Forget Me Not
Last week's update didn't happen on account of a paper being due. By examining the status of natural rights in a Commonwealth, determine if a Hobbesian sovereign can ban guns. Discuss in ~750 words (for serious).
Anyway, you don't care about my problems and I think almost nobody is reading these or missed last week's non-update, so let's move on.
Forget Me Not
Original Air Date: 12-17-1982
Does the Title Make Any Fucking Sense? Yes! Yes it does!
I don't have particularly good memories of this one from my first time through the series back in November. And, for some reason, Wilton Knight's voiceover-from-beyond-the-grave during the opening credits sounds weirdly echo-y to me. Maybe they moved him to a mausoleum.
Regardless! Onward!
The episode opens with KITT parked outside a swank little beach house.
you can't see it, but he's composing a symphony in his ample spare time
There's a woman in the surf wearing scuba gear, coming in from the ocean. She's carrying a harpoon gun or something. Inside the beach house, Michael is upstairs in a pink room, wearing a pink shirt and putting on a pink tie.
rejects gender color norms
The woman comes upstairs with the harpoon gun, the camera focused unblinkingly on her shiny wet thighs. She walks into the room with Michael and ... nothing happens. He smiles at her, she smiles back, she gets a towel and helps him with his tie, and in an only semi-wooden contextual exchange they establish that Michael is playing bodyguard here and is responsible for preventing her father from being assassinated. This is Maria Elena.
one half of this week's feminine conversation
It seems that Michael would like for this working relationship to turn into a sexual one, but she puts him off until the "working" part is finished.
Michael is heading to a party (without her), which is why he's gotten dressed up all pink-like. Eventually he hops into KITT and heads out.
I don't have to tell you why I capped this
or this
KITT disapproves of Michael's behavior as relates to Maria Elena and the beach house in some vague sort of way, but in between that he provides more and better exposition, and a geography lesson.
this is, according to KITT, called San Mirada nowadays
Brazil San Mirada was, until the recent election of Maria Elena's father, a "militaristic state." Dad has had threats on his life, but is coming to the US anyway for some unspecified reason. He's showing up a day earlier than originally scheduled in order to attend an equestrian show. Rudy del Fuego, the guy whose party Michael is about to crash, had the most to lose from Dad's election and therefore is probably going to be behind any assassination attempts; Michael thinks this party is going to be full of assassins. Involved is also a guy named David Burns, who has lots of investments in Brazil San Mirada, and is therefore a likely co-conspirator.
Our cast of characters established, Michael asks if KITT has any ideas. KITT suggests Michael try a paisley tie next time.
They arrive at del Fuego's place, where Michael must fend off a valet.
no, you may not drive my car, not even 10 feet
The valet assumes that Michael is just trying to save a buck and decides to get revenge.
Out on the back lawn, del Fuego is greeting all his guests.
doesn't look evil yet, does he?
Del Fuego notices Michael, who realizes that he doesn't want to be in a conversation with the man and have to admit that he has no legitimate reason to be there. So Michael grabs two glasses of champagne and accosts the first woman he sees, giving her a kiss and one glass of champagne.
user
Del Fuego sees this, apparently assumes that Michael is with the woman, and moves on to his next friend. The woman seems really happy to have Michael's attention, and not at all creeped out by being suddenly kissed by a stranger who greeted her as "my love." Michael ditches her the moment the danger is past, and she becomes downcast.
used
Meanwhile, the valet is blocking KITT in with other cars.
KITT does not appreciate this
Michael is soon accosted himself by a different woman, who believes that they met two years earlier in Rio. It turns out to be a case of mistaken identity - she never got a look at that other guy with his clothes on. Hah!
The valet moves a second car in to box in KITT, this time tapping KITT's front bumper.
