Trivia / Baywatch

• Actor Leaves, Character Dies: Because of the show's infamously high cast turnover, most departures were just the victims of Chuck Cunningham Syndrome or Put on a Bus. However Baywatch did turn two cast departures into ratings stunts with epic deaths, one in Season 1, and another in Season 7.
  • Shawn Weatherly apparently hated how little Jill was given to do on the show, often having one line or no line appearances. She left the show in the middle of Season 1 so the creators had her die in a shark attack.
  • Alexandra Paul ended a long run on Baywatch in Season 7 by getting a straight up Dropped a Bridge on Him moment, almost literally. Stephanie gets crushed by a collapsing boat mast, during a major storm at sea, on her honeymoon. She even dies in the arms of Mitch and her new husband (now new widower!) David Hasselhoff claimed in his autobiography that Paul was not enjoying her time on the show and begged to be written off, though in a later interview with Paul in 2017, the actress simply felt it was time to move on, legitimately enjoyed the job, and was heartbroken about leaving. Clearly the door was left open for her, because she did a single episode of Baywatch Nights in its final season playing Stephanie's ghost, then returned for the Hawaiian Reunion movie to play a character named Allison Ford where a major plot point is her resemblance to the late Stephanie Holden.
• Ashcan Copy: The ratings for the first season of Baywatch Nights were so bad that television stations in New York and Los Angeles declined on buying any new episodes. However, the production company feared that such a public flop significantly devalue the entire Baywatch brand so they renewed the show for a second season and bought the airtime themselves, effectively putting on a show they were assured would fail just to save face.
• Bad Export for You: The US retail DVD set from Fremantle Media unfortunately replaced the licensed songs from earlier seasons with songs by unknown bands; this also affected the DVD re-release from Visual Entertainment. The German DVD set however retained all the original songs, as did the Australian release.
• California Doubling: Averted. Baywatch was mostly set on LA County beaches, where most of if was actually filmed.
• Career Resurrection: David Hasselhoff was a big star on Knight Rider, but he was in some forgettable roles during the late '80s. Starring on Baywatch rocketed him back into the spotlight.
• Cast the Expert: Michael "Newmie" Newman, the only real lifeguard on the show (and likely one of the few actors who could actually swim like a pro). He originally worked behind the scenes as a technical advisor before being added to the main cast, while still continuing his technical advice duties.
• Channel Hop: Debuted on NBC and lasted one season, then found a new life in syndication lasting 10 years. Also applies behind the scenes, as the NBC version was produced by GTG Entertainment (short for Grant Tinker-Gannett^note a joint venture between former NBC exec and MTM Enterprises head Grant Tinker, and newspaper/TV company Gannett {which has since spun off their TV assets as TEGNA}; the company was short-lived having only produced this show's first season, a few TV movies and unsold pilots, and the flop that was USA Today on TV), while The Baywatch Production Company (later Tower 12 Productions) did the syndicated one.
• Colbert Bump: Baywatch's ratings skyrocketed after the sex tape of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee was made available online (which has been fictionalized in Pam & Tommy).
• Creator Backlash:
  • The show's original executive producers from NBC once said in an interview that Baywatch should never have been a show as they believed that lifeguards are not interesting enough to write good stories around.
  • Whenever a cast member left the series, nine out of ten times one of their reasons for leaving would be that they didn't think the show or its writing was very good. Most notable was real-life professional surfer Kelly Slater, who played the recurring character Jimmy Slade, who openly criticized the show and demanded to be written out after reading the script for the episode "Tentacles", in which a series of surfboard thefts is revealed to be committed by a giant octopus, which he ends up fighting.
  • David Hasselhoff grew to dislike many of the end results of the show.
    • He wanted Baywatch to be a family show, so he hated the more lewd aspects the show became famous for. To this day, he refuses to admit that Baywatch was anything but wholesome.
