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SEASON ONE
Welcome Home, Jaime (parts 1&2)
In order to be worthy of her own program, Jaime had to be shown to have fully recovered from the events which sidelined her character on The Six Million Dollar Man. But to be truly independent, she couldn’t just marry Steve – the resulting show would have been way too much like Hart to Hart. With this in mind, the BW team made the first half of this two-part pilot about Jaime’s slow but steady recovery, and pitted her against Donald Harris (Dennis Patrick), the corrupt tycoon she and Steve had failed to foil on his show. But just as Jaime is gaining the man’s trust, his son discovers her true agenda; now she’ll have to do an anti-sales job on an idealistic young man who still loves his dad! In the end, no one gets hurt too badly, establishing Jaime as a compassionate superagent. This impression is cemented by the very sympathetic way she tells Donald she has to call Washington on Daddy Dearest. Since we just saw him confront pops on his own (thus saving Jaime from being kidnapped by Harris’ associates), we’re not too worried. This storyline was weakened by all the series-positioning work it had to do, but still did the job it was given: to convince us that Jaime Sommers would be worth tuning in to each week in her own right. B+
Angel of Mercy
Co-starring Andy Griffif as the jaded pilot dispatched to insert Jaime behind enemy lines, this one is both sweet and funny – a gem in the rough worthy of repeated viewing. When Oscar learns that our ambassador to the Central American banana republic of “Costa Brava” has been lost in a recent insurgent flare-up, he decides the only politically correct way to mount a rescue mission is to send someone who won’t be associated with the US government. So he has Jaime dress up in a fake-looking Red Cross outfit, and sends her where macho jarheads fear to tread. What elevates this above the level of M*A*S*H-like camp is that when they come upon a child soldier during their reconnaissance, Jaime refuses to leave him behind, setting a high-road example that “Starkey” (Griffif) can’t help but live up to. The tender scene at the end will melt all but the hardest hearts. A-
A Thing of the Past
When the man who drives Jaime’s class to school saves them all after an accident, it worries Jaime that he shuns the spotlight. A little probing brings up driver Harry’s ugly secret: fifteen years before, he’d witnessed a murder, and now the culprit’s after him! The cute repartee between Jaime, Harry and the kids on the field trip, as well as the relatively painless way she dispatches the enemy and subsequent humble and clever way she distracts Harry’s attention away from her bionics make this a classy episode. A-
Claws
Not all BW stories involve crime-stopping. Sometimes it’s nice to see her just living and being a positive influence. When a friend with a menagerie of exotic pets including a tame lion is called out of town on business, Jaime and the neighbor girl her friend pays to help out must keep the big cat safe from the woman’s other neighbors – who want to gun down the poor beast, wrongly assuming it is responsible for recent livestock losses. Being a fairly transparent remake of the $6MDM “Taneha” episode, this one’s almost too dorky for words. It’s always worth seeing Lindsay in full loving-kindness mode, though. C+
The Deadly Missiles
Oscar asks Jaime to spy on an old family friend, which she agrees to do very reluctantly (and with engaging realism, as cleverly arranged through a touchingly human happenstance we can all imagine occurring in the kitchen). As she suspected all along, the man himself is as innocent as she is, but he’s hurt that she’d even wonder about him for a minute. To make matters worse, the culprit turns out to be Jaime’s friend’s new right-hand man – someone who knows how the OSI works, and plans to make them pay dearly for interfering with his plans. Steve has a contrived and pointless cameo, but it’s really Jaime who saves the day. The dramatic tension between Jaime and her friend, and the way they’re forced to work together to avert the threat are what drive this episode. B+
Bionic Beauty
An OSI agent is found “face down in the river Seine” just as the OSI receives word that a top secret gizmo will be spirited out of the United States, possibly under cover of a beauty pageant. Of course Jaime is the perfect agent to send in, and she speedily gets to the bottom of things and quickly saves the day. While there are some cute moments in this one, the writers felt the need to write in Steve’s mother, Helen as Jaime’s bumbling chaperone, who ends up getting taken hostage in the bad guys’ effort to force Jaime to stop interfering with them. This causes her to be a bit on the forceful side with mastermind “Ray Raymond”, though she’s quite gentle with his henchmen -- even saving one of them from getting run over in a car by his boss. Also, for her “talent” act in the pageant, the BW team cobbled together a complete rendition of Lindsay singing Roberta Flack’s “Feelings.” Yuck!! B-
Jaime’s Mother
Yet another ill-advised attempt to fill out the picture of Jaime’s family context, this one features an imposter who shows up pretending to be her mother. Of course the woman loses her professional detachment and starts falling for Jaime, repenting in a way no real enemy agent ever would. To make matters worse, while disarming the thugs sent to polish off both women in an almost sweetly gentle way the first time they make trouble, Jaime causes a hideous accident which nearly kills them both to save this emotional terrorist from being shot by them in the episode climax, later visiting her in the hospital and showing her a kindness which is just way too “girl power” to be either believable or any fun. D-
Winning Is Everything