KITT does not want to be on kissing terms with his subjects
Eventually del Fuego goes into the house, and Michael follows him but loses him. After going through the house, Michael tries to enter a likely-looking door next to the stairs, but is halted by del Fuego's ... security guy? Michael dissembles, claiming that someone told him this was the bathroom. The security guy doesn't buy it and shoos Michael off.
Loitering near the door, Michael runs again into the lady in the blue dress, who strikes up a conversation. She thanks him for the champagne he gave her before, then confesses that that glass was one too many for her.
this actress actually plays "drunk" pretty convincingly
She asks Michael for his name, and thinks it is a funny coincidence because her name is Micki. She babbles drunkenly for a few moments, and then starts to feel ill. Michael apologizes for giving her that extra glass of champagne she didn't want, but Micki says she's a big girl and goes to find somewhere to lay down. She heads upstairs.
Del Fuego comes out of the likely-looking door next to the other set of stairs, and he and his security guy cross the house. Michael turns aside so that del Fuego won't see who he is, and then when they are gone he sneaks into the likely-looking room. Inside is del Fuego's very stylish office.
nice view, very nice desk
Meanwhile, the valet has rolled up a third car to help box in KITT.
I'm actually confused as to what purpose the third car serves
In a different stylish lounge, del Fuego and Burns meet up.
crime must pay really well
Burns has hired a "Frenchman" to deal with their problem for them. He and del Fuego shoot the breeze a bit - del Fuego has a political axe to grind, whereas Burns only cares about all the money he's sunk into Brazil's San Mirada's emerald mines. He's going to go broke, apparently, if he's not able to make back his money, which will only happen if del Fuego's buddies get back into power.
Over in the office, Michael flips through del Fuego's paperwork and photographs everything with a mini spy camera.
pix or it didn't happen
Mission accomplished, he slips back out to the party. Absolutely nothing comes of these pictures.
Burns and del Fuego decide to head back to the party, too. On the way out, del Fuego notices a foot sticking out from a pile of furry blankets on the couch, and uncovers Micki.
thank goodness this is PG-13
Apparently this is where she decided to lay down. Whoops!
Downstairs, Michael is about to leave when he notices one of del Fuego's lackeys carrying an unconscious-looking Micki downstairs. Michael knows that this is not legit and immediately calls for KITT.
wonder twin power: activate!
form of ... a really really hot Trans Am
He tells KITT to go into surveillance and meet him at the front door. KITT, of course, is boxed in, but this only slows him down a little bit. While the valets' jaws drop, KITT gently pushes the car in front of him into the car in front of it, and so on, until he has enough space to get out. He moves to the front door (a journey of about 10 feet) and opens his door as Michael comes running out. He has a bit of snark for Michael ("I would have been here sooner, but you didn't tip the valet.") but Michael is not interested. They hit the road.
KITT noticed the car with Micki leaving and is tracking it. He offers to overtake the car, but Michael wants to know where they're going first.
In the back seat of the car, Micki starts to wake up. She overhears the lackeys discussing how they plan to kill her, and attempts to open the door to escape, then fights back by kicking and grabbing at their faces. This causes the car to swerve, and Michael hits the gas to catch up. In the confusion, Micki manages to get the door open and throws herself out of the vehicle; she goes rolling down a steep incline toward the ocean.
Michael and KITT get ahead of the lackeys and turn across the road to stop them, so the lackeys just turn around and go back the way they came.
that gray Seville knows better than to challenge the king of cars
Rather than chase them, Michael stops to ensure that Micki is okay.
he calls her "the girl," because adult women like it when you refer to them as girls
Since she is demonstrably not okay, Michael decides to rescue her. He does this quite hilariously, using some rappelling gear that I reckon he keeps stowed in KITT's back seat.
this is his "just in case" safety harness
I think this is #48 in "101 Uses For a Multimillion-Dollar Supercar"
KITT expresses mild concern that his winch wasn't meant for this but isn't too fussed about it. Michael hops down to Micki, who is unconscious again but alive. He somewhat awkwardly hefts her onto his back and gets KITT to reel them in (resulting in a minor snafu when the winch briefly overheats). The act ends.
