Heat Vision and Jack

...well, not really.

As far as I know, only one episode was made of this show, Episode 14. It's a fantastic bit of parody... of what, I do not know.

Some elements of the Fugitive, Knight Rider, and the Six Million Dollar Man all thrown into one wacky package.

Check it out if you can, but I had to download a crappy copy of it. Maybe it'll be a hidden DVD feature on some other Jack Black, Ben Stiller, and Owen Wilson project.

I thought it sounded interesting when I first read about it. Then I saw it. It's like Lovecraft funny. Like "human language is inadequate to describe the horror blah blah" funny.

It's like every action/adventure show EVER packed into a half hour, but the most obvious comparisons would have to be "X-files" and "Knight Rider." (Heat Vision is KITT) The only thing I didn't like was Owen Wilson's flat reading of Heat Vision's lines. And even that wasn't bad the whole time.

So why didn't it make it on TV? It's a half-hour live-action comedy without a laugh track. How many of those have EVER made it? (Apparantly people need to be told when it's funny.)

made entirely of brilliant TV pilots (called "The Network") that were never picked up and this was by far the best. I couldn't stop laughing. It's a real tragedy the show didn't get any air time -- I bet if Jack Black and Owen Wilson switched places it would have been huge.

Created originally as a pilot for Fox, created and written by Rob Schrab and Dan Harmon, directed by a young Ben Stiller, and starring (the voice of) Owen Wilson and Jack Black as the leads Heat Vision and Jack respectively. What was in hindsight the set up of a powerhouse of a series, we never got more than the single original episode after Fox passed on the series. Following Jack Austin (Black), a former astronaut who is exposed to solar energy giving him extreme intelligence (but only in the day), and his best friend and talking motorcycle Heat Vision, who was an old roommate shot by a raygun, merging is mind with the bike. Obviously a ridiculous and over-the-top series from the get-go, it reminds me much of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace or Danger 5, in its campy, schlocky style. The jokes are pretty funny for what it was, and Jack Black of course gives a fantastic performance. With Harmon and Schrab behind the writer's room I'm sure this could have turned into a pretty fun ride, and its unfortunately we never got to see it. If you like any of these people, sure, was a fun thing to flip on for as short as it is.

Ben Stiller came to television with the Ben Stiller show, and despite great reception, it was canceled quickly. He went out and got famous in film, only to come back to television and get canceled again. Heat Vision and Jack takes humor out of it's ridiculous premise, bad dialogue and melodramatic acting, parodying bad television shows, mainly Knight Rider. Where Knight Rider took itself too seriously, Heat Vision and Jack takes nothing seriously at all. It's a stupid, but hilarious joke.

Jack (Jack Black) was formerly an astronaut sent into space on a special mission. When in space, his mind was expanded and now he knows everything. NASA wanted to take his brain, so he called his roommate Doug, who was vaporized into the motorcycle he was driving. At that moment, he ceased to be Doug and he became Heat Vision, the talking motorcycle. In this thrilling adventure, Jack and Heat Vision (voiced by Owen Wilson) are on the tail of a possessed gas station owner (Vincent Schiavelli) that can melt people with his eyes. Along the way, Jack and Heat Vision must avoid Ron Silver who's trying to kill them, and they meet a sheriff (Christine Taylor) who helps them on their journey. Can they survive the chaos? Well, unfortunately the pilot didn't last to become a show.

There really isn't anything wrong with this pilot. The performances are so purposefully bad. Jack Black gives his best serious performance, which ends up seeming like a bad Shatner imitation. Christine Taylor's delivery is late 80s/early 90s stuff, like one of the girls off of Baywatch. Owen Wilson has a good voice, and Ron Silver plays Ron Silver to perfection. Even Ben Stiller has a small role as a DJ. The direction and writing is terrible, but in the context of this spoofy material, it's great.

As long as you know this is a spoof, it's funny. If you somehow missed this....well, it's hard to imagine someone missing that.

My rating: Great show. 31 mins. Not rated, contains some mild sexual content.