Ben’s Bionic Woman Episode Guide
Regular Cast:
Lindsay Wagner ---------- Jaime Sommers
Richard Anderson ---------- Oscar Goldman
Martin E. Brooks ---------- Dr. Rudy Wells
San Chew Jr. ---------- Mark Russell
Richard Lenz ---------- Dr. Michael Marchetti (Seasons One and Two only)
Dee Timberlake ---------- Karen Stone (Season One only)
Jenifer Darling ---------- Peggy Calahan (starting Season Two)
Christopher Stone ---------- Chris Williams (starting Season Three)
Lee Majors ---------- Col. Steve Austin
Martha Scott ---------- Helen Elgin
Ford Rainey ---------- Jim Elgin
Rita Egleston ---------- Jaime Sommers’ Stunt Double
Broadcast Timeline
Season One: Wednesdays from January 11th thru May 26th, 1976 on ABC
Season Two: Wednesdays from September 22nd, 1976 thru May 4th, 1977 on ABC
Season Three: Saturdays from September 10th, 1977 thru May 13th, 1977 on NBC
NOTE: $6MM episodes involving the bionic woman:
(Season Two): “The Bionic Woman” (parts 1 & 2): Sundays, March. 16th & 23rd, 1975
(Season Three): “Return of The Bionic Woman” Sundays, September 16th & 21st, 1975
(Season Four): “Return of Bigfoot”: Sunday, September 19th, 1976
(Season Four): “Kill Oscar”, Part Two: Sunday, October 31st, 1976
Overall Observations: The Bionic Woman Formula
On the day season two of the Bionic Woman debuted, I turned eight years old. Up till
then, I’d been a normal boy except for being too nearsighted to enjoy or do well at sports.
In fact, I took a lot of ribbing – not for my athletic deficiencies, but because of what I
preferred to do with my Wednesday nights. Like everyone else, I watched way too much
television. Unlike my friends, my favorite superhero was…a girl!!
If (as the opening credits scene of The Six Million-Dollar Man always reminded us)
Oscar Goldman of the OSI (Office of Scientific Investigation) rebuilt astronaut/accident
victim Col. Steve Austin “better, stronger, faster”, then he was before, then doing the
same for Steve’s counterpart -- the love interest ABC only planned to have around long
enough to provide a couple weeks’ variety on his show -- unexpectedly did much more: it
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brought to life one of the most fantastically adorable crimebusters ever to grace the
screen! Unlike Wonder Woman, Jaime Sommers had been a very mortal (if athletically
gifted) person before her skydiving accident. But in the process of mastering her bionic
abilities and coming to terms with her new life, Jaime became sweeter, prettier and
gentler than any super-person before or since, setting the Gold Standard by which to
judge all others. Down-to-earth even when vaulting thirty feet into the air, able to deflate
the biggest egos with jibes gentle enough to keep their owners’ self esteem mostly intact
and possessed of a gentle wit which saw through the absurdity of the innumerable
hairbrained schemes of the crazy men around her (but never allowed her to get a swelled
head or take herself too seriously), Jaime showed fierce, uncompromising loyalty to her
friends, and unapologetic, urestrained tenderness toward nearly everyone -- including
felons of all descriptions -- having an undisclosed bionic ability to make most of the latter
fall asleep even before whatever she threw at them knocked them to the ground. Never
flashy or jar-headish, Jaime was the poster-person for compassionate law enforcement, as
well as the ultimate low maintenance girlfriend -- first to Steve Austin on his show, then
later to OSI civilian contractor Chris Williams (Christopher Stone) on hers. And she
fitted all her bouts of saving the world in between such everyday schoolteacher-type
duties as bake sales, field trips and algebra and social studies lessons – making viewers
wonder just how her kids managed to learn anything with her gone so often!!!.
Though most of her exploits were silly – campy, even – the bionic woman had one more
thing going for her: Lindsay Wagner’s determination to ensure that she saved the day not
just because she was strong on the outside, but rather because of her inner core of tender
firmness and her constant commitment to making a positive difference in people’s lives.
In an interview she gave for a (1999) Lifetime special about herself, Lindsay reveals how
she was always making the scriptwriters alter the plots to allow this inner vitality to make
its way to the surface. In the end, that is what has made The Bionic Woman such a
cornerstone of great television.