The second act begins that evening back at the beach house. Devon and Maria Elena are there, and they are not pleased. Michael explains what "the doctors" apparently told him, that Micki has Hollywood Amnesia ... not the retrograde amnesia that can legitimately result from physical head trauma, but instead the kind of "psychological block" that we used to see on TV all the time. Michael thinks Micki has some kind of amazing intel, because del Fuego tried to kill her, whereas Maria Elena is concerned that Micki is a spy and Devon thinks Michael is just trying to score.
Back at del Fuego's place, del Fuego's lackeys are making excuses for why they let a scary black sports car frighten them away from the scene of the murder without ensuring that the murder-ee was actually dead first. Del Fuego blames it on these low-quality American lackeys; back in Brazil San Mirada, they have henchmen of the first order! Burns sends the lackeys back out to make sure Micki is dead, and if she isn't to watch her house and find out who she's talked to. Once they are gone, del Fuego pours them drinks to celebrate their upcoming success.
absinthe or green apple schnapps? we report, you decide
Elsewhere, the Frenchman makes a dramatic show of unpacking and assembling his rifle.
The lackeys arrive at the coast with flashlights, but soon realize they can't see anything from the road and can't get down the cliff. They decide to come back tomorrow with a boat.
The next morning, the Frenchman arrives at the "International Equestrian Grounds" with a horse trailer.
it's "international" because some of the horses are Arabian
There is no horse in the trailer; instead he plans to use it as a blind from which to snipe. He stows his rifle in the trailer.
Back at the beach house, Maria Elena is sunning herself.
because skin cancer is a remote threat
Michael walks in on her, gets an immediate hard-on, and then tries to convince Maria Elena that she can't work on her tan this close to the window because apparently Rudy del Fuego's house is literally a stone's-throw away and he might look out his back window and spot them. ??? I don't understand the tactical appeal of this particular beach house, then.
Micki interrupts their UST by wandering in.
and she's wearing Michael's half-unbuttoned pink shirt and no pants ... why?
She claims to not know where she is, who Michael is, or indeed who she is herself. While Maria Elena puts a robe on, Michael explains their ten minutes of prior history and then asks if she remembers anything from the party. She recalls nothing useful. Maria Elena suggests Micki might have brought a purse to the party with her, and Michael decides to go look for it.
Maria Elena can't believe Micki is actually in the script
On the way to the shorefront, KITT and Michael have a very confusing exchange about license plates. It leads, somehow, to KITT reminding Michael that cars have no family, lineage, or personality. Michael wonders aloud why he keeps forgetting that.
hey, eyes over -> here, Michael!
KITT speculates that Michael is becoming psychologically attached to him, but Michael says it must be the '56 Chevy he drove in high school. He really loved that car. "Really," says KITT, a reaction that amuses Michael.
They arrive at the cliff where they found Micki.
I wish the background of these shots was better
because KITT is quite beautiful, don't you think?
Michael tells KITT to go into surveillance mode, which makes KITT ask prissily if that '56 Chevy could have gone into surveillance mode. Michael says no, but he still had fun with that car cruising hamburger joints.
Once again Michael rappels down to the ocean, and by coincidence del Fuego's lackeys are arriving in a boat at the same time. Michael does not notice them immediately and soon finds Micki's purse; they walk up and pull a gun on him. Michael calls for help on the comlink.
KITT responds immediately: there's no way he can drive down the rocky incline, so he backs up to get a running start and literally throws himself off the cliff.
KITT's devotion admits no boundaries
This development surprises the lackeys, needless to say. Michael is able to bat the gun away but is knocked down and hits his head. KITT fishtails into the lackeys to swat them aside.
not a great pic of it, but the best one I could get
He rolls over the gun to break it, then rolls over Micki's purse to keep them away from it. They decide to beat feet.
