in favor of too many cast members, and as a result, Baywatch has suffered greatly. Now they are trying to get back on track. With the exception of too many cast regulars, they are doing a great job so far.

Neely gets a night job as a cocktail waitress. Mitch asked what does she know about being a cocktail waitress, that she was a lifeguard. Neely didn't know anything but reasoned that waiting tables and serving drinks couldn't be that hard. Neely, being a pampered young woman soon found out that she wasn't cut out for that type of job, as she couldn't get the table numbers straight and kept dropping drinks. She broke a lot of glasses. She worked while Mitch watched little Ashley. Later when she had enough to put a deposit down on a nice apartment, she got ripped-off. The manager also rented the place to another prospect that wanted it as well. Neely could have sued, won and got her money back. They could have mentioned the fact that Craig (Parker Stevenson) was a lawyer and could have enlisted his help with the legal aspects of the situation.

I can already see that the baby and who is going to watch her is going to be a big problem in the Buchannon household. Mitch has already bonded with little Ashley. He adores her and loves having her around. He's the wonderful father type and loves children. He has a hard time easing up on his grip though. But as wonderful as Mitch is, I would actually like to see the big picture here. I question this because I wonder what Hobie think about this arrangement? Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that so far he has never been in any storylines with Neely so far this season? He got along with her well last season, appearing in two episodes there (Scorcher/7th season 1996-1997 and Golden Girls/7th season 1996-1997) with her. They could give us his view and what he really thinks. We all know that he would tolerate any living arrangement for his dad. Does Hobie actually like Neely and the baby being there? I'd like to see a couple of episodes with the complete living arrangement. Some heated disagreements until the adjustment was made could have made great storylines.

Neely felt bad after she got fired as well. Even though Neely sold a lot of drinks, she also spilled too many and broke as many glasses. The manager thought that it was much cheaper to let her go than to keep her. Mitch told her to take a deep breath and he comforted her. He told her about the surprise. He was painting and wall papering the guestroom in pink! So, the Buchannon household gets two new additions!

In the two previous seasons (although getting nicer in the later one), Neely was a bit of a whiner when she was the bad girl. But no one ever suspected that she was helpless outside of her job as a lifeguard. She seemed so self-sufficient. Now as the good girl, Neely seems so helpless. Well, go figure that one out!

The second was a somewhat funny boyish storyline with two spoiled rich men, who didn't have to or want to work (thanks to daddy's overwhelming money) challenging Cody (David Chokachi) to race them and the markers would be their boats for pink slips. There was a lot wrong with that, as Cody and Newmy (Michael Newman) were in Mitch's personal boat, as in property and it wasn't Cody's to bet and he should have told them that. He comes back to reality when Newmy reminds him that it was Mitch's boat and what was he going to tell him about the bet? Cody was so sure that they would win that he didn't even worry about it. The two men were not going to play fair though. They hot-wired the boat (((((LAUGHING))))) Oops, I almost typed in "car") to enable it to put out more speed. I will tell you, these guys need to get out there and get jobs! Real men don't play all day long, even rich ones!

It all started when Cody and Newmy challenged the lovely ladies Jordan (Traci Bingham) and April (Kelly Packard) to a race while they were at the end of their shifts patrolling the water in their scarabs. The guys cheated on the starting count to give themselves an edge. When the guys pulled away from the ladies, they encountered the two pampered brats. Later, when they caught up with them, the girls wanted a rematch and they did so with a lifeguard competition.

Then came the scene when Cody wanted to challenge the girls by beating them to the rescue. They get their gear, while April and Jordan was on it. Newmy goes in as backup and Cody went to the back of the truck to get his rescue can and just picked it up and ran with it, not realizing that the cord's harness was caught and the strained momentum caused him to sustain a leg injury. He was on crutches had to stay off of it for two days. He couldn't get up the stairs of his apartment and Newmy brought him over to the Buchannon's residence for their poker game. Cody asked Mitch if he could crash on his couch for a couple of days. Being the nice guy he is, Mitch allowed him to stay. Why didn't he ask Newmy if he could stay with him? I think that it would have been an interesting change of pace to see how these two got along under the same roof.

During their poker game, in which J.D. (Michael Bergin) and Manny (Jose Solano) cancelled at the last second, which left Cody, Newmy and Mitch. Needing a fourth person to make it a half-decent game, Mitch used the baby (he played the baby's hand for her).

Ashley was winning and Newmy and Cody weren't pleased. Newmy mentions the bet since Cody couldn't race with an injury (you know, he's been injured a lot this season). Cody still didn't want to tell Mitch about using his boat as an "anti." How long did he think that not telling was going to hold out? Later while Cody slept on the couch with his leg propped up, Mitch managed to get tiny Ashley to fall asleep. He accidentally sat on Cody's leg, forgetting that he was there. I'll tell you again, pairing these two up as a team just doesn't work well at all. There is no magic between them. Their personalities just don't click! The incident caused the baby to wake up again. Mitch got up as quickly as he sat down and tried to get her to go to sleep again.

Mitch goes over with Cody to tell the guys that the race was off. Cody was injured, and besides it was his boat, not Cody's. When one of the jerks asked why wouldn't he race them in his place, Mitch said, "because I don't want to!" You'd think that it would end there. The men made a remark about lifeguards and that "it was your chance, Pops" line to Mitch. Mitch took the challenge.

I thought that Mitch should have held strong. Unsupervised boat racing was against what he represented as a lifeguard Captain. But then I thought that the script would have been more interesting and had a lot more kick to it if the writers had written in Manny and Hobie, and let the two little boys kick these guy's adult butts after taking Cody's and Newmy's places in the race. Yes, it would have made it very, very interesting! Mitch could have stated to the jerks that he had two substitutes to challenge them. I would also like to see Hobie and Manny pal around a bit more to see how they register as a team in storylines. Hobie is supposed to be a very good friend of Manny's, but they are rarely seen together.

The pampered pups and their rich daddy would have had to live down the fact that they had gotten beaten by two teens, and had to give them their expensive boat. And to top it off, the young teens could call these guys "old men" in retaliation for calling Mitch "Pops." Well, am I right or what? This alternative would have given the script that little oomph it needed to make it a much stronger script. And it would have used more cast members with a more useful purpose.

David Chokachi does an excellent job here in the acting department as the free wheeling jock and clicks very well with Michael Newman. I would like to see Newmy visit Mitch a bit more as well as help him out at Headquarters. Maybe he could come to dinner more often. Newmy is in great need of more substantial storylines. I would love to see a lot more of him. A few more of the shows mainstay characters written in as suggested could have made such a strong script. It could have boosted it to the excellent mark. Both plots worked well and were very entertaining and funny.  My Score: 3 Rescue Cans

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