Thunder in Paradise

Thunder in paradise must be watched as an entertaining series. You certainly must not watch it as a serious one or you'll easily be disappointed. The characters are caricatures, the situations are simple, the background looks like heaven. More, you'll appreciate the presence of Carol Alt who has since disappeared from our TV screens... I appreciated that show, it changes from all the CSI series we have now. The boat is a marine version of Viper, but convertible vehicles had some success at that time. Thunder in paradise is not worse than the A-Team for example, and it has at least as much action. The design of Thunder is rather interesting and the special effects are OK.

I don't care what anybody says, I think these were great fun! As I said in the title, it was A-Team meets Miami Vice meets Bay Watch.

Guns, Girls, Gangsters, Gadgets and Good old fashioned fun with a capital Thunder which starts with T and rhymes with P and stands for Pool, swimming pool, that is. This is an action adventure fantasy show full of explosions, machine guns, girls in bikinis, guys in, well, swimming trunks and heaps of ham acting. And nobody dies, either! That's right, not one person is killed-to-death on this show. Nobody. Nor is there even any blood in sight, well real sickening blood, that is. Sure, the cuts and scrapes that any action hero gets in a normal day on the job are there to be seen, but nothing like you'd witness even on the tamest action flick (or computer game) nowadays. So, for me, Thunder in Paradise is sort of like Scooby Doo, only LIVE action.

It's all good formula stuff: The good guys, ex-Navy SEALs, invariably get into some kind of mess and try to find a way out of it which undoubtedly complicates things into an even bigger mess. Along the way they save the girl (or girls!), save the beach, save the hotel, save the kind old man or anyone else who needs help, and put the bad guys away - for good! Not to mention, they always get the girl in the end. Well, almost always. Oh, did I mention the huge amount of gorgeous bodies in the background of almost every beach scene? I think this show might hold the record. Carol Alt, who co-starred in it, is no slouch either. But the reigning star of the show is 'Thunder' the scarab experimental one-off water weapon that 'Spence' has built for the Navy. Hi partner 'Bru', and buddy for life pilots the hi-tech craft through calm harbors, rough seas or bullet-riddled jungle lagoons. This thing goes anywhere. And so does the plot for that matter! But you can be sure, by the story's end our heroes will be banged-up, bruised and aching, but also smiling ear to ear back at their favorite beach watering hole, the Scuttlebutt Bar N' Grill, run by Carol Alt's character 'Kelly LaRue'.

The jokes and fun, action and fights between our heroes played by Hulk Hogan and Chris Lemon (yes, Jack's son), and whatever bad guys come along, is nothing short of fantastic mediocrity! And that's why I love it. It doesn't try to be perfect or even high brow. This is simply a fun, B-movie ride of adventure and melodrama in the same way the old serials used to be - you know, those shorts that inspired "Raiders of the Lost Ark"?

Anyway, I loved it. When TV was like this, (A-Team, etc.) when there were limits as to how serious a show could get or how much gore could be shown (or inferred) for general audiences to ingest we had a lot less problems occurring in society, didn't we? A connection? Cause and effect? Does media influence society? You decide. As for me, I've already decided. Besides, I don't want to turn this review into a Marshall McCluhan seminar. All I know is, innocent, good-natured fun like this wasn't influencing young minds and inspiring disturbing behavior in real life to go out and do nasty things, or worse yet, be immune and sensitized when someone else does. Can you say the same about today's TV shows, usually glorifying a sadistic serial killer, or having us see up-close the gruesome details of a crime scene investigation which spares no blood, guts, organs and sickening details of torture for our viewing pleasure? All that stuff is child's play for most children nowadays who can recite from memory how to cut up a body for disposal, use bleach to remove DNA from a crime scene or how a month-old corpse looks when dredged up from a river. Well, that may be your cup of tea, but I believe in garbage in / garbage out. And thankfully, we get to choose our own garbage.

You can have your torture and stylish autopsies. I'll take fun in the sun and silly paradise any day.

This was a largely undistinguished show. The actors were likable enough but the scripts were pretty lame.

But one thing that makes this series of interest to Disney fans is that it was produced at the Disney-MGM Studios at Walt Disney World and virtually all of their exterior locations were on property at Walt Disney World. Alert eyes familiar with WDW can spot a number of resorts and parks that were used. EPCOT Center provided international settings. Underwater scenes were shot at the Living Seas pavilion.

You won't see this very often. Disney has rarely allowed outside productions at their parks.

This show was not good in the least, but it made up for it by being so incredibly corny that at least you could watch it without being bored. I think at this point in Hogan's career he was trying to wrestle very minimally and wanted to work more on his acting. Well we all know that most of his credits are very horrid, in this show it is the so bad it is kind of good category. This show would quickly run its course and he would once again wrestle quite a bit, but for what it was worth it is probably the most successful endeavor he had as an actor. The show featured him and this other dude as they used this super boat to take down criminals and strange things that borderlined on copyright infringement laws. The boat was a bit absurd as it looked like a normal speed boat on the outside, but then they go below decks and the thing looks like it is the size of a small yacht. Of course, with Hulk Hogan being the star of the show, other wrestlers made appearances which I am sure made the show seem cheap to the casual viewer, but excited young children who enjoyed wrestling back in the day. The one I remember the most is Sting. I can not say that I have seen all the episodes, in fact my best is I have seen perhaps ten or so of the shows. I usually caught it on late at night when I had nothing else to do. Was entertaining for what it was, made me chuckle at the badness of it all.

Thunder in paradise has a few things going for it, a stylish crime fighting boat, hulk hogan and stylish look, sadly those are the only things that's good about this pointless uninspired mess, featuring ridiculously poor dialogue. Silly teleplay, bad acting throughout and many ridiculous episodes, yes 1994 was a great year for television, er for example, but this useless tv show is just too pointless to even conceived, it's a shame, because it's beautiful and stylish to look at, but embarrassing to watch, this is an ultimately empty tv show that doesn't work on any level except for the beautiful boat.

This is a very dull show.