Michael is dazed, and while he pulls himself together the lackeys make it to the boat. He finally gets into KITT and attempts to chase them, but soon runs into an outcropping of the cliff that prevents KITT from advancing. After beating on KITT's steering wheel in frustration (don't hit him, it's not KITT's fault!) Michael goes back to retrieve Micki's purse and then they head back to the beach house. It is not revealed how they got KITT back up to the top of that cliff.
Later at the house, Michael and Micki examine the contents of her purse, which, unlike every other lady's purse in my experience, seems to contain no tampons. There is a key inside but no ID and no home address. Micki wangsts and Michael comforts. Then he heads upstairs to the bathroom to "get ready" and runs into Maria Elena.
O.O
She strikes up a conversation (without bothering to put on clothes first) about how annoyed she is that Michael is spending all his time on Micki and none on her father's impending assassination. Michael is sure that Micki will remember something important about the assassination thing. Maria Elena apologizes and creates more UST.
well, of course she does
The doorbell rings. It's Devon and Bonnie. Devon has brought pictures of three possible assassins, which Michael shows to Micki. She recognizes none of them. However, when Devon is talking about each possible assassin, she remembers "something about a Frenchman." Next she remembers one Joe Palmer as her fiancé and insists that they need to find him. Before anyone can do a smackdown on this, KITT interrupts to say that Burns is leaving del Fuego's place.
Michael runs to leave, but Micki is distraught that he's going to do something else instead of tending to her. Maria Elena tries to explain that preventing her dad's assassination is more important than reconnecting Micki with her life right this second, which sends Micki into a pout of self-centeredness and self-pity. "But what about me?" she whines, and then she stalks off because Maria Elena has dared to have a family and home and a memory, and because she is not concerned at all about the impending death of the president of a South American ex-dictatorship.
On the road, KITT wonders why they are following Burns. Michael has no answer except "instinct." KITT does not compute "instinct" and asks if there's anything he can do. Michael asks him to promise to cruise a hamburger joint with him someday. "If we must," says KITT.
They follow Burns to a dumpster, where Burns deposits a small duffel.
it's right behind the Pontiac dealership
While they wait for someone to come collect it, KITT reveals that he's tracked down the Frenchman's aliases. This leads to an exchange in which Michael asks how many languages KITT speaks. KITT does not provide a number, because he's not sure if he should count the "archaic tongues."
Meanwhile, Micki is calling the Joe Palmers in the phone book (along with the near-Joes like Jay and Jerry). So far none of them know her.
A bum comes to rummage in the dumpster that Michael is watching; Michael becomes suspicious. KITT wonders why a bum is any of their business, but Michael has noticed a very nice watch on the guy's wrist. The bum comes out with the duffel, and Michael decides to follow him to be sure this is the Frenchman.
Micki has graduated to calling the cops to see if anyone has reported her as a missing person. For some reason she has a hard time getting them to take her seriously.
Michael and KITT follow the "bum" back to a snazzy hotel.
hawt
Michael walks in and starts riffling through the registration cards behind the unguarded front desk. He finds one for one of the Frenchman's aliases and rings for the desk clerk. Pretending to be a guest, he claims he locked his keys in his room and asks for a duplicate for the Frenchman's room number. The unsuspecting clerk hands one over.
Meanwhile, Micki is pacing the room with the TV running, and suddenly she realizes that she is on TV. Turns out she is an actress in a soap opera, and "Joe Palmer" is her character's fiancé.
Back at the hotel, Michael attempts to enter the Frenchman's hotel room, but the dude is right there (which should have been very duh, since Michael and KITT followed him there). The Frenchman escapes out the balcony door and Michael immediately loses him as the act ends.
The final act begins with Michael returning to KITT, who consoles him. Micki has left him a message over the comlink - she's remembered everything and is going home. Michael becomes concerned and goes to meet her there.