Perhaps Jaime said it best when she told the ALEX 7000 supercomputer (in Season
Two’s: “Doomsday Is Tomorrow” episode) that her unusual limbs were made of “sugar
and spice.” That’s as apt a description of the whole program as any I know, as perfect a
way to describe what Jaime Sommers stood for as anyone could hope to come up with.
So without any further ado, let’s get on to…
Episodes of Season One
Welcome Home, Jaime, Part One (airdate: Sunday, January 11th, 1976)
As the first episode of the series opens, OSI supervisor Oscar Goldman is dictating a
memo to the Secretary of State about the health of the bionic woman, and Oscar’s grave
concerns about sending her on missions in light of her continuing issues. Having killed
Jaime off at the end of her first $6MDM appearance, the BW team had to make a special
effort to portray her as worthy of her own program. Thus this first half of the Bionic
Woman pilot shows our heroine moving past the physical and emotional difficulties
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which sidelined her on The Six Million-Dollar Man, and laying down roots of her own,
albeit in the same town she and Steve grew up in: Ojai, California. Establishing herself
as a classy and selfless spirit, Jaime informs Oscar she wants him to call on her whenever
the OSI needs help – an offer he will all too soon have reason to accept. Jaime’s old foe
from $6MDM is back, and is secretly spying on Jaime, hoping to enlist her in his outlaw
organization. To test her, Harris endangers Jaime several times, including one in which
he has one of his men deliberately get in a car accident with her, at which point Jaime
rescues the man, providing just the proof Harris needs that he must have this unique
woman on his team! But Jaime doesn’t know this yet, and she doesn’t learn it until…
Welcome Home, Jaime, Part Two (airdate: Wednesday, January 21st, 1976)
With Jaime finally established as a schoolteacher and on-call black-op specialist for the
OSI, part two of her series pilot can finally get down to the business of her takedown of
corrupt industrialist Carlton Harris, whom she and Steve failed to stop during her last
appearance on the $6MDM. When Oscar visits Jaime’s classroom one afternoon, he is
full of concern for her well-being, and strongly lobbies for Jaime to leave Ojai and go
into hiding. Showing herself to be a woman of substance, Jaime gently refuses, and the
two consider their next move with regard to the rogue businessman. Looking around the
room for answers, Jaime gets a brainstorm: Harris is testing her because he’s thinking of
trying to hire her away from the OSI. Assuming she is right, Jaime hatches a plan to
stage a fight with Oscar to make it seem to Harris as if she might be open to an offer.
When he takes the bait, Jaime heads out to their scheduled rendezvous with high hopes of
settling an old score and snaring her first villain. But complications ensue when the
tycoon’s son, Donald, discovers Jaime’s real purpose, forcing her to do an anti-sales job
on the young man, convincing him that his own father deserves to go to prison! But
unbeknownst to both of them, a far worse fate awaits Jaime than mere failure on her
mission, should she fail to persuade Donald. In a climax which will establish Jaime as a
compassionate superagent, Jaime disarms both Harris and his henchmen as well as
Donald, telling him as gently as she can that she has to call the OSI to turn his father in.
As a story, it’s not much. But this episode does what it’s supposed to: it establishes
Jaime Sommers as someone who stops crime without hurting the criminals, who doesn’t
hold grudges or relish revenge. We see that strength and sweetness can co-exist. And
we’re left wanting to see much more of The Bionic Woman.
Angel of Mercy (airdate: Wednesday, January 28th, 1976)
When the U.S. ambassador to a small Central American country and his wife are trapped
under a collapsed building in a guerrilla-infested jungle, Jaime is whisked out of her
classroom right after the period in which her students ask about the unfolding drama as
part of their study of current affairs. Jaime is dismayed to discover that jaded chopper
pilot Jack Starkey (Andy Griffif) is to be her only support on this trip. When they come
upon a pre-teen rebel in the midst of their search, Jaime proves herself worthy of this
episode’s title as she refuses to abandon the boy, bringing him along for guidance and
safe passage through enemy territory. Upon finding the trapped couple, Jaime uses her
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bionics to dig them out, unaware that the child has seen her. Then she must reveal her
abilities again when the main rebel force comes upon them, prompting this sweet,
tongue-in-cheek exchange between herself and Starkey: “What kind of woman are you?