A cassette tape (remember those?) with top secret info on it has been hidden away in a bar in the Central Asian sandbox of Kaftan (or is it “Taftan”, Oscar’s pronunciation – I know: Just don’t ask why the BW team wrote a liquor-serving establishment into a Muslim country), and Oscar decides the best way to get it out is by having Jaime pose as the second half of a man-woman racecar team entered into a Paris-to-Dakar-inspired mad dash across the country. Of course detouring to the town where the tape is hidden virtually guarantees a loss in the race, so Oscar hires a former champ, now badly lacking self-confidence after a crash, hoping he’ll prove fast enough to get Jaime to the tape ahead of any other racers with similar plans, but compliant about losing since that’s all he’s been doing lately anyway. This episode proves itself a real winner, though, as Jaime tenderly talks the master driver out of his self-induced funk and back into the game – and the winner’s circle as well (tape in hand, of course). A+
Canyon of Death
Before she would agree to be the bionic woman, Lindsay Wagner extracted an agreement from her show’s team that they would let her develop one story of her own per season. This one was her Season One effort, a story about how Jaime must struggle to keep a troubled Native American boy in school and away from his people’s burial ground in the desert military testing area outside the base school. The rub is: if Jaime can’t bring “Paco” in from his self-initiated recess, the very people responsible for safeguarding a new weapon may just kill him in their attempt to steal it! This one could have been way better if the BW team had decided to take some of Jaime’s gentleness shown toward “Chris” in the “Jaime’s Mother” episode, and give some to the man stealing the flying suit instead. That’s the problem with writing plots in which the bad guys threaten kids, and no doubt a big part of the reason that as the series wore on, we saw less and less of Jaime in the classroom. A-
Fly, Jaime
It helps going in to realize that just because one bionic program rips off the other from time to time, that doesn’t mean the story itself might not prove surprisingly enjoyable. This one is an almost verbatim recasting of the $6MDM Season One “Survival of the Fittest” episode, but where the original was stupid and predictable, Jaime/Lindsay is able do everybody some good – even the bad guys, whom she takes down with as little force as she possibly can. Because of this, and in no small part due to a truly soul-nourishing B story between Jaime and a medical washout who she ends up coaxing into saving Rudy Wells’ life [a key part of which was hacked right out of the version rerun on the Sci-Fi channel], this episode will reward as many viewings as you feel like giving it. A+
The Jailing of Jaime
Unfortunately, every superhero has to face a number of stock challenges, one of which is being wrongly accused of a crime. Exactly why the BW team suddenly decided to put her through several of these clichéd hoops in a row will probably always remain a mystery. Still, these stories are used so often because they cut the legend down to size and give the cardboard cutout a chance to show some humanity. This Jaime does in spades, quickly unearthing the truth – the man who ‘entrusted’ her with his high tech gizmo the night before is actually to blame – and taking both him and his henchmen down in a way which truly must have bruised only their egos. This is reasonably believable because after all, Jaime breaks right out of jail bionically, so she’s probably not very mad at Dr. Hatch. A-
Mirror Image
The next obligatory superhero snafu the BW team puts her through is confronting her doppelganger. That Lindsay must play both roles (until they meet up at the climactic moment – a strangely uncredited gig for the stand-in) makes this even more cool. This combo of acting skill, international intrigue and a truly soft takedown (Jaime returns a thug’s gunfire with several bags of dirty laundry) make this one another awesome installment in the annuls of everybody’s favorite superheroine. A+
The Ghosthunter
This one could have been really good. An OSI contractor in the Salem, Mass area is experiencing strange setbacks in his research – ones which seem to have a supernatural source. What the BW team should have done was make it clear that the man himself was responsible, having been burned out by overwork and corrupted by some foreign buyer’s offer of enough dough to retire and become a full-time single dad. What they do instead is to have the cause of the craziness be the man’s young daughter’s unrecognized Carie-esque telekinetic abilities! As we shall see when we look at the Season Two “Sister Jaime” episode, sometimes the BW team doesn’t think their stories through carefully enough. F
SEASON TWO
The Return of Bigfoot (parts 1&2)
Just like last season, the first half of this story is actually a Six Million Dollar Man episode. Some time ago, Stephanie Powers, Sandy Duncan, Andre The Giant and a couple other guys stumbled across Steve, who saved them from destruction – for which he was repaid by having his memory of them erased! This time it looks like Andre (Bigfoot) is committing crimes, which Steve is then blamed for since they look like bionic feats. Of course Steve looks even more guilty since he can’t point the finger at another suspect. But good news: Gillian (Sandy Duncan) finds Steve and restores his memory so he can save Shalon (Powers) and the rest, who’ve been overtaken and nearly killed by a breakaway group bent on conquering the Earth! These renegades are coercing Bigfoot’s assistance by threatening to kill Shalon, which, fortunately, they can’t actually do. But it takes all of Jaime’s bionic strength and human warmth to turn the tide, as Steve is nearly killed by Bigfoot when he escapes from OSI custody to clear his name. In the end, the bionic pair set everything right, and are offered relocation to the alien world. While sorely tempted, they reluctantly refuse, noting how much their home world still needs them. The final scene is cute: we see Steve and Jaime walking out of the alien command center through a vertigo-inducing tunnel of light, rejoining the human race and kicking off another season for both shows on a high note. Because of how gentle Jaime is with the bad guys (she actually convinces Bigfoot not to take revenge when he has the chance) and the role-model worthy way she sticks by friends, old and new, this episode is way cooler than it might otherwise have been. A-