    • Hasselhoff also thought Baywatch Nights was a dumb name, originally wanting to name the spin-off Santa Monica Nights. He would mockingly suggest in interviews that they could make new spin-offs called Baywatch Mornings or Baywatch Afternoons.
  • In 2016, Donna D'Errico became a born-again Christian. She now regrets her role on Baywatch and has said that she'll never again appear in roles that require her to wear a swimsuit or other revealing attire.
  • Kelly Slater never really wanted to be an actor, and only did Baywatch because his manager convinced him it'd be a career boost. In a 2014 interview, he revealed that he frequently clashed with the writers over the quality of the scripts, which was one of the reasons he eventually asked to be written out of the show for good.
  • Nicole Eggert didn't realize what type of show Baywatch was when she signed on, thinking it'd be akin to something like Beverly Hills, 90210.^note It's possible she was brought in under the pretense of doing a high school spin-off, as "Showdown at Malibu Beach High" was a fairly blatant Back Door Pilot of that premise. She quickly grew frustrated with the low writing quality and the absurd amount of Fanservice, the latter of which caused her to develop self-esteem and body image issues. She eventually asked to be let out of her contract before the show could damage her career any further, though she did later come back for the reunion movie.
  • While not quite as negative as some of the other cast members, Jason Momoa has said that the show's cheesy reputation really hurt his career and made it very difficult for him to find work for a long time.
• Dawson Casting:
  • Nicole Eggert and David Charvet were both 20 when they began playing Summer and Matt, who were in high school at the start of syndicated season 2. Not too bad, but it still technically falls into this trope.
  • Meanwhile, Billy Warlock was already 28 when he started to play 18-year-old Eddie Kramer in the first season.
• Development Hell: There were talks of a reboot under the title Baywatch: San Diego, with casting auditions planned for May 2020. Presumably the COVID-19 pandemic derailed these plans, and there has been no word of the reboot since.
• Directed by Cast Member:
  • "Come Fly With Me", directed by David Hasselhoff.
  • Three episodes were directed by Monte Markham (who played Captain Thorpe).
  • Numerous episodes were directed by Parker Stevenson (who played Craig). An arguable subversion since he wasn't a cast member at the time he directed those episodes.
• Dolled-Up Installment: David Hasselhoff seemingly wanted Baywatch Nights to have little to no connection to the main show during its early production. According to an anonymous source of Allison Pregler's, he originally envisioned the show as reboot of Peter Gunn but failed to secure the rights. After that, he wanted to name the show Santa Monica Nights but had to rename it to include the Baywatch brand at the producers' insistence.
• Edited for Syndication: The Amazon Prime remastering of the original series changed many things from the original series.
  • The Season One opening was remade to "I'll Be Ready" over the original theme.
  • Amazon replaced over 300 music tracks in the show to get around the issue of copyright. However, this caused many instances where dialogue or sound effects were also replaced if they had music in the background. In the cases where the characters themselves sing or dance to licensed music onscreen, the scene will often be cut entirely. The most notable example would be "The Runaways", which had over ten minutes of footage cut due to it being full of live performances.
  • The Amazon remaster also switches the original fullscreen episodes into a widescreen format, cropping off a fair bit of the footage in the process.
• Fake American: Pamela Anderson is Canadian, David Charvet is French.
• Follow the Leader: Baywatch Nights infamous shift from a detective show to supernatural investigation was due to the showrunners deciding to imitate The X-Files after Nights' first season flopped.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • During the first season, many members of the cast worried that John Allen Nelson, the most well-built actor on the show, would steal screen time from them and ostracized him for it. Ironically, the show would indeed focus on fanservice (although it would mostly be associated with the female cast instead) and most of the original cast would be fired or Demoted to Extra.
  • The producers were not above bullying and harassing members of the cast to ensure that they maintain their figures. When Yasmine Bleeth struggled with her weight, production staff put up a poster of her by the crafts service table reading: "If you see this woman next to this table, please make sure you shun her away."