“A very frightened one. Now, what’s next?” When it’s time to say goodbye to their
young friend, Jaime kisses him tenderly when he starts to cry. Order and hope restored,
Jaime and Starkey jet off into the sunset, returning to Ojai just in time for the next day’s
class, in which the kids are eager to relate how a brave pilot just saved the ambassador
they were discussing the day before! Jaime stays mum about her role in the affair, only
pausing to correct one student’s pronunciation of the name of the Hispanic child –
pointing out correctly that the letter “j” sounds like “h” in Spanish. “How do you
know?’, one of the kids asks, to which Jaime replies simply: “I’m a teacher. I’m
supposed to know things like that.” An endearing episode all around, especially as it
reveals Jaime’s soft, feminine side while also showcasing both her bionic powers and the
restraint and humility she must constantly adopt in order to keep those abilities secret.
A Thing of the Past (airdate: Wednesday, February 18th, 1976)
One fine day, Jaime takes her class out for a field trip, unaware that two men in a trailing
car have taken quite an interest in them. The boys don’t want to let the girls join them at
baseball, giving rise to a fun scene in which Jaime bionically hits one out of the park. We
also learn that she and the schoolbus driver had secret crushes on each other for years. So
when the man shrinks from the linelight after saving everybody’s lives on the way home,
Jaime is bemused. This quickly turns to worry when two “insurance claim adjusters” –
really the mysterious hoods we saw earlier – pay Jaime a visit, asking about the driver,
but not the accident. Their motive soon becomes clear: “Harry” is really Walter Kruger,
a witness to a twenty year old murder! Now the killer and his henchmen are out to nab
Kruger separately, causing Jaime double trouble as she must first get her friend to accept
her help, then protect him without letting on about her bionics. This is a nice enough
piece, showing Jaime’s fierce devotion to her friends and once again highlighting the
skillfully low key way she handles awkward questions about her super powers. Jaime’s
takedown of the two hoods is relatively tame, while the way she jumps on the assassin’s
shoulders would seem a bit excessive except that she does it in a way that sends him into
a relatively soft landing among a mountain of cardboard boxes. For the first time we see
a power of Jaime’s which is never talked about: her ability to knock the bad guys out
without aftereffects before they even hit the ground. Contrast this with the Six MillionDollar Man, whose fights are always super realistic, his opponents reacting the way they
would in real life, including not being able to get back up if Steve knee-caps them with
whatever’s close at hand. But this is the Bionic Woman, after all: we don’t want
anywhere near the same level of violence. While the plot of this episode is nothing to
write home about, it’s still a fine example of what makes the show so sweet.
Claws (airdate: Wednesday, February 25th, 1976)
When a girlfriend is called out of town on business, Jaime and a neighbor girl are left in
charge of the woman’s menagerie of exotic pets – including a lion! Local ranchers have
been losing cattle lately, and when Jaime tells them she’s seen a cougar, they don’t
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believe her, and hatch a plan to lure “Neil” out into the open so they can shoot him! Even
the sheriff doubts her story, so Jaime has only her firm certainty of Neil’s innocence to
shield the big cat from destruction! Corny though it is, this one will appeal to those who
want to see Lindsay, but aren’t interested in crime stories. She also uses her bionics a
couple times to keep the animals safe and in line.
The Deadly Missiles (airdate: March 3rd, 1976)
An old family friend stands accused of shooting a rocket at L.A. from a stock the military
is letting him develop on his private property. Jaime doesn’t want to spy on the man, but
is convinced by Oscar’s pleading, and a touching detail you’ll see when you watch this
episode. But what Jaime finds jeopardizes her bionics, and now she must share her secret
with the very man she’s investigating, and enlist his help if either of them is going to
make it out of this alive! A mildly enjoyable if not terribly memorable episode.
Bionic Beauty (airdate: Wednesday, March 17th, 1976)
Setting a precedent Wonder Woman would later follow, Jaime goes under cover as a
beauty queen wannabe. Of course she recovers the gizmo she’s after, and her capture of
the bad guys is a mixed bag, leaning just slightly to the gentle and considerate side.
Sadly, the contestant-conspirator slated to win gets the most votes anyway, and the
concluding scene is an embarrassing faux redemption in which she does nothing but
swear to Jaime that she’s reformed. The BW team was trying its best, but sadly this
episode only rates a B- in the end. Just like the next one, its problems would have been
so easy to fix that one simply suspects that the full value-added formula for the show
hadn’t been arrived at yet – an issue which happily gets resolved by the beginning of
Season Two.