“In this corner, Jaime Sommers”
As we’ve already seen, Steve and Jaime have had to be kept strictly apart – for the most part – on their separate shows for those programs to remain plausible and keep their respective audiences. Hence Jaime’s quotable rejoinder to Oscar, who wants to send her under cover into a ring of high tech spies as a female pro wrestler: “I don’t suppose you’d consider putting Steve in a dress, would you?” Oscar declines, so off Lindsay goes to stop Normal Fell (fight club director Mel Bigelow), Marj Dussay (a would-be Soviet triple agent named Dr. Brandes) and Marcia Shapiro (‘Mad Mary’ Maddox) from smuggling a top secret thingamagig out of the arena, and back to Mother Russia. This is a fun romp, in which Jaime doesn’t even have to knock anybody out. A-
Assault On ‘The Princess
A navy deserter is running a floating casino off the coast of South America, and the OSI learns he’s probably also sheltering a wanted terrorist, code name: “The Iceman”, who has stolen the working models of two newfangled batteries which will blow up if they get warm. Aware he lacks jurisdiction (a very important point which will come up again later in the season), Oscar nonetheless approaches the gambling ship with the cops, giving Jaime just enough time to bionically jump aboard before he is turned away. Jaime soon discovers “Lucky” (Ed Nelson) Harrison to be a reserved gentleman with a warm heart, in melancholy, self-imposed exile who wants only to be left alone to ply his relatively harmless illicit trade. But there’s still the matter of the energy cells and the Iceman, so Jaime must take this captain who fled his first ship into her confidence to get his help in saving his new one. Once again, Jaime finds ways to wash the Iceman’s evil plans down the drink without harming a hair on his head and boost the self-confidence of the bumbling but well-intentioned men around her – including Vito Scotti, who reprises his role as the lecherous Latin Lover Romero from season one’s “Fly, Jaime” episode – all without breaking any hearts along the way! A+
Road to Nashville
With the help of Doc Severinsen, Hoyt Axton, Fionnula Flanagan and others, Lindsay and the BW crew spin a charming yarn about letting love lead the way and forgiving those who love you the occasional slip as Jaime travels to Nashville to investigate a country singer who may be passing secrets to the enemy. As we’ve seen before, it turns out to be the man’s closest associates who are responsible, with girlfriend Tammy’s (Flanagan’s) betrayal cutting the deepest, as she’s the one who pulled Buck (Axton) out of the gutter through sheer unconditional love and grit. The hokey premise and Jaime’s slightly high-impact first takedown of the hired muscle pulls this one down a bit, but it’s still cute and fun. B+
Kill Oscar (parts 1-3)
Imagine your boss gets kidnapped, then instructs you to kill him rather than attempt a rescue by advance directive. Now picture the madman who’s got him: a megalomaniacal, ravingly misogynistic genius who used to work for the man whose fate he now controls. Would you be willing to risk possible treason charges to defy your chief’s heartless orders and also show true tenderness to the troublemaker when you finally caught him? Can you picture a world in which a rogue could hold North America hostage to his ability to control the weather, but still be treated with kindness and respect in the end? If so, you’re a confirmed bionic fan, and a movie lover to boot! Why this epic was never shown in theaters is beyond me; it’s certainly heart-pounding enough. As we’ve seen with multiparters in the past, the two bionic programs shared this one, with the central chapter being a Six Million Dollar Man episode (in which Jaime has been sidelined by evil Dr. Franklin (John Houseman, who incidentally worked opposite Lindsay once before, in the 1972 film: “The Paper Chase”) and his soon-to-be cult favorite “fembots” (“The ultimate women. Obedient and as beautiful or as deadly as I wish to make them”). For the one and only time in the entire televised history of the bionic universe until the reunion movies, Steve and Jaime work together to successfully stop a bad guy, and Jaime’s ultra-kindhearted threat to carry Franklin out of his doomed lair, and her subsequent equally lovingly empathetic words to him offered before she walks away to rejoins her victorious colleagues show what a classy chick Jaime really is. A+
Black Magic
With a power hitter like Vincent Price as a guest star, this one can’t help but be good. In a clear tribute to The Addams Family, the BW team creates the terrible Carstairs clan, whose patriarch (Price’s first role in this episode) has just died. The next eldest brother (Price’s second role here) and his dirty dozen are now after Price’s Will, in which there happens to be a top secret formula the OSI doesn’t want falling into the wrong hands. In the end, the butler’s the one selling out his country, and jaime’s almost sweet capture of the man and his foreign buyers elevate this camp above mere cult interest. A-
Sister Jaime
Even the very best shows have to hit rough patches now and then. As we saw in the case of the final episode of season one, sometimes it’s OK for there to be no villain, but when exactly that is can be tricky for writers to figure out. I said in the case of “The Ghosthunter” that the OSI single dad contractor should have been deliberately sabotaging his own project; then Jaime could have instantly empathized with his need for money and time with his angelic daughter, found way after way to put things back on track and finally convince the man that he could be both a parent and a patriotic American. That would have been both more believable and more fun than what we were eventually given.
