5. Thunder In Paradise
With apologies to Primus, we are firmly sailing the seas of cheese at this point. Thunder in Paradise represents everything wrong with late 80s/early 90s television: over the top, cheese, unrealistic premises, forced love interests, and absurd family ties for the sake of appealing to every possible viewer demographic out there. If you don't know the premise of Thunder in Paradise, well, it starred Hogan as Randolph J. "Hurricane" Spencer, an ex-NAVY SEAL who, with his partner Martin "Bru" Brubake, worked as a merc down in Florida in a high-tech boat named Thunder. Which talked. Like KITT on Knight Rider, only way less cool. Oh and the boat was super fast, could become invisible, and dance the flamenco. Or something. We might have made that last one up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCtL0NH1X8w Point is, the entire premise of the show (which started out as a TV movie) was bad, and it was made worse by the fact that Hogan's merc character had a daughter who had to essentially be babysat every time Daddy went out on a mission. As action-drama shows go, this was a great comedy, and that's the best we can say. We actually watched a couple of episodes when it was on its original run, and we had almost completely forgotten about it before writing this piece dragged those repressed memories back to the surface. Lovely. The big problem with the show beyond the horrible premise? How forced it was. Any show not named Magnum P.I. strains your willing suspension of disbelief in serving up some zany schemes and mishaps for the heroes to face week in and week out, and really, how often can you realistically write in a leg drop on a show that frequently takes place at sea on a speedboat? So that took away one of Hogan's primary talents, leaving him to actually, you know, act most of the time - in a show with weak writing and silly plots. Which resulted in a lot of wooden, awkward scenes. The fact that it lasted an entire season speaks only to how lame a lot of 90s action television was (M.A.N.T.I.S., we're looking squarely in your direction). Oh, and it also spawned a "kick-ass" video game.