Jaime’s Mother (airdate: March 24th, 1976)
When a woman shows up one day claiming to be Jaime’s mother, the bionic woman
instantly senses trouble, for her parents were killed in an auto accident when she was a
teenager. Sadly, her new friend indeed turns out to be an imposter, and Jaime really hurts
the guys who kidnap her at gunpoint. What makes it all worse is how gently she
disarmed them earlier in the episode. Give Lindsay a break, though: not everything we
see on The Bionic Woman is her choice. This one earns a C- for effort. Watch it once,
then move on.
Winning Is Everything (airdate: April 7th, 1976)
Jaime goes after her second thingamagiggie -- this time a cassette with top secret data on
it which has been hidden in plain sight at a bar in the “newly liberated” Central Asian
sandbox of “Kaftan”, host to an annual 500 mile drag race, conveniently featuring a man
and a woman in each car. Oscar hires has-been champion Tim Saunders to drive Jaime to
her rendezvous, figuring he won’t argue with her request to detour too hard. But
Saunders is looking for a comeback, and now Jaime must convince him to risk throwing
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away what may be his last chance without being able to tell him why it’s so important!
What makes this episode a winner is that in order to accomplish this, Jaime must pick at
the old scab of the man’s deflated self-confidence, while tenderly encouraging him to
believe in himself again. Of course they win the race and retrieve the datatape. The
closing sequence echoes a by now familiar refrain: Jaime gently disengaging from a man
who’s fallen in love with her. It’s cute and fun: an A- episode.
Canyon of Death (airdate: April 14th, 1976)
Behind this very corny title lies another sweet installment of Bionic Woman, with one
semi-OK takedown and one which is very painful to watch. On the very day a troubled
Native American student who’d rather commune with his ancestors than warm a desk at
school joins Jaime’s class, Oscar unexpectedly asks her to provide backup security for a
top secret new weapon; a personal jetpack flying suit, complete with tinted visor and
spacesuit-like shiny silver one-piece nylon outfit. When John “Paco” Littlebear bolts
following a classmate’s wisecrack, Jaime chases him into the desert, only to discover that
the very men responsible for safeguarding the high tech gizmo are planning to steal it,
and will kill anybody who gets in their way! In an effort to throw them off the trail,
Jaime allows herself and the boy to be buried by an avalanche the men create, causing
Paco to decide she’s really the ancient spirit of Sky Father, a humorous joke which nicely
ties the episode together. Shortly thereafter, Jaime is captured, making the Indian the
only hope for the survival of both the Free World and the world’s greatest superhero
show, a task made much harder by his well-established penchant for telling tall tales.
Inexplicably, Jaime hits a conveniently placed STOP button on the outside of the flying
suit, causing herself and the would-be thief to plummet three stories to the hard, dry
ground below. Use your imagination to conjure up a nicer image to end with, and
remember: since time on TV is limited, we can’t possibly be shown everything. C+ for a
good story, marred by unnecessary violence.
Fly, Jaime (airdate: Wednesday, May 5th, 1976)
So far, the producers of Bionic Woman have merely flirted with making Jaime’s feminine
wiles her main weapon on a mission. But when Rudy has to fly across South America
with a top secret formula in his head, the time has finally come to put her in a flight
attendant’s outfit and milk this delightful scene for all it’s worth! Have fun with this one,
a B+ romp with a touching dialog between Jaime and a reluctant helper, a proposition we
have great fun watching Jaime refuse (offered by Vito Scott in a role he’ll reprise just as
delightfully in Season Two) and a big surprise as to who the master crook turns out to be.
The Jailing of Jaime (airdate: Wednesday, May 12th, 1976)
One ordeal every superhero must undergo is to be falsely accused. So when Jaime
delivers her third top secret thingie to a base whose location she’s not even entrusted
with, she belatedly discovers it would have been a good idea to ask more questions before
accepting the assignment. Finding herself “detained” the very next morning, Jaime gets
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anxious, breaks out of jail and brings down the conspiracy with her usual speed and
efficiency. A fun if not memorable straight B episode.
Mirror Image (airdate: Wednesday, May 19th, 1976)
Yet another stock superhero story, this is the episode in which the bionic woman meets
her evil double, Lisa Galloway. Lisa, her plastic surgeon and a few of their no-good
friends have big plans to infiltrate the OSI, kill the real Jaime and conquer the Free World
– plans which get undone when the fraudulent crimebuster takes an impatient and badly
aimed shot at Oscar. The real Jaime shows remarkable restraint when disabling the man
who tried to kill her, and her confrontation with Lisa is almost an anticlimax. A nice
effort, worth at least an A-.