  • During their marriage, Tommy Lee would often be on set with Pamela Anderson and would often throw destructive fits when she had to kiss other men on the show, requiring security to remove him. While not to the extent of Lee, Billy Warlock was also reportedly somewhat possessive of his then-fiancee Erika Eleniak, disliking her publicly wearing a swimsuit and having to interact with other men on the show.
• Killed by Request: Stephanie dying was a result of Alexandra Paul wanting to leave the show and suggesting her character be killed off to create a big, dramatic moment for the show.
• No Budget:
  • Baywatch became syndicated starting in its second season, with most of the funding coming from product placement and other kinds of sponsorship deals and the show frequently saved money by reusing footage and refusing to do retakes.
  • Baywatch Nights was over a million dollars overbudget only five episodes into the first season. The second season, which was made just so that the Baywatch brand didn't suffer the embarrassment of a one season spinoff, had lackluster funding from the start, with the show filled with money conserving padding and increasingly cheap costumes, sets and special effects.
• Only Barely Renewed: The show was cancelled after its first season on NBC, but survived through syndication and later became the most-watched television show in the world, with an estimated weekly audience of 1.1 billion viewers despite consistently negative critical reviews earning it a reputation as a pop cultural phenomenon and frequent source of allusion and parody.
• The Other Darrin: A handful of characters were simply recast rather than being written out or disappearing. While this also includes a number of minor characters who were simply recast when they made a one-off repeat appearance (such as Mitch's brother and Matt's father), this occasionally affected regulars.
  • Season 1 character Gina Pomeroy was played by Gina Hecht in the pilot movie, before being replaced by Holly Gagnier.
  • Hobie was first played by Brandon Call on the NBC episodes, then by Jeremy Jackson in syndication.
  • The character of Neely Capshaw was played by three different actresses, believe it or not. The most famous one was Gena Lee Nolin, who portrayed her from syndicated seasons 6 to 8. But she was also played by Heather Campbell in her debut appearance, syndicated season 5's finale, "Wet and Wild". In syndicated season 9, Nolin was replaced by Jennifer Campbell.
  • Matt's dad was originally played by Dirk Benedict, but Benedict was replaced by Jim McMullan in Season 4.
  • Mitch's brother Buzz was played by Tim Thomerson in Season 2 and by John Beck in Season 4.
• Out of Order:
  • It happened all the time. Characters get introductory episodes long after they've first started appearing, characters leave the show and keep appearing in future episodes and romance subplots are almost impossible to keep track of due to the fact that characters could break up in one episode and be together in the next among other things.
  • A particularly bad one: Stephanie's latest boyfriend, Dr. Tom Morella, discovered Stephanie had skin cancer in "Bash at the Beach", but in the very next aired episode, "Free Fall", which was a holdover from season 5, Stephanie and Dr. Morella first meet.
  • "Forbidden Paradise", originally written for season 5 and debuting on VHS in 1995, later debuted on TV as a two-parter in 1996. This is awkward if you're watching in airdate order on DVD, since the episode still featured Matt as a regular character, despite that David Charvet had left the show by that point.
  • The season 7 premiere has Logan quitting the team to pursue his dreams of being a movie director. However, two more episodes act as if Logan is still with the team and his relationship with Caroline ongoing.
• Real Song Theme Tune:
  • Season 1 used "Save Me" by Peter Cetera, while the rest of the series used the iconic "I'm Always Here" by Jimi Jameson, a reorchestrated instrumental of which was used for the first season of Baywatch Hawaii; the second used "Let Me Be the One" by Fiji and Glenn Medeiros.
  • The Seasons 2-4 end theme was "Current of Love" by David Hasselhoff, who joined Laura Branigan for the Season 5 end theme, "I Believe". Seasons 6-10 used an instrumental of "I'm Always Here", the second Hawaii season using an instrumental of the main theme.
  • The DVD's replaced "Save Me" with "Above the Waterline" by Kim Carnes, while "I'm Always Here" was replaced by "Strong Enough" by Evan Olson. Generic music replaced the end themes.