Micki arrives at her house and finds that her key really does open the front door. She is overcome with emotion at arriving home.
okay, get a grip, you were gone for, like, one day
One of del Fuego's lackeys is lurking in the house and captures her. He uses her phone to call back to home base to get instructions, and is told to hold onto her for now. Micki tries to play the amnesia card, but he isn't buying it.
Izod Lacoste is the brand of choice for the preppy-thug set
Meanwhile, Devon is escorting Maria Elena and her dad to what is now being called the "International Equestrian Grand Prix."
Michael arrives at Micki's house. He surprises the lackey, with Micki covering his entry by coughing. They escape together.
The Frenchman arrives at the equestrian competition and goes into his horse trailer to prep his rifle. Maria Elena's dad expounds his philosophy of governance: becoming a coward is as hateful as becoming a dictator. Because those things are exactly equivalent.
Michael, KITT and Micki are on their way to ... I dunno, actually, somewhere unspecified. Maybe they're just out driving for fun.
hot in the city
Under prompting, Micki kindasorta remembers something about a "pedestrian show," which Michael connects to the equestrian show. It's odd because neither Burns and del Fuego, nor del Fuego's lackeys in the car, said anything about an equestrian show. No matter! KITT performs a rather sloppy bootlegger turn and they head to the event. KITT attempts to contact Devon but has trouble getting through. They run into a bunch of cars blocking the road and jump the obstruction.
Meanwhile, the Frenchman finishes putting his gun together and lines up his shot through a small window in the horse trailer using the world's tiniest scope. I mean, I have a bigger scope on one of my .22 varmint rifles, for serious.
Michael, KITT and Micki arrive at the event and crash unceremoniously through the fence. Everyone notices this, including the Frenchman.
KITT wonders why he wasn't invited to this event, since it involves jumping obstacles
KITT scans the grounds and finds a man with a high-powered rifle. Michael turns toward the horse trailer, and the Frenchman attempts to stop KITT by shooting him. People scatter. The Frenchman abandons the trailer but can't reach his car before KITT gets there. He instead jumps on a horse and attempts to escape on horseback.
definitely capable of outrunning a horse
Michael gives chase. Micki expresses concern, and Michael assures her that inside KITT is the safest location on Earth. But no, Micki just doesn't want him scaring the horses.
capable of out-jumping a horse, too
KITT notes that they could easily catch the Frenchman, but Michael wants to wear the horse out, not kill it. They go through the stable area and eventually wind up on clear ground, where Michael puts KITT on Auto and reveals that he keeps another surprise in KITT's back seat.
Michael must have a very interesting sex life
He ropes the Frenchman and pulls him off the horse, jumps out of the car and hogties him just as the police pull up.
The epilogue has Michael return to the beach house. He's brought flowers. As he's getting out, KITT asks how much longer they'll be staying there; the sea air is bad for his circuitry. Michael says two days, and in fact bids KITT goodbye for the next two days as though he's not planning to leave the house at all in that time period.
KITT alerts him that he needs more flowers, as Maria Elena already has a guest. Michael divides the bouquet into two.
flowers -> sex
Michael offers to take them to a hamburger joint. Hah hah.
This episode has a lot of gender commentary in it, so let's dive right in.
It starts out with Michael and Maria Elena living in a romantic beach house while plotting to prevent her father's assassination. Michael wants to sleep with her, whereas Maria Elena puts that off until after the job is done. So right away we've established that there will be no challenge to the paradigm that men are horndogs barely in control of their urges, and women are the sexual gatekeepers obliged to fend them off.
Note that she does want to sleep with Michael (just not right now), but this changes nothing. It is her responsibility to maintain an appropriate relationship between them.
