Flipper

I really love this show, and I love dolphins. The best part of this program was the relationship between Keith and Pam. They would have been the perfect couple!!!

The first season of this show has its charms. The character dynamics are interesting, and many of the characters are believable. The occasional villains are sometimes a bit over the top, and the dolphin is underused at times. It's more like a Flipper LITE compared with the original show. Despite some occasional overacting the show is still watchable, as the four main characters are fairly interesting and there's some continuing character development as well.

However, the change from season one into season two makes the show completely different. Some of the characters are more like caricatures - in the first season there are such characters as well, but they're mostly the villains, while that also applies to the reoccurring characters in the second season.

In the second season it's also completely unbelievable that this is supposed to be Florida, as most people speak with HEAVY Australian accents. It's like they don't even try....

The second season seems inspired by Baywatch more than Flipper, as there's constantly bikini "babes" walking around in the background of the shots and they even have beauty pageants! That season also features some search and rescue team as main characters, similar to Baywatch as well. Even Maya is featured in an exploitative way for no real reason. Inexplicably, Alba's acting is worse than it was in the first season.

Just watch the first season - it has an ending which serves well as a final ending for the show. There are no real unresolved issues at all, as almost everything unravels through the season. The last episode is a bit odd, but it works as a conclusion. Just forget about the other seasons, regard season one as sort of a stand alone show.

I gave this a six out of ten, but that applies only to the first season.

The first season of this show was pretty decent. The characters were interesting, the writing was reasonably good, and the chemistry between the two adult leads (Brian Wimmer as an adult Bud (now Keith) Ricks, from the original '60s "Flipper" TV series, and Colleen Flynn as Pam Blondell, a fellow dolphin researcher) made the show fun for adults as well as kids. The two kids (Payton Haas as Pam Blondell's son Mike and a young Jessica Alba as Maya) were pretty likeable as well. Unfortunately, the producers evidently felt that a show about scientists wasn't interesting enough (exact same thing seemed to happen to "Seaquest DSV" as well), so for the second season they fired the entire cast except Jessica Alba (who afterwards seemed to show up in a bikini far more often) and turned it into a sort of aquatic cop show instead. The quality of the show went downhill in a big way, with lame writing and even lamer characters.

I like it when flipper makes that funny noise and then does a trick

This American-Australian co-production about the adventures of the dolphin who's faster than lightning (no one you'll see, I'm told, is smarter than he) is far from the worst way to while away an hour, although it lacks the original song and most of the characters except for Brian Wimmer in the first season (as the grown-up son of Porter Ricks). Then again, the version with Paul Hogan was based more directly on the source and look how well that turned out...

Because your average dolphin has an even more limited range of abilities than Champion the Wonder Horse - as opposed to Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, the Littlest Hobo etc - the scripts are often a stretch; the one where interns Holly and Dean discovered a group of teenagers living on an island after their plane crashed and building their own society was particularly contrived, although it wasn't the worst episode. The overuse of the FX shots of our finned hero diving in and out of the research facility around which the action revolves is also a bit grating, and the acting's not exactly Emmy-winning.

For all that, it's hardly unwatchable with lots of attractive Australian (and Floridan in the first few episodes) scenery and nice music - though the second season's music is better than the first. Definitely not one for cynics, but pleasant family fare, and you just have to go all warm and gooey inside at the sight of that sleek, cuddly, giggly, adorable creature. (As well as Jessica Alba, Flipper's pretty cute too.)

Note: The above only applies to the 1995-97 episodes, not the ones from 1998 onwards known as "Flipper: The New Adventures" - beware of anything with "The New" in its title. And while some would say this is a plus, there's no Jessica either :-(