The Ghosthunter (airdate: Wednesday, May 26th, 1976)
A cheap way to end the season, this one sees Jaime going under cover as governess (yes,
they actually use that word) to the daughter of an OSI engineer experiencing unexplained
and potentially dangerous distractions which constantly pull him away from his very
important work. Unbelievably, these turn out not to be caused by foreign agents, but
rather are the Carie-esque physical manifestations of the man’s daughter’s subconscious
angst over his spending more time on his work than with her!! Our hearts are supposed
to be warmed by Jaime’s climatic confrontation with the girl, as she assures her that
daddy does so love her while the whole house comes tumbling down around them. In
reality, this scene works infinitely better on the Bionic Bloopers reel. BOO!!!!!
Episodes of Season Two
Preamble:
Season Two of The Bionic Woman debuted on my eighth birthday. As soon as I
caught the episode “Kill Oscar” (beginning on October 27th, 1976) I forgot all about The
Six Million-Dollar Man, and became an overnight Lindsay-ite despite my prepubescence.
The other stand-out episode of this season was “Doomsday Is Tomorrow” (January 19th
and 26th, 1977), the stretch of film which has stuck in my memory these past thirty years,
to which I was instantly transported when I first saw Lindsay in a 2005 ad for Select
Comfort’s “Sleep Number Bed.”
In many ways, Season Two was the high point of the Bionic Woman’s entire run, pitting
her against real people and raising timely issues in the context of action-filled stories
which taught without preaching. Some of my favorite episodes are actually in Season
Three, but by then quality had become erratic, swinging wildly between dynamite
heartwarmers and a few miserable train wrecks. In marked contrast, there’s not a single
bad episode in Season Two, just a few questionable offensive takedowns – a concession
to those fans who expected a certain amount of head busting before they’d tune in. Still,
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this middle act of The Bionic Woman remains a classic, and always will as long as
there’re folks who like sweet, smart and strong women on screen.
So, let’s stop wasting time, and get right into it. The first half of the story which kicked
off Season Two actually started on $6MDM. Jaime’s second run thus began with:
Return of Bigfoot, Part Two (airdate: Wednesday, September 22nd, 1976)
The second half of a two-part story begun the Sunday before on $6MDM, in this one
Jaime, Gillian (Sandy Duncan), “Shalon” (Stephanie Powers) and Steve Austin stop a
bunch of aliens from conquering (and also inadvertently destroying) the earth by gaining
the confidence of “Bigfoot” (Andre The Giant) and rescuing Steve with a miracle drug
from the alien homeworld. Upon crushing the plot, Jaime and Steve are offered new
lives in the visitor’s far-off society, but realize they have too much still to do here at
home. A touching if inconsequential way to begin a remarkable run of multi-part
episodes, some of which will definitely prove better than others and a continuation of the
trend toward high-powered guest stars. Worth viewing at least once.
In This Corner, Jaime Sommers (airdate: Wednesday, September 29th, 1979)
This is Jaime’s tour as a pro wrestler! Despite its hokey premise, it’s another chance to
see a kinder, gentler crime fighter in action, going after yet another high-tech, top secret
thingamabob. “Joltin” Jaime Sommers’ faux Indian getup isn’t exactly Lindsay’s hottest
outfit (that’s arguably reserved for the next episode), and her foes in this one hardly live
up to the diabolical brilliance of some later ones. Still, it’s the Bionic Woman in all her
glory. Another enjoyable episode.
