Knight Rider/Heartwarming

How, precisely, does a talking car manage to have so many Moments of Heartwarming? Must be the Rule of Empathy.

• Michael and KITT don't exactly hit it off in the pilot episode, which makes the Friendship Moment towards the end just plain cute.

Michael: Yeah I care, but don't tell anyone, okay?
KITT: *happily* Okay.

• Michael's reaction to Bonnie's abduction in Knight of the Drones.

Michael: You hurt her and there's not a place in hell I won't find you.

• • Michael actually has many moments like this throughout the series. Bonnie's a Berserk Button for him and he doesn't even realize it.
  • Also from Knight of the Drones, a completely smashed up via missile launcher KITT weakly asks Bonnie why it’s so dark outside. She tells him that it’s night. Bonnie is sometimes jokingly referred to as KITT’s mother, but in this scene, you can’t help but buy it.
• Michael's reaction to the empty shell of KITT after he's hauled out of the acid pit in Junkyard Dog is a combination of this and Tear Jerker. Don't even get started on Michael's dogged refusal to give up on KITT afterwards, from sitting outside the workshop like an anxious relative waiting outside of the "emergency room" to his talking KITT into going back into the field when he's clearly scared to death by recounting the terror he himself experienced after his "death" at the beginning of the series.
• Basically throw a kid into the mix and KITT will, more often than not, end up being adorable. Mostly because the kid never has the gut wrench reaction of "OMG TALKING CAR!" that many of the older people have and will quite happily chat away to him without freaking out.
  • On that note, there's Becky, the little girl who needs a Bone Marrow transplant, talking to the man who is supposed to be her donor but is thinking of chickening out. She convinces him to go through with it just by smiling and telling him she's scared. But that's okay, because "we can be scared together".
  • Then there's KITT and Becky's relationship. We all know that KITT it The Stoic, with a good side of snobbishness and vanity, but he will willingly sacrifice every scrap of dignity to make that little girl smile. She even calls him Black Beauty.
• Michael talks a Brainwashed and Crazy (so to speak) KITT out of hurting him by reminding him of the team, Bonnie and Devon and how much they all care for each other. You can argue that it's all a part of his programming, but still with KITT it's hard to believe...
  • Michael doing a similar thing with a Brainwashed and Crazy Bonnie.
• The episode where a teenage girl is asked to help find a treasure left to her by her father before his death (which the bad guys are after as well). She had hated her father all her life, while others idolised him, feeling pushed aside and unimportant to him, and she agrees only reluctantly. In the end it turns out that the treasure her father left her is a beautiful, but monetarily worthless hoard of crystal/stone compounds in a cavern – a beautiful sight reserved only for her, and which had no cash value to him whatsoever. He loved her more than money after all.
• While most of The Scent of Roses was sad enough to be Tear Jerker material, the fact that KITT stayed in the same parking-lot for two weeks. Induring all kinds of indignities to be near Micheal's side is very sweet. Not to mention it actually saved Micheal's life when KITT used the hospital intercom to stop an assassin from killing him.
• When Jennifer Knight tells Micheal he's "One of the Family" at the end of the two-parter Knight of the Juggernaut episode. They even had a hug! D'AWWWW!
• In Knightmares when Michael has amnesia and thinks he's Michael Long again, he asks KITT to tell him about himself.

KITT: One more thing you should know about Michael Knight.
Michael: ...What?
KITT: I was extremely fond of him.

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