North Carolina broadsheet torches new network drama Rescue: HI-Surf

“Imagine Baywatch, but instead of David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson, we’re going to cast people no one has heard of."

It was with heightened blood pressure that surfers, nationwide, tuned into Fox television this past Sunday evening after the football lights dimmed. The network, you see, was rolling out its first surf-adjacent show since The OC and the aforementioned watermen and waterwomen were on pins and needles to see if, decades on, Big Network was going to finally finally depict our pastime of queens in its right light.

Rescue: HI-Surf, set on Oahu’s fabled North Shore, promised to follow the heroic county lifeguards as they protected surfers etc. tackling “the most dangerous wave in the world” but did it deliver?

According to North Carolina’s only statewide newspaper, The North State Journal, it did not and the tar heel’d critics took direct aim at professional surfing as well.

“Imagine Baywatch, but instead of David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson, we’re going to cast people no one has heard of,” the reviewer, Mr. Shawn Krest begins.

Lightly racist though continuing, he pens, “A teenager heads toward the beach with his board … and his name is Reef. Because of course it is. His parents are dropping him off and telling him specifically when they’re going to pick him up … so clearly, Reef is going to die.”

Reef McIntosh, Reef Heazlewood and possibly Kelly Slater’s still publicly unnamed son smarting.

Wasting no time, Mr. Krest goes directly after professional surfing fans, maybe Brazilian, wearing Filipe Toledo jerseys.

One of the surfers wipes out, and the people laying out on the beach react with an, “Ohhh!” And the people on the beach? Are all fully dressed, like with shirts on. So, is this an actual surf competition, and they’re the audience? I thought this was just a normal beach? And if it’s a competition, why is Reef, who has apparently never done this before, allowed to just walk out there and give it a try.

He lasted four minutes before turning the program off though added, “I was generous. It should have died when the kid was named Reef.”

Reef McIntosh, Reef Heazlewood and possibly Kelly Slater’s still publicly unnamed son having every right in considering legal action.

Did you watch Rescue: HI-Surf?

Do you want to?

Here’s the clip of Reef getting bashed.