Michael offers aid to a young Army officer and is drawn into an investigation into the suspicious death of her father, a military base commander.
Trope-y Maneuvers:
- Car Fu:
- Michael and KITT are accosted by mooks shooting at them from a pickup truck. KITT sideswipes the truck, somehow shearing the door off while the passenger is leaning through the window shooting, without hurting the goon.
- Late in the episode, KITT prevents a couple of mooks from fleeing by pinning them between his fender and a brick wall.
- Chekhov's Gun: Played for Laughs. Early in the episode we meet the local snack vendor whose snack truck has a faulty air conditioner, causing it to run hot. During the climax a heat-seeking missile from the firing range zeroes in on the truck, littering the area with junk food fallout.
- Dulcinea Effect: Discussed; seems Michael has a thing for helping pretty young ladies in distress.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- In these early episodes, KITT enters the "Rook" as it sits parked by the side of the road. The more familiar trick of driving up/down the ramp while both vehicles speed down the highway would be introduced later in the season.
- Whenever the bad guys shoot at KITT, we don't see the usual sparking squibs to indicate bullet riccochets.
- He Knows Too Much:
- Col. Ladd finds fresh paint on some of the munitions stored at his base and gets killed for it. Later Michael finds the same munitions and determines what the original color was supposed to be, which reveals that the villains are disguising nuclear-grade weapons as low-yield rockets (so they can be secreted off-base and sold on the black market).
- Lt. Ladd gets a computer report showing that the base's munitions inventory isn't adding up. The conspirators catch her and lock her in a target tank out on the shooting range.
- No Badge? No Problem!:
- After dropping off Lt. Ladd's car for repairs, Michael drops her off at the Army base where she works. He then spends the next several minutes following her around the base, including into some likely restricted (or, at the least, private) areas, and no one bats an eye at the presence of this unknown civilian.
- Averted later, when Michael needs to engineer a way onto the base to continue snooping; he bribes a local snack vendor to pretend he (Michael) is a new hire and the vendor's nephew, in order to get past security.
- Pulling the Thread: According to official reports, Col. Ladd's jeep lost control and veered off a cliff due to a blowout. When Michael attempts to replicate the accident, he determines that had the jeep's tire blown as described, the jeep would have veered away from the cliff, suggesting that the colonel's death had some 'assistance'.
- Running Gag: Due to towing Lt. Ladd's car without a proper tow hitch, KITT suffers some minor damage to a number of periphery systems, which quickly becomes a running joke a'la the "Tuesday" gag from Star Trek: Generations.
