Follow TV Tropes

Following

YMMV / Night Man

Go To

  • Awesome Music: Even people who think the show sucked like a vacuum cleaner in a black hole think the show's sax-led theme music, by Glen A. Larson and Marc Bonilla, is terrific.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: For no good reason, David Hasselhoff appears as the mastermind of the illegal weapons sale near the end of the pilot. He's on screen for maybe fifteen seconds before NightMan throws him out a window, after which Johnny gets a post-mortem one-liner to underline the supremely pointless cameo ( "Life's a hassle, isn't it?"), delivered to no one. Glen Larson stablemates referenced: one. Impact on the plot: zero.
  • Complete Monster:
    • "Pilot" & "Devil in Disguise": Mr. Chang is a corrupt Chinese diplomat who is involved in arms dealing. Conducting a series of murders to strengthen his "bidding" for powerful technology, Chang attempts to murder Johnny Domino and all who know him to obtain the technology Johnny has. When Johnny becomes Nightman, Chang tries to kill his lover and murders all rival arms dealers so he can use his new weapons to start World War III and drive up the price of his weaponry. Later returning to torture Johnny mentally and destroy him utterly, Chang shows nothing short of sadistic glee in death and destruction.
    • "It Came From Out Of The Sky": Rhea is an alien who travels from planet to planet spreading a drug called Ambrosia, a drug with savage withdrawal and an inevitable tendency to place those addicted to it in comas. Rhea starts peddling Ambrosia to thousands of teenagers in the streets of Bay City, placing them in comas to do what she always does to the populations she lulls into her control: devour their very souls, which she's been doing since before humanity was even conceived.
    • "Book of the Dead": Andre Barzun was a wicked necromancer in life who authored the tome of the title. Andre Barzun is eventually resurrected through the deaths of multiple innocent people by the efforts of his granddaughter Lucy. Barzun attempts to have all life on the planet consumed by hordes of ravenous zombies, happily throwing Lucy's horrified husband to the ghouls moments after he's revived.
  • Special Effects Failure: In the pilot, Johnny Domino is struck by lightning while riding a San Francisco streetcar. Except they filmed the scene on a very sunny day with a clear blue sky, then composited in fake, ominous stormclouds—leaving the rest of the scene bright and sunlit. The resulting lightning strike seems to come from Effectsland rather than being an organic part of the scene. This is especially egregious as the lightning strike is Night Man's origin story.

Top