By contrast, Sister Jaime is an episode which did not need a villain. Jaime is sent into a convent under a habit to find and recover some “industrial grade” diamonds, used only in military-industrial complex-type applications – a premise stretched beyond all semblance of credibility. She discovers the gems have been pilfered not by Interpol’s most wanted, but a drug ring (domestic naredowells over whom the OSI lacks jurisdiction). The pushers are in cahoots with a priest (I guess even back then the Catholic church had issues), and are storing their dope on convent grounds. This uncharacteristically incenses Jaime, who switches from sweet Sally Field-type faux “female Christian soldier” (her words!) to scorn-dripping, crook entrapping vigilante in her (of course successful) scheme to bring the dealers to justice outside convent grounds – a move necessitated by the fact that a legitimate church authority (the closest bishop) is taking time out of his busy schedule to pay a scheduled inspection visit on the place, the assumed purpose of which is to shut down the winery the nuns are operating on grounds of decadence, but really (so we’re told) in a very unChristlike act of misogynistic jealousy. In the end, even Oscar has to upbraid Jaime for her overzealous personal war on drugs, since she actually moves the contraband into a vehicle she corrals the bad guys into using. Because of this very hurtful frame-up job, this episode is totally ruined. F
The Vega Influence
After having written such an angry takedown, the BW team takes a break and sends Jaime along for the ride on a military supply-ferrying flight to Thule Air Force Base deep in arctic Greenland. When Thule tower’s final approach instructions deteriorate into incomprehensible gibberish, the crew decide to land and investigate rather than risk diverting on the fumes they’ve got left in their fuel tank. They quickly learn that the entire population of the base has been turned into zombies, coincidentally right after unearthing a strange rock out of the permafrost. This turns out to be a meteor, and it contains a form of life which wants to get taken someplace warm, where it will spread like wildfire, overrunning the entire world! One by one, everyone else on Jaime’s flight gets infected, but she remains strangely immune – as does one other person: the teenaged daughter of one of the base officers. As they team up together to first escape the zombies, then defeat the alien invasion force, Jaime deduces what makes them different: abnormal hearing (enhanced in her case, totally absent in the girl’s). This touching tribute to the abilities of the so-called handicapped, along with the heart-warming message of cooperation between new friends and Jaime’s quintessential kindness and loyalty even to those who are trying to kill her make this one a winner in spite of its hokey premise. A-
Jaime’s Shield (parts 1&2)
Since she’s spent the past year fighting crime already, Oscar & Co. figure it’s about time Jaime actually walk a beat – or at least pretend to be in training to do so – when they learn that a foreign agent has registered under an alias in the first ever class of mixed recruits in the history of the “Santa Regina” PD. Given Jaime’s record of gently deflating overblown male egos, this assignment seems like it’ll be a walk in the park. But under the constant flow of scorn from her trainer-then-partner, Jaime gets a bit brittle. When she bionically hears an old woman scream for help even though she’s in a moving squad car (and presumably not listening out for anything in particular), Jaime gets her superior to let her out, and she stops the purse snatcher she’s come upon by hitting him in the butt with an aluminum trash can lid, thrown Frisbee style. This is supposed to look like it didn’t hurt because there’s a couch in the pile of trash the man falls head first into, but they just have to have him wield a knife against Jaime so she can bionically bend it like a stick of licorice, threatening to do the same to the robber’s hands if he doesn’t let go. This episode continues to take itself way too seriously when Jaime is confronted by the foreign agent trainee, who turns out to be planning the assassination of a foreign dignitary on US soil. Jaime derails this by hucking a heavy metal chair at a sergeant who’s near retirement, and has gone corrupt; then, we don’t even see for sure whether he ever gets up or not! Because of this pandering to stereotypes and unnecessary violence, this episode is one definitely worth missing. F
Biofeedback
