4 Lessons Knight Rider taught me about careers (and sexy lips)

Hey, folks - Max Bedroom here. 

I’m a child of the 80s. My kids are all grown up and my wives are all gone (along with my house and my money)…so I’m back in my parents’ basement.

Down here in the basement I found a box of my old VHS tapes. They’re full of TV shows, movies, and music videos that I recorded when I was a kid back in the 80s. I’m hoping these tapes hold the key to getting my life back together. As I watch them, I’ll pull out the life lessons and post them here for you. Maybe you’re in a funk like me and need some life lessons, too. Or maybe you think I’m pathetic and reading about pathetic people makes you feel better about yourself. Hey, all are welcome!

Since I just lost my job to AI, I thought it would be fitting to start with a show about a guy with great hair who drives around in an AI-powered autonomous car. That’s right, we’re starting with Knight Rider. Here are the four career lessons I learned from Knight Rider.

Knight Rider Season 3 Episode 14: Junkyard Dog

1. There’s money in toxic waste

This episode can be summarized as: KITT gets thrown into an acid pit, recovers but loses his desire to kill, and then learns to love killing again. It’s just like the dad from Family Matters when he was a cop in Die Hard. Learning to love killing again is a timeless theme. It gives people hope.

The Boss Hogg of this episode is a toxic waste entrepreneur named “Acid” John Byrock. By complete coincidence, “Acid John” is what I once called my aunt’s toilet when I sat on it after she cleaned it with an abrasive agent. To this day I don’t trust toilets and I certainly don’t clean them. Don’t believe me? Ask my first wife.

You can tell “Acid” John Byrock is rich because he wears a fancy 80s suit and drives a big car. There are no horns on the front of his car, though, so he isn’t Boss Hogg rich, at least not yet. Maybe just one more toxic dump and he’ll get those horns.

How does Acid John make his money? No clue. We learn from a fake wildlife photographer (more on her later) that he sets up in a location, dumps toxic waste, and then when the law starts to catch up with him he moves on. Does Acid John’s company dispose of toxic waste for other companies? Do they produce something that results in toxic waste? Who cares? I want in. Show me the toxic money! At one point one of his trucks just dumps toxic waste on the side of the road. Come on, Acid John, there are much better places than that. Rivers. Ponds. Sinkholes. It’s as if the earth was made to hide toxic waste. Fine, I’ll dump it for you. Where’s my check?

While I’m counting my money, I’ll be thinking and praying about all of the animals that get hurt by the toxic waste, which leads us to…

2. You can be a wildlife photographer if you have a camera and a creepy van

Admit it. You have, at some point in your life, thought that you could be a photographer. Point and click, right? Just get a fancy Canon or Nikon and off you go. I have personal experience with this, and I can tell you it’s not that simple. My first wife was a photographer. Nude photography. I mean she was nude when she took the pictures. And she only had one client, a handsome guy who, for reasons I could never figure out, didn’t care for me at all.

In this episode, Michael first meets wildlife photographer Fran when she’s standing on the side of the road among cows and a lone bunny. She gives Michael a chance to show off his muscles by asking him to put a sick baby cow in the back of her creepy van. What’s she going to do with that baby cow? My guess is dinner. Wildlife photographers have to eat like the rest of us. Why does a wildlife photographer drive a van? Is she not actually a wildlife photographer and just using that as a front as she builds a case against the toxic polluter? I’m not sure. Mom came down and yelled at me during that part and I didn’t bother to rewind.

Do you have an eye for perspective? Have you ever looked at the Mona Lisa and thought She should scoot a few inches to the left? If you answered yes to any of these questions, and if you own a camera, then congratulations: you are a wildlife photographer…and the owner of a creepy van with a baby cow in the back.

Not into cameras and creepy vans? Don’t worry; Knight Rider has a career for you that pays better and requires no skills at all.

3. To be a scientist you just need a white coat and two head gestures

After KITT is destroyed in an acid bath, they decide to spare no expense and bring in the best idiots money can buy to fix him up. They’re wearing white lab coats, though, which makes everyone in the show think they know what they’re doing. They do not.

It’s clear from the first moment these happy morons appear that all they know how to do is make things light up. They treat KITT like he’s a Nintendo.

You can tell these white-coated soft-heads are fixing KITT because they’re getting these lights, which look like they fell off the Christmas tree in A Christmas Story, to go into KITT instead of coming out of him. Gag me with a spoon! Are those lights his blood? If he gets a cut, does a rainbow come out?

After KITT is “fixed”, not like your dog at the vet but in a more biblical sense, he goes out for a test drive. KITT handles the cones like a self-driving Tesla on a busy city street: poorly. The doctors then shake their heads. Brilliant move, Doc! Later, after Hasselhoff convinces KITT to kill again and KITT masters the driving course, they…wait…nod their heads. A+ for communication, fellows.

Look, I’m not trying to be a hater. I just want that job. Put me in a white lab coat and let me move lights around. With all of the video games I’ve played, it’s what I was born to do. I’ll show Mom those years I spent on my Atari were worth it.

If you’re an idiot who doesn’t like wearing white lab coats, then you’ll love this next job.

4. If you’re going to be an arsonist, be the best arsonist you can be

Still riding high from Top Gun and Iron Eagle (and Iron Eagle 2), I once told my high school guidance counselor that I wanted to fly jets in the Navy. After she stopped laughing, she told me I was qualified to be a “rock breaker” or a “human test subject”…she didn’t even mention arsonist. If only I had known then, who knows what I might have become?

In this episode, when “Acid Jeans” John decides it’s time to high-tail it on out of there, he hires an arsonist. And not just any arsonist, mind you. He hires the best arsonist in the country. And how do we know he’s an expert? At one point someone questions what he’s doing, and he reminds them that he’s a professional arsonist. He was hired to burn down…a toxic waste dump. Is that hard? Couldn’t he just light a match or, you know, just wait a while?

That settles it, then. I’m heading upstairs to tell Mom that my career is about to catch fire. Literally. You know, because of the arson.

And if none of those careers appeal to your sensibilities, then the bonus lesson is for you.

Bonus lesson: Chekhov’s sexy lady lips

There’s an old rule in 80s TV shows: if a good-looking woman with lips appears in the first act of the episode, those lips have to be locked with the main hunk's lips by the end of the episode. This old nugget holds true in this episode. Fran the wildlife photographer has lips. So does Hasselhoff. And at the end of the episode, as KITT is mid-sentence, Fran and Hasselhoff start making out. Ooowwweeee! Hot hot hot!

And what, you may be wondering, does the magic talking AI car do when they start making out in front of him? He watches. He’s a voyeur. A creepy, lipless voyeur.

Signing off

And with that the tape goes back in the box. Who knows what other life lessons lie in these boxes of tapes? I hope there are more about arson.

I have to get going. Mom is drawing me a bath. I hope it isn’t an acid bath.

I’ll be back soon with more VHS wisdom. Until then, keep your hair big and your dreams bigger.