• Recycled Script:
  • "Livin' on the Fault Line" has the same earthquake plot of "The End?", right down to putting the cast in the exact same dangerous situations and even reusing footage from the earlier episode.
  • There are several different episodes where a character has prophetic dreams about a coming catastrophe. Said precognitive abilities are almost never mentioned again.
  • Eddie being falsely accused of statutory rape is revisited in Matt being falsely accused of sexual harassment. There's even a montage of both guys angrily working out so as to de-stress.
• Referenced by...:
  • In Infinite Craft, "Baywatch" is a possible crafting recipe.
  • In What Happened to Lani Garver, Claire describes her boyfriend Scott as looking "like something that just jumped out of Baywatch."
• Schedule Slip: The episode "Bash at the Beach" is based around the 1995 WCW pay-per-view of the same name. The episode didn't air until almost a full year later, only a few months from Bash at the Beach 1996 where Hulk Hogan, who had been portrayed heroically in the episode, turned heel and founded the New World Order.
• Similarly Named Works:
  • Two episodes have the title "Homecoming".
  • The twelfth episodes of Season 1 and Season 2 are both titled "Reunion".
• Sleeper Hit: According to the executive producers, the pilot movie "Panic at Malibu Pier" was one of the few made-for-TV movies which actually got higher ratings in repeats than it did initially.
• Spared by the Cut: Mitch was meant to be killed off with an explosion in season 9, and the scene was shot with the intention of having the cast mourn his death, but the show had difficulty finding financial backing without David Hasselhoff and scrapped the death.
• Star-Making Role:
  • For Pamela Anderson. Before she joined the show, she was somewhat well-known as a Playboy Playmate and as the Tool Time Girl from Home Improvement, but her role on Baywatch turned her into a household name and one of the biggest sex symbols of the 1990s.
  • Despite Baywatch Nights failing both critically and in the ratings, the program proved to be Angie Harmon's breakout role.
• Troubled Production: The pilot episode was shot in January, making the water so cold that they had to move production to Hawaii where the water was filled with sharks. During the first season, the beach the show took place on was overly polluted, requiring medics on set. There was once even a sewage spill that John Allen Nelson had to quickly swim away from, and Nicole Eggert and Alexandra Paul once found a dead body with a gunshot wound during filming.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Reportedly, David Hasselhoff was against casting Pamela Anderson on the show because he was afraid that her large breasts would draw attention away from the other cast members, but he was overruled.
  • NBC wanted to fire Erika Eleniak after she appeared in Playboy, but due to the show moving into syndication and focusing more on sex appeal, she was kept on until she left in Season 3.
  • Tom Selleck turned down the role of Mitch, not wanting to be recognised as a sex symbol. Lorenzo Lamas and Adrian Paul were also considered.
  • Dean Cain auditioned for Matt Brody. Interestingly enough, Baywatch cast member Kelly Packard would later appear as a correspondent of Ripley's Believe It or Not, which was hosted by Cain.
  • A young Leonardo DiCaprio was nearly cast as Hobie, but David Hasselhoff complained that Mitch having a visibly teenage son would make him seem too old.
  • Neve Campbell auditioned for a role on the show, but was rejected by the casting manager because he felt she was too pale. Denise Richards, Alicia Silverstone, Sandra Bullock, and Paula Abdul also auditioned for the show but were passed over.
  • Season 7 brought in a new lieutenant, Samantha "Sam" Thomas, ostensibly to replace the long-running character of Lt. Stephanie Holden, played by Alexandra Paul. That particular season ended with Sam in bed with none other than Mitch Buchannon himself, with the two of them discussing how to break the news of their relationship to Mitch's son, Hobie. So everything seemed set for her to return the next year with an expanded role as Mitch Buchannon's girlfriend and partner in command. Alas, that didn't happen. Baywatch instead returned with even more former Playboy Playmates, including Carmen Electra and Angelica Bridges as the newer lieutenant, and Samantha disappeared with no explanation.
