Season 4, Episode 16 "Mirror, Mirror"

Carrie-Anne Moss, who would come to notoriety playing Trinity in The Matrix a few years later, guest stars. It's an odd little episode.

Matt keeps having dreams about being attacked by sharks. Well, he has one dream, and then afterwords complains to Summer (for our benefit) about what a pain it is becoming. Baywatch does this a lot, it's an easy formula for erasing the slate. Days or even months can pass between episodes, and because of the perfect year-round So Cal weather, it very rarely matters what time of the year it is. You have to pay close attention in the first few minutes for exposition as to the "climate" of the episode. As such, we know two things off the bat: 1) We're going to continue to be misdirected with shark attacks that turn out just to be dreams, and 2) there will have to be another, separate, more substantial storyline to fill the rest of the 42 minute run-time. Sooo...

Carrie-Anne has like, quintuple-parked a camper trailer in the parking lot at Baywatch. She's inside, teasing her glamorously huge hair and being a mean bitch to her sister, who we don't see, but hear, half-heartedly defending herself on the other side of a closed door. She harangues her on and on about her plainness, her lack of grace and style, "How could any man want you the way you are!?" until the scene cuts to the exterior. We see the sister, also Carrie-Anne, in quirky mis-matched clothes, stupid nerdy glasses, unceremonious ponytail of sadness, looking tortured as she makes her way through the throngs of beautiful Californians to her new favorite place: staring at Mitch in his tower from a few feet away making dreamy faces. Cue the creepy Lifetime movie-of-the-week soundtrack. He notices her, oh god. He smiles.

"Uuuhh, what does that flag mean?"
"It means there's a dangerous riptide today, be careful."
"I guess I'll stick to the sand because you see I'm not a very good swimmer so I don't think that I'll be swimming today."
"Ok."
"...my name is Gwen."
"What?"
"...nothing, it's just... I'm Gwen, that's all."
"That's short for Guinevere, right?"
"..."
"Well, Lady Guinevere, be sure to put on plenty of sunblock today."
*smiiiiiile*
This conversation is so awkward it makes your toes curl. Mitch is this paragon of niceness, which is totally normal, but we can see by her expression that their exchange meant a lot more to her. Suddenly, a cry for help. That stupid riptide is trying to kill someone. Mitch has to save them, which he does, in the requisite run to shore, dive over breaker, swim hurriedly, give flotation device, drag to safety, make breathe again sequence we've come to know so very well. Gwen is so impressed she is temporarily rendered normal and showers him with compliments, to which he remarks on her obvious foreignness at the beach. She motions to her camper and explains that she and her sister are on a cross-country trip together. "My sister and I are very close." Then the post-heroism, predictable-as-Tuesday wave of flirty bimbos breaks over Mitch, who becomes distracted, leaving Gwen to gather her things and flee the scene, sobbing.

Mitch is closing up at the end of the day when he notices a beautiful woman in front of his tower. She introduces herself as Maddie and Mitch notices the similarity. He asks after Gwen and she scoffs, dismissing her, "Gwen is such a drag. I can't believe I'm stuck on this whole trip with her." She won't leave him alone until he agrees to have dinner with them in their trailer. He's put off by her callous attitude towards her sister, and it isn't until she insists it will make Gwen's whole trip for him to pay a visit that he finally gives in. "Say hi to Guinevere for me." She doesn't like that. You're smart enough to see what's going on, right? Ok good. Because they're done merely implying it and we need to be on the same page here.

Matt is determined to go diving in a shark cage and face his fear man-to-icthus. Summer insists on going with to keep an eye on him. Matt gets in the water with a big-ass stock footage shark looming, but he galvanizes his nerves and tries to hang. Suddenly it bites through the line securing the cage to the boat, sending him adrift. Summer leans hard to grab the severed rope and falls in. The shark is suddenly right there, no one can react in time, she's dragged under and yeah, psych, another dream. Summer is convinced his dreams are indicative of a fear of commitment. This is a very Summer-y conclusion to come to.

"It's not fair, I saw Mitch first! He called me Lady Guinevere..."
"He's coming here to see ME. Because I'm glamorous and exciting to be with!"
"Well I may not be all that, but I deserve to be here too!"
Maddie/Gwen is sitting in front of a mirror arguing with herself. This is a moment I actually feel no cynicism toward. Carrie-Anne absolutely kills it. She transitions between personalities with casual insanity, making something honestly unsettling out of the average-at-best script and scenario. It's a rare moment where you're like, "Wow, Baywatch. Did you just make me feel?" She sees that Maddie is trying to shut her out for good and resolves to stop her, but by the time Mitch arrives Gwen is nowhere to be seen. He drinks a glass of wine we saw her slip a nondescript narcotic into moments earlier and passes out. When he wakes up he's handcuffed to a cot in a filthy basement that's slowly filling with tidewater, being offered a tray of delicious breakfast items by Maddie, who has apparently finally gone full-on shithouse.

Matt and Summer get dropped off out in the water to position some buoys when go fuggin' figure a shark shows up. Matt heroically distracts it long enough to allow Summer to get back to the boat, then barely makes it back aboard in time, himself. More stock footage sharks, quick cuts back and forth between two differently lit scenes but oh well, he makes it. He believes he has conquered both his fear of sharks and Summer's fear that he might have a fear of relationships. The latter will ultimately prove unconquerable.

Mitch is up to his neck in water, the stairs that lead out are halfway submerged. Maddie storms in angrily and demands, "What are you doing!?" to which he responds, understandably, "HELP ME." A sequence then plays out in which her two sides again struggle for dominance, and again her performance is great. It's revealed through an unimpressive but brief flashback to her childhood that she, Gwen, saw her twin sister, Maddie, drown tragically. Unable to save her, she's been plagued with the guilt ever since, so now she's a crazy pants. Finally getting it, he calls out "My Lady Guinevere!" and she snaps out of it. Poor, sad Gwen can only weakly hand Mitch the handcuff key and he frees himself. All she cares about is that he understands how badly she had wanted to help Maddie.

She's scared when she sees the ambulance with "sanitarium" on the side and the guys in white. Mitch assures her that she's going to get the help she needs, that Maddie's death wasn't her fault, and she tries to seem strong. "Can I come see you when I get well?" He agrees but as they shut the doors, he looks crushed. As they drive away, her expression slowly changes. She takes off her thick glasses, lets her hair down, and asks for the radio, telling the orderlies how much she loves to dance, then laughs at her reflection in the rear-view ala Perfect Blue.

A genuinely engaging episode and quite enjoyable despite a sub-par sub-plot that went nowhere. All episodes of Baywatch feature Hasselhoff prominently, and he is a torrent of acting here, but he usually isn't *supposed* to be outshined like in this one. It's all about Carrie-Anne and she is totally awesome, beautiful and sad and dangerous and broken. If in her role we'd had the usual fare of guest stars it wouldn't have had such surprising intensity.

Anyway don't worry. The show, as well as this blog, is going to go back to normal.