There's nothing superficially wrong with the dynamic. Michael is not pushing her, after all. It's not like he's a rapist. However, unpacking their relationship shows how this paradigm is kind of messed up. Why is it Maria Elena's responsibility to keep Michael at arm's length until a more appropriate time? Why is it not his responsibility to keep it in his pants until the more appropriate time rolls around? He doesn't push, but he does keep suggesting that he'd like to have sex with her, and that in itself is problematic. Unwanted sexual overtures are an imposition on the overture-ee. A single pass would be forgivable, given that her behavior indicates that she might be receptive, but he should respect her "no, not until the future" and lay off until "the future" arrives.
Note, too, how she keeps flirting. The script manages to make Maria Elena fit both the "virgin" and "slut" horns of the feminine dilemma, and in the process demonstrates how difficult it is for a woman to be both sexual and autonomous. She can't be something in between, or other than, virgin and/or slut; she can't just be a sexual being without having to adhere to one of those stereotypes. The closest the script can get is to make her both at the same time.
It should be a no-brainer that a woman is entitled to flirt with a man (who is receptive to it - consent works in both directions) and yet not forfeit her right to autonomy by doing so. By being flirty and suggestive, Maria Elena is not issuing an open-ended blanket consent to anything Michael might want. The script does not succeed in conveying this without making her the sexual gatekeeper.
It could be said that this is not fair to Michael, who is suffering from blue balls for almost the whole episode. But if he doesn't like it, it's his job to say something. He could have told her to put on some damned clothes before starting that conversation about Micki. It's important in these kinds of dynamics to recognize that both women and men have agency and are entitled to use it.
Men are not slaves to their hormones and we should not pretend that they are. A hard-on does not overrule a man's brain, and if a woman's flirting bothers him, it's his responsibility to say so and ask her to stop. To assume that he can't do so strips him of his agency, turns him into a kind of semi-feral animal, and makes a hard-on a valid excuse for any kind of behavior. None of those outcomes is acceptable.
As an aside, I like Maria's figure. She's presented as being very sexy, but she actually has some flesh on her, not like "sexy" women today, who look kind of skeletal. I would be more happy to have this as a beauty ideal than our current one. It would be even better if we could have a pluralistic view of "beauty" that took in more than just one ideal, but until we can have that, this would definitely be an improvement.
Also, I'd like to mention Maria Elena's apology to Michael when she brings up her problem with how he's been treating Micki vs. her dad's upcoming assassination. Why does she apologize? She has nothing to apologize about, imho. He really is blowing off the assassination thing in order to coddle Micki, and she has every right to be upset about it. But she does apologize, apparently realizing that he's getting some sad feelings, and that it's her responsibility to make sure someone cares for his emotions.
I really don't care for the exchange, at all. It is a common cultural meme in Western society that women are supposed to make everyone feel happy, but men do not have this responsibility, so when a man and a woman are together he is the recipient of her soothing but does not reciprocate. She winds up doing all of the emotional work, and he reaps all of the rewards. It's a meme I don't like.
Finally, I will briefly touch on how Maria Elena's biggest concern is her father. It's one of those things that makes sense an on individual level (he's an important politician who is facing possible assassination, how can you argue with that), but which nevertheless is just another piece in the ongoing pattern that Knight Rider women's lives revolve around men.
Speaking of this, let's move on to Micki. Now, Micki is not bad at all until her "but what about meeeeee" moment when Michael is about to run off to follow Burns. She is having a hard time, surrounded by people she doesn't know with no idea what's going on. A little wangst is understandable. It's only when she telegraphs that she expects the world and everyone in it to revolve around her that she crosses the line to whiny crybaby.
But what bothers me the most about Micki is not Micki herself, but the way Michael just uses her when they first meet without a second thought. He brings her a glass of champagne, gives her a kiss (let's not forget that at that point they had never met before), and calls her "my love."
He's doing it to evade Rudy del Fuego's notice, by pretending he belongs at the party and is not a gatecrasher, but that only makes it worse. To Michael, right then, Micki is not even a person but just a prop ... something he grabbed in the moment to effect a disguise. Later he grabs a little statue off a table and pretends to be examining it in order to have his back turned when del Fuego walks by. Micki and that little statue serve equivalent functions for him, and that's screwy. He thinks it's perfectly acceptable to treat a woman as if she exists for his use.