The second of Lindsay’s personally developed stories, this one inspired a real-life human miracle. A pair of brothers both working for the OSI are at odds because one of them (played by Granville Van Dussen) has some very flashy abilities (like being able to stay underwater for fifteen minutes and walk barefoot across smoldering coals, using nothing but the power of his mind, while the other sees his funding scaled back once the gadget he’s invented is perfected. Bitter and jealous, the man flees to East Germany, where the enemy (in the form of Lloyd Bochner) offers him a fortune to decode a document which will tell them about Steve and Jaime’s identities. Steve has his hands full with the rest of the gang (separate shows, after all), so Jaime is sent after the would-be traitor. But just as she’s about to bionically jump into the Evil Empire, the mental magician shows up and insists on coming along to help out. He and Jaime storm the bad guys’ fortress, but are caught, and the man is shot. Jaime is brought into the house, where she confronts the other brother about the consequences of what he’s about to do, and in light of this, he changes his mind about working for the enemy. Just as they’re about to be killed, however, Paten and Jaime are saved by Darwin – who, it turns out, can also run and fight after having been shot!! He can’t do much, but the distraction he provides gives Jaime the time she needs to huck a lamp at the criminals, in turn giving all three Americans the precious seconds they need to flee. It’s cute, and we can tell that she hasn’t really hurt anybody (the physics of the bionic universe and Jaime’s powers being set up as they are), and even brother Paten, who almost betrayed his country, faces no worse consequence than learning that his bro might just have something on the go after all. A- NOTE: About a year after BW went off the air, a real person used the techniques showcased in this episode to survive a horrific ordeal. Having been raped and left for dead with both arms completely amputated by the criminal, the girl got herself to safety by meditating, as she was inspired to do by this episode since she knew her body very well, and had an uncle who meditated regularly, and had once shown her how to do what he did. THAT’S the power of a really good TV show.
Doomsday Is Tomorrow (parts 1&2)
A serious contender for best episode of the whole series, this one focuses on nuclear disarmament. When eminent physicist Dr. Elijah Cooper (Lew Ayres) gets sick and tired of the whole world talking about peace instead of actively pursuing it, he decides to do something about the problem. Banking on his longterm reputation as a credible scientist not given to overstatement, Cooper takes over the world’s airwaves and broadcasts the ultimate ultimatum: never blow off a nuclear bomb again, or within six hours Cooper will rain doomsday down on the earth! To add veracity to his threat, Cooper invites four physicists from Russia, Japan, France and of course the good ‘ole U, S of A (in the form of Rudy Wells) to his complex, where he promises to convince them his deadly invention is real. Conveniently enough, one of the researchers is a woman Dr. Cooper has never met, so Jaime is subbed in for her, providing an opportunity for one of the most delightful – if not downright delectable – scenes in the whole run of the show when she has to avert the man’s suspicion over being younger than he had believed someone of her stature would be. Next, the others arrive, and they all try to convince Cooper that he should disarm his device and let the world work out its squabbles its own way. But Cooper has planned ahead; his device – once activated – cannot be shut off, and in a final act of determination, he arms the system in front of them. Now the die is cast, and the entire world has no choice but to refrain from nuclear brinksmanship, or even weapons testing until a plan of attack can be figured out. Of course only the Bionic Woman can save the day, and she does so in a way which provides both plenty of action and a chance to deplore crime while paradoxically being in full support of the “criminal” as a man on an honorable mission we can all relate to. A+
Deadly Ringer (parts 1&2)
Lisa Galloway (Jaime’s Season One alter ego) is back, and this time, she and her bad boy boss, plastic surgeon boss, Dr. Don Porter, plan to kill Jaime so Lisa can take her place in perpetuity! As the episode begins, we see Jaime crocheting a decorative pillow Lisa will eventually finish with the words: “To your own self be true”. Breathing in knockout gas pumped in by two thugs outside her loft, Jaime falls asleep while working on the pillow, and wakes up in Lisa’s prison cell! To make matters worse, the prison doctor is in on the plot, and drugs Jaime through her food, rendering her bionics useless so that she really does look like Lisa with an identity complex! In the end, even after breaking out of her rival’s jail cell and discovering that the bad girl has actually assumed her identity and is living in her own home, Jaime still shows tenderness to the woman, an act made totally believable by both Lindsay Wagner’s brilliant (indeed Emmy winning) double portrayal and some wonderfully convincing writing. A-
Jaime and the King
In this delightful BW romp, Jaime is dispatched to Europe to act as in-home teacher to the son of an Arab sheik, as well as surreptitious bodyguard for this overly macho petty potentate. For its delightful message and the downright gentle way Jaime stops the evildoer, this episode richly deserves its grade: A+
Beyond The Call
A Vietnam vet who fathered an Amerasian child is fortunate enough to have her with him at home, but still deeply haunted by the events of his past. Making it worse, the girl, too, is psychically stuck on the battlefield, unwilling to talk to anybody and acting out against the world. Of course Jaime is able to see past the bad behavior of father and daughter to the wounded place inside, and her way of handling it earns this episode yet another A+
