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Fasten your seatbelts!

From Transformers to artificial intelligence and GPS navigation.  Such is the “modern” transition of from the series Knight Rider of 26 years ago.

The series premier opened with a James Bond feel.  Justin Bruening (Mike Traceur) and Deanna Russo (Sarah Graiman) are at a large black tie function and have only minutes to retrieve “the package.”  They run into trouble when men approach Mike, calling him by name.  For reasons never made clear, they take him to an interior room.  Meanwhile, Sarah is in a vault and retrieves a disc that she hides in her gown just as four men enter.  KITT is sitting in the parking lot and being surrounded by police.  The men in the room with Sarah want to know where Mike is but Sarah is mum on the matter.

KITT communicates with Mike and Sarah through the tiny ear buds they each are wearing and tells them he’s surrounded.  He turns on his motor and jet propels himself over the police cruisers while morphing into a supercharged car with tail fins and turbo jets.

Mike has a knock down drag out with his perpetrators and escapes to look for Sarah.  When he finds her they both have to run to escape the men chasing them.  They exit the building through a metal grate and Sarah hands Mike her long hairpin which he then uses to weld the grate shut again.

“The package” turns out to be a man instead of the briefcase that Mike thought he was supposed to obtain. The man admits that his DNA contains an encrypted file.

There’s a chase through the subway as Mike races to get “the package” who has been stolen by a woman who says she knows Mike, but he doesn’t remember. KITT morphs into a truck and the race takes the truck down the subway tracks to find this mysterious woman.

Mike retrieves the thumb of “the package” which the woman cut off and then it’s a race to get back to the KITT Cave while KITT is on fire from a heat seeking missile.

It gets sticky here because (as part of a cover story) Mike is said to have been killed in the subway station by the FBI.  He ends up being an anonymous person back at the Cave.  I assume this is supposed to give him time to figure out who he is because that’s where the season opener ends.  There are lots of possibilities for this series because of all the unanswered questions. They leave fans hanging and wanting to watch next week’s episode.  Who is Mike?  Will he and Sarah rekindle a romance.  Will her father, Bruce Davison (Charles Graiman), show the black side of his persona?  What will KITT morph into next time?

Knight Rider was created because of the overwhelming success of the TV movie that came out earlier this year.  The series is gimmicky and tongue-in-cheek at some points.  Only time will tell if it’ll last past December.  Stay tuned for next week’s roundup.

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