Micki, of course, serves almost no purpose in the plot. Sure, she narrows down the list of assassins to the Frenchman, but they only started with 3 in the first place, and Michael was able to spot the assassin when he came to collect the dropped-off cash in the dumpster. Surely KITT could have brought along images of all three and matched one up to the assassin's face. Then Micki mentions the equestrian show, a link that surely Michael could have figured out for himself. An assassin will be where the target is, after all.
Finally, I want to mention those assassins. Devon brings in three pictures. One is of the Frenchman. A second is a Latino, whom Devon doubts would be hired to assassinate a Latin American political figure (why not is not explained).
But the third one is named, according to Devon, Romeo and Juliet. The reason being that nobody knows if this person is male or female. So this is either a transvestite, or a transsexual person, I think the first one we've seen on Knight Rider. And this ambiguous person is ... a criminal and murderer. ALRIGHTY THEN.
KITT has a few interesting moments in this episode, most notably his jealousy attack over Michael's affection for his old Chevy. It's brief and played for a laugh, but it's pretty distinctive. The sequence begins with KITT saying, quite loftily, that Michael must be getting "psychologically attached" to him and that this is a logical human response. Michael blows that off, saying instead that he anthropomorphizes cars because of a different car that he loved, and KITT becomes jealous.
While KITT does not use the word "love" (instead preferring "psychologically attached"), Michael does (in reference to his old Chevy) and KITT responds with jealousy. It's hard to dislodge the impression that KITT wants Michael to be automotively monogamous and resents the implication that Michael still carries a flame for his ex. The fact that Michael seems to be deliberately provoking KITT's reaction says (to me anyway) that Michael likes KITT's devotion and likes to be reminded that KITT is fully devoted to him. He's playing with KITT's (allegedly nonexistent, but fully evident) emotions here, which is frankly crappy, but he seems to be doing it in order to remind himself in his heart that he's loved. Again, it's crappy to mess with someone's emotions to accomplish that, but it nevertheless says a lot about their relationship.
Then, later, Michael seems to try to make it up to KITT by trying to get him to agree to do the same things he used to do with his old Chevy. "I know that place was meaningful to me and my ex, but maybe if we go make our own memories there, it can be meaningful to me in a way that relates to you, instead."
There's a possibility that KITT wants Michael to be more than automotively monogamous - his disapproval of Michael's desire to turn his relationship with Maria Elena from a working one to a sexual one could be interpreted that way. Of course, KITT later warns Michael that he needs to split his bouquet so as not to tick off either of the ladies, when he didn't have to do that, so he's either resigned to Michael's philandering, or he's obeying a programming directive to not sabotage his driver's relationships on purpose.
KITT's other major moment is when he flings himself off the cliff to come to Michael's rescue. It should surprise no one that KITT is willing to break his drivetrain in half for Michael without question, but it's the violence that he uses to protect Michael that does surprise me. He slams into that one dude really hard. When the other guy goes for the gun, KITT quickly backs up over the gun, and might have gone over the guy's hand if the dude had been a little bit faster.
I'm not sure why it shocks me when KITT turns violent, but it always does. His violence is generally directed against the scenery (walls and the like) but here he is directly attacking some people. Maybe it's because he's even-tempered and isn't doing this out of anger - fear, perhaps, but probably not even that. This is just cold-blooded assault, calculated out in obedience to his primary programming. If he's capable of risking broken bones and ruptured spleens (for someone else) to carry out his programming, what else is he capable of doing? Anything short of killing someone, I believe. That's a rather sharp contrast with KITT's generally-docile and gentle core personality. One minute he's making fashion suggestions (paisley ties do have a lot to recommend them) and the next he's fracturing someone's hip.
Is that all I have? I think that's all I have.