The DeJon Caper
Artful dodger Pierre Lambert makes his living forging some of the world’s greatest masterpieces, which then disappear off museum walls. When the OSI catches him, the man is too scared of his boss to help them until Oscar teams him up with Jaime and sends him home to Paris, where he and Jaime pull off their own masterpiece: the utterly painless and charming capture of the criminal mastermind and prevention of his final theft: A+
The Night Demon
When Jaime arrives for a surprise visit with a Native American friend on her way to deliver something to the base near his home, she discovers that one of the man’s other buddies is about to con him into selling his land to a local store owner, knowing as he does that the land has valuable uranium under it . Once again, Jaime manages to crush this plot without hurting the bad guys, but the writers miss out on the chance to have her rehabilitate them – something which could have been accomplished so very easily. B+
Iron Ships and Dead Men
Oscar’s older brother was on assignment for the navy on the day of Japan’s fateful attack on Pearl Harbor – carrying a suitcase full of cash which, along with the man, suspiciously go missing. Oscar appeals to Jaime to help clear his brother’s name, which she is able to do in a delightful way, which once again doesn’t hurt anyone as much as their protests make it seem. A-
Once A Thief
We all know the rest of this saying: “…always a thief.” But is that necessarily true? This series’ consistent message has been that not everyone who commits a crime is a bad person. So when she is first burglarized, then carjacked by the same well-spoken elderly gentleman, Jaime defies Oscar’s orders and risks prison or death at the hands of the man’s former associates to save him and find a way to help the man repay society for what he’s done without paying with his money or his time. A+
SEASON THREE
The Bionic Dog (parts 1&2)
As the BW team prepared to kick off what would prove to be her final season on the air, they had to deal with changing networks, as ABC had somehow decided to drop the show. Bionic scribe and producer James Pariott says in a 2007 book by Herbie Pilato that he and the rest of the team thought they might be able to spin off another series: The Bionic Dog, and since they knew she’d never get to encounter Steve again (since his show remained on what was now a rival network), they let Jaime take home the test animal which led to her and Steve’s bionics as a pet -- eventually. As the episode begins, Oscar and Rudy want to put the animal down, and Jaime has to dog-nap him. This episode becomes a two-parter so that the BW team can also introduce a replacement for Steve, a man they have Jaime go to for help in hiding Max (the dog). Unbelievably, they’re so lazy they have her “re-enter” the life of ex-beau Chris, whom she supposedly left high and dry without any explanation years ago, rather than write in a more in-character reason for her departure – like a mission – which could have given her character more depth and heightened the tension as well.. There ends up being no crime here, since Oscar and Rudy of course forgive Jaime for her kidnapping of Max, and let her keep him – BIG SURPRISE. C+
Fembots In Las Vegas (parts 1&2)
The cult-favorite villainous female androids created by John Houseman’s character in Season Two’s “Kill Oscar” epic story are brought back in this silly, rambling episode in which the man’s son revives them in a desultory attempt to avenge his father (the BW team having either forgotten or chosen to ignore the fact that in the series reality they’d previously established, the man was likely pardoned, and never even went to prison). C+
Rodeo
This is a sweet story, in which Jaime goes undercover as a cowgirl “hazer” – sidekick to a professional rodeo rider – in order to protect an OSI engineer with a penchant for roping steers when he should be crunching numbers for the free world. This one could have been perfect if not for a little nonsense you’ll see (or, rather, hear) as Oscar pulls up to the rodeo ring in the final scene: A-
African Connection
An Idi Amin wannabe is out to fix an upcoming vote to ensure his continued term as president of his country by using a piece of OSI technology to rig the count. With the help of an endearing elderly drunk Afrikaner local and a longtime black school chum, Jaime stops this from happening in yet another delightfully nonviolent campaign, doing things like gently pushing child soldiers down grassy slopes and putting them to sleep with trank darts “shot” by her bionic arm. A-
Motorcycle Boogie
This time the BW team managed to et the real Evel Knievel to play opposite Jaime in an unbelievably fun (if impossibly corny) wild ride behind the Iron Curtain. The two reclaim a computertape so the Soviets can’t destroy our national defense, giving Jaime the chance to tenderly sideline a Keystone Cop-like modern-day goosestepper and strip him so Knevel can use his uniform to spirit her and the tape out of the building!! A+
Brain Wash