  • After California productions costs got too high, the producers wanted to move to Avalon Beach in Australia and rename the show Baywatch Down Under. However, locals worried that the show's presence would disrupt the area's ecosystem and got the government to bar them from filming in the area. The show then moved to Hawaii and rebranded the show as Baywatch Hawaii.
  • Season 9 would have focused on Mitch and Neely adjusting to married life. When Geena Lee Nolin was among those cut and Jennifer Campbell recast, the entire marriage plot was dropped quickly.
  • The original script for Hawaiian Wedding would have had an amnesiac Mitch found alive with a reunion of his past teams to try and jog his memory.
• Write What You Know: A couple of the people working on the show, most notably co-creator and co-executive producer Gregory Bonann, were lifeguards in real life and used their experiences as plotlines on the show.
• You Look Familiar:
  • AJ Langer guest starred as Caroline in "The Trophy" (a girl who files a False Rape Accusation against Eddie), and a few seasons later as a multi-named character in "Guys & Dolls" (a teenage scam artist working with her father).
  • Daniel Quinn played Eddie's vengeful former friend Jimmy in "Second Wave" and Mitch's disabled buddy Eric in "The Trophy" from the following season.
  • Buzz Belmondo briefly appeared in "The Fabulous Buchannon Boys" as a huckster named Eduardo and in "War of Nerves" as a chef named Vito, before becoming a recurring character in Season 3 as Gudio.
  • Richard Jaeckel played Mitch's old mentor who dies in the Pilot Movie; and starting in the 2nd season, Lieutenant (later Captain) Ben Edwards.
  • Nancy Valen had a small part in the Pilot Movie, many years before getting cast as Captain Samantha Thomas in the 7th season.
  • Jeff Altman first appears as Fred Rachins, a guy who wants to be a lifeguard, in "The Drowning Pool", then as a man on his honeymoon in "Lifeguards Can't Jump", but later appears as a completely different character, a Hollywood movie producer, in "Rescue Bay". He later appears in "Scorcher", playing secret service agent Dudley Dawson, and AGAIN in three 1998 episodes, playing medical supply salesman Ed Symes. Sure are a lot of guys running around L.A. that look exactly like the same man, aren't there?
  • Similarly, Jennifer Campbell first appeared as a biker named Jessie Majors in "Point Doom", before later being the third actress to portray Neely.
  • Loren Avedon played a baddie in "Princess of Tides" and the main villain in "Kicks" the following year.
  • Kelly Packard played two different girls on two separate two-parters (in 1991 and 1995) before landing the role of April Giminski in 1997.
  • Dorian Gregory appeared as an extra in "Money Honey" and later appeared in Baywatch Nights as Diamont Teague, one of the main characters.
  • Lou Rawls played Garner's informant Ozzie in "Lifeguards Can't Jump," and later played a major role in the first season of Baywatch Nights as nightclub owner Lou Raymond.
  • Angela Visser played a Dutch housekeeper with a crush on Mitch in "Island of Adventure" and a Dutch woman who became utterly devoted to Matt after he saved her life in "Someone to Baywatch Over You."
  • Alexandra Paul returned in "Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding", but not as Stephanie (for obvious reasons).
  • Blake Gibbons played Eddie's schizophrenic brother Bobby in the Season 2 episode "Shark's Cove," and then recurred in Season 5 as Stephanie's boyfriend Riley.
  • John O'Hurley played Fred Adler the dockmaster in "Masquerade", and later played Bill Cooper in "Red Wind". He also appeared as a villain in the Baywatch Nights episode "Bad Blades".
  • Heather Campbell, who played Neely in the character's debut episode, later appeared in Baywatch Nights as a phone sex operator.
  • Carmen Electra played a character named Candy in an episode of Baywatch Nights before playing Lani in Baywatch proper.
  • Michelle Williams played Bridget in "Race Against Time: Part 1" and an uncredited groupie in Hobie's Imagine Spot from "Second Time Around".

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