Son of the Beach
television series
Son of the Beach is an American sitcom that aired from March 14, 2000, to October 1, 2002, on FX. The series is a spoof of Baywatch, with much of the comedy based on sexual double entendres, puns, innuendo and the like. The lead character, Notchibald "Notch" Johnson, is a parody of Baywatch's Mitch Buchannon: where Mitch Buchannon is handsome, Notch Johnson is portrayed as balding, middle-aged, and pot-bellied, but is nevertheless seen by all the other characters as highly fit and attractive. Radio talk show host Howard Stern was one of the executive producers.
Synopsis
The show centered on the adventures of Shore Patrol Force 30 (SPF 30, a pun on the term Sun Protection Factor), led by the pasty, out-of-shape, clueless lifeguard Notch Johnson (Timothy Stack). The rest of his patrol consists of B.J. Cummings (the innocent blonde lifeguard), Jamaica St. Croix (the ghetto-raised, mix-raced lifeguard), Chip Rommel (the dumb, hunky, muscular male lifeguard who is a parody of Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Kimberlee Clark (the smart female lifeguard and straight man of the series). Many of the plots revolved around action genre clichés and movie parodies, and the show made liberal use of celebrity guest stars including Jason Alexander, Mark Hamill, Alan Thicke, Erik Estrada, Gary Coleman, John Salley, Joey Buttafuoco, Patty Hearst, Adam Carolla, Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf, George Takei, Gilbert Gottfried, Walter Koenig, Pat Morita, Anson Williams, Christopher Darden, Maureen McCormick, Lee Majors, David Arquette, Neil Patrick Harris, Musetta Vander, Angelica Bridges, Ian Ziering, RuPaul, and Dweezil Zappa.
The title is a pun on the phrase "son of a bitch." Likewise, character names are rife with puns and innuendo. Porcelain Bidet, B.J. Cummings, Jamaica St. Croix ("you make a saint cry"), Anita Massengil, and Notch Johnson all refer to some sort of double entendre, while Chip Rommel's name refers to the "Desert Fox", further punctuating the fact that the character is German, his parents being "The Rommels of Paraguay" (South America was a refuge for hunted Nazis at the close of World War II).
The public source identifies “Son of the Beach” as television series. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Beach, television and series.
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This entry incorporates text from “Son of the Beach” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.