On one of Jaime’s visits to Washington to visit her colleagues, she overhears trusted friend Peggy Calahan (Jenifer Darling) revealing top secret info which could get Oscar and a confidential informant killed. Knowing her friend wouldn’t betray anybody’s confidence willingly, Jaime investigates the new man in the secretary’s life, and confronts him when she discovers that he is getting top secret data out of high-powered women’s heads by washing their hair with a special shampoo containing truth serum. Not willing to torture the man or threaten him with his own gun, Jaime first gets his plan out of him with his own shampoo, then saves Oscar’s would-be assassin from jumping to his death by gently and matter-of-factly lashing his leg to an iron railing. A+
Escape to Love
The teenaged son of a defector from Eastern Europe falls back into the hands of the Evil Empire when he freezes and won’t follow his father across the border into the West. Now Jaime has to save the boy, both from the forces of darkness and from his own lovesickness for her, which threatens to undermine his newfound freedom. A-
Max
With Jaime in the hospital (for an undisclosed reason), the bionic dog is being cared for by friends, who implant him with a high-tech tracking device lest he be kidnapped – which he of course is. It’s not long before Max escapes, and going after him is the last thing his kidnappers do as free men, but not because of anything Jaime – who is still sidelined – does. D+
Over-the-hill Spy
Oscar just barely manages to coax a retired agent back into the field when the man’s nemesis resurfaces. But the veteran agent will have to work with Jaime – whose bionics are not revealed to him – if he wants to collect the big payday Oscar promises him. The ways Jaime uses her bionics against the bad guys are hard to watch, but in the last (and most important) case, she shows a tender concern for the man she’s just “bionicated” (a friend’s word), and she also encourages her partner – who has since captured his rival – to let the man go, which he does. B+
All For One
Jaime goes undercover as a college kid in order to stop a student from stealing tens of thousands of dollars, which he turns out to be using to put his thirty-eight best friends through college, while actually being too busy stealing under cover of a legitimate job on campus to attend the school himself. If not for the horrible way Jaime stops two gun-toting thugs at the very end of this episode, this one would have been perfect. B+
The Pyramid
Jaime and her new boyfriend, Chris, have quite a wild date when they decide to investigate a suspicious area they’d have known to leave well enough alone in real life. Chris figures out that Jaime is bionic; there’s a nice moment as the two grow in intimacy through this revelation, and then they’re captured by a strange alien whose boss tells Jaime the earth will be destroyed unless she finds him enough electrical power to send his rapidly approaching mother ship a message that he’s not under attack. Jaime has to steal a nuclear-powered battery from the OSI, and though what she does to stop the man guarding it from arresting her clearly doesn’t hurt as much as his grunt makes it sound like it does, writing a gentler takedown would have been so easy! A-
The Antidote
Once again the Cold War gets tapped for villains, and once more Jaime is in the hospital – this time the victim of a poisoning. The culprit informs the OSI that the antidote will be forthcoming once Jaime reveals the location of a planned meeting between Oscar and a man the enemy wants to assassinate. She refuses, of course, and it falls to, who else but the bionic dog, Max to save Jaime by attacking the fake nurse sent into the hospital to polish her off. D-
“The Martians are coming, the MARTIANS are coming!”
When Jaime sees a “UFO” descend upon Rudy Wells and spirit him away, she’s naturally skeptical. It turns out that the “flying saucer” is really an everyday helicopter surrounded by a hologram. In a dumb attempt to show Jaime as a normal twenty-something woman, they have her show romantic interest in a reporter who thinks the whole thing is a government cover-up. Interestingly, the “bad guys” do turn out to be closely connected with the OSI, and Jaime stops them in a fairly painless manner. But unlike her usual M.O. during Season Two, Jaime does not redeem the wayward couple. A-
Sanctuary: Earth
Another piece of pure BW fun guest starring Helen Hunt (in the role of an alien princess on the run from her parents’ rivals), this one sees Jaime preventing Hunt’s character from being kidnapped with the help of Max, whom she admirably calls off the would-be abductors once they are no longer a threat. A-
Deadly Music
Oscar asks Jaime to help install an earthquake-detecting device on the ocean floor when one of the members of the crew she is to join threatens to quit after another is injured under suspicious circumstances. Delightfully, Jaime solves the case with her brain instead of her bionics, and the way she forces a confession out of one of her fellow divers is justified by the fact that we know she’s too compassionate to ever let a shark attack him, though that’s precisely what he was trying to do to her. A+
Which one is Jaime?
