The now cancelled comedy, Son of the Beach, was broadcast on the FX channel, and was an overtly jiggly Baywatch parody, combined with a cornball nod to the Quinn Martin Productions cop shows from the late 1960s. The show’s claim-to-fame was its incessant and liberal use of sexual double entendres, both visual and otherwise, and it seemed as if there was a constant “bad boy” competition to see what would be allowed past the censors.
The show centers around the Shore Patrol Force 30 (or SPF 30, for short), a team of lifeguards in the beach community of Malibu Adjacent, led by the pale, out-of-shape, rather dense Notch Johnson (Timothy Stack). Notch’s unit consists of ditzy blonde B.J. Cummings (Jaime Bergman), street tough Jamaica St. Croix (Leila Arcieri), muscle-bound Arnold Schwarzenegger clone Chip Rommel (Roland Kickinger), and smart Kimberlee Clark (Kim Oja), who one character refers to as “the sensible, flat-chested one.” The SPF squad is constantly at odds with horny Mayor Anita Massengil who, over the course of the series, is always trying to shut down the lifeguard team one way or another.
The jokes are juvenile and sexist, but the delivery is both so corny and serious that even the most eye-rolling punchline seems comical. This is beer and pretzels kind of entertainment, and show creators and headwriters Timothy Stack, James R. Stein and David Morgasen load each episode with bad puns, funny names, double entendres and plenty of shots of Bergman and Arcieri in tiny, tiny bikinis.
This isn’t highbrow intellectual comedy, and admitting to liking something like Son of the Beach might not earn you any points with the local chapter of the Moral Majority.