This one’s yet another delicious piece of mind candy. Some bad guys are onto the fact that the OSI has a super-strong female agent, so they hatch a plan to kidnap Jaime and sell her to the highest bidder. But Oscar gets wind of the plot, and decides to call Jaime in to get ready for a nonexistent mission so he won’t have to tell her she’s in danger. Somebody has to take care of Max, though, and Oscar has Calahan move into Jaime’s house to dogsit. This leads the crooks to assume Calahan is Jaime, and to kidnap her instead. As Jaime grows more and more suspicious (since Oscar has never operated this way before), she listens in bionically, and overhears a tape recording of the ransom call in which Calahan’s kidnappers, having discovered she’s not Jaime, demand that their real prey be brought to them or they’ll kill Calahan. Jaime of course proceeds to break her friend out and capture her captors, downright tenderly wrapping one up in a metal fence and sidelining another with a stuffed animal to the knee – a course of conduct not significantly marred by the hideous way Max nearly kills two other goons, since Jaime had to enlist the dog’s help in order to escape herself, the bad guys having captured her when she arrived in the tool shed where they were holding him and Calahan until he broke out – a pointlessly forced use of this pointless “character”. A+
Out of Body
Always wanting to portray Jaime as solving her cases by positively affecting people’s lives rather than because she’s physically strong, Lindsay Wagner leaves an unmistakable imprint on this episode, in which a Native American teenager of her acquaintance is almost killed in a dastardly effort to implicate him in the theft of a top secret gizmo. Hovering between life and death in a hospital bed, the boy manages to communicate on a spirit-to-spirit level with Jaime (I know, but in this case, believe me, it actually works), which he can’t fully manage until he releases his wish for vengeance against the man who framed him. Even so, Jaime ultimately discovers the truth only when the culprit sets her up to be killed, and even so she stops him and his henchmen with no violence whatsoever – even managing to soothe the man’s fears that she’ll just go off on him as she’d be totally justified in doing. A+
Long Live The King
The Bionic Woman’s antepenultimate mission is completely ruined by the gratuitously violent ways in which they have Jaime take down her adversaries. The king of a Middle Eastern country is in danger from assassination on his visit to New York, so Oscar calls in Jaime to be the monarch’s “social secretary” – the last person would-be killers would ever see as a threat. All the team would have had to do to make this a good episode is have Jaime show an ounce of compassion to the men she “bionicates” – helping them to their feet or taking their hands in hers as they lie disarmed on the floor, for instance. But instead, they seem more interested in making this episode into precisely what Lindsay Wagner wanted the program never to become: a simple live-action cartoon in which the hero obliterates the villains, who are as one-dimensionally evil as she is cardboard-cutout-style “lawfully good” (in the Dungeons and Dragons sense). 0 points
Rancho Outcast
The familiar, gentle Jaime is back in this blessedly low-impact piece in which Oscar sends her to Central America in the company of a petty hood who claims to be the only one who can identify a wanted criminal kingpin, who has taken refuge in a banana republic notorious as an outlaw haven. Of course “Peetie The Weasel” plans to weasel his way out of his commitment to Jaime, but when she is discovered and captured, he can’t leave her behind even though she tells him to – any more than you or I could!! Jaime does some impressive dancing, showing her good humor by wondering aloud if her performance will match up with that of a local legend, and she sidelines the crooks in another completely painless way, returning to the States to ask Oscar for permission to personally deliver a pardon to Peetie, rather than calling in the cavalry to bust anyone else. A+
On The Run
The final episode of The Bionic Woman is also Lindsay Wagner’s personal statement of her feelings about playing a cybernetic superheroine, her final personally developed story. After saving a little girl -- played by the same actress who played Kim in Season Two’s “Beyond The Call” episode -- from being kidnapped (in a typically gentle but visually arresting way), Jaime begins to burn out, becoming disillusioned by her role as a secret agent whose only real asset is her bionic superpowers. When she tells Oscar she wants out, Jaime suddenly finds herself, well, on the run from the very people she has been working for these past three (by our world’s actual calendar only two) years! Oscar fights for Jaime, but is overruled by his superiors, who plan to sock her away on a comfortable but isolated ranch she will never be free to leave so that no enemy will be able to learn of the reality of bionics. First Jaime runs to her boyfriend, Chris, but leaves him again so he won’t be implicated in her escape. In the end, Jaime finds her way to a park, in which a bummed out boy is avoiding interacting with his blind father, who can’t play ball with him anymore. Of course it would have to be a tennis ball the boy is throwing around, and Jaime accidentally crushes it (as she’s done every week in the opening credits sequence) in frustration as she tries to convince “Tommy” that he should give his dad a chance to be just as fun as he used to be in whatever way he can in his new condition. This whole encounter makes Jaime realize that she’s being hypocritical, asking others to overlook a condition of hers which makes her as “different” as Tommy’s father now seems to him. Realizing this is too much to ask, Jaime allows herself to be brought in, and in an effort to honor her friends in the government (as well as leave the possibility of a comeback series open), tells Oscar she’ll consider going on more missions in the future, as long as that can happen on her terms, and woven into the naturally developing fabric of her own life. B-
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