Assault on the Princes (airdate: Wednesday, October 6th, 1976)
This turns out to be Jaime’s assault on the gambling cruise ship Princes Louise, captained
by navy AWOL suspect “Lucky” (Ed Nelson) Harrison, the first of a string of not-so-bad
guys Jaime will redeem and get off the hook from now on throughout the rest of the
series. Lindsay looks as ravishing as she ever will in her croupier outfit, and the Bionic
Woman trademark of quietly handling things, then allowing her softer, more feminine
side to save face for the bumbling men around her are in top form here. Vito Scott
returns to reprise his role as the pudgy, loveable lady killer Romero, and though she
avoids him like the plague at first, Jaime’s tender kiss for the man who goes below and
beneath any semblance of a safe core body temperature for her is reason enough to watch
this episode over and over again. This is exactly the stuff of Bionic Woman legend, the
very essence of why I love this show. A+
Road to Nashville (airdate: Wednesday, October 20th, 1976)
With Doc Severinsen as country legend Muffin Calhoon, this should be another sweet
chapter in the annuls of everybody’s favorite female crime buster’s exploits. But it’s
marred somewhat by Jaime’s not-so-gentle way of getting herself and Muffin out of a
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tight spot: pushing a grand piano at two thugs playing cards by the door of singer Buck
Buckley’s recording studio. We see the fallen hired guns get up and give chase almost
immediately. Still, it’s important to maintain the skill of believing that Jaime can knock
people out painlessly and instantly if you’re going to enjoy this episode. Lindsay’s
singing is just OK, and as for the “performances” of what we’re supposed to take for
country and western powerhouse Buck Buckley, let’s just say he’d be wise to keep his
day job. This episode rates a solid “B” for effort, and for the way Lindsay looks in her
cowgirl getup. Respectable if not exactly the brightest star in the BW firmament.
Kill Oscar, Part One (airdate: Wednesday, October 27th, 1976)
The first installment in what will turn out to be a three-part exploration of greed, out-ofcontrol science and misogyny and its discontents, this episode’s title comes from the
mandate OSI director Oscar Goldman has secretly given his staff in the event that he is
ever kidnapped. When this comes to pass at the hands of a brilliant but ravingly
avaricious former employee never identified as anything other than “Franklin”
(instantiated to absolute perfection by none other than John Houseman), Steve, Jaime and
their cohorts are plunged into a nightmare as they must simultaneously protect the
dangerous top-secret weather control device the man is after and disobey their superiors
at the NSA, who actually want to follow through with Oscar’s crazy orders!
Complicating things further are the “fembots”, Franklin’s secret-weapon android doubles
of some of the most important women in government service, which affect Oscar’s
kidnapping, nearly kill Jaime and embody everything evil and treacherous that Franklin
attributes to “the weaker sex”, but which are in fact straightforward projections of the
wickedness in his own shriveled heart. As this first chapter draws to a close, Jaime lies
unconscious in the hospital, the victim of an abortive takedown by the fembots, which
she first identified by noting how out of character two of her closest friends had been
acting recently. Now only Steve can save Oscar and the Free world, which brings us
right into…
Kill Oscar, Part two (airdate: Sunday, October 31st, 1976 on The $6MDM)
In this crossover continuation piece, Col. Austin must rescue Oscar and bring down
Franklin without Jaime’s help, since (in order to not upstage him on his own program)
she is laid up and out of action. But Steve and the OSI get a nasty surprise when they get
Oscar home: he’s another of Franklin’s robots! Now they’re out of the frying pan and
into the fire, as the fake Oscar has given orders for the weather-control machine to be
flown to an obscure island in the Caribbean, the new base of the diabolical former OSI
operative prepared to stop at nothing to prove his theories about the use of scientific
advances as military applications being more effective and useful than their peaceful
bionic counterparts. As this installment ends, we’re left in serious doubt about the
continued survival of America’s defense, and as unsure as Steve about whether his
beloved Jaime will live or die. It’s a nail-biting cliffhanger which will finally be resolved
on…
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Kill Oscar, Part Three (airdate: Wednesday, November 3rd, 1976)
As Sunday night’s $6MDM piece of this story ended, Jaime, Steve and Rudy had just
learned that not only does the madman Franklin now possess the weather-control device,
but he also still has Oscar and Calahan in his clutches as well. Holled up on a speck of
land in the Caribbean, Franklin is virtually laying siege to the continental United States
with his newfound ability to ravage the land with hurricanes, a point forcefully brought
home by guest star Sam Jaffe (in his guise as Admiral Richter). Somewhat unbelievably,
it transpires that no one outside the OSI is aware of Steve and Jaime’s bionics, so they
must sell Richter on the idea that they alone can land on St. Emile where the battle
hardened Navy Seals just failed. Showing admirable bravery, Jaime throttles her fear of
being launched from a torpedo tube along with Steve, and actually hits the shore first. As
the fembots are dispatched against them, first Jaime, and the Steve must battle their way
through what was the eye of a permanent cyclone, which Franklin has now brought onto
the island in a desperate bid to stop them. By the time the $12 million pair reach his
fortress, Franklin is prepared to allow himself to be drowned in, and by his own hubris,
but in one of the tenderest moments on any TV program, Jaime convinces him to come
along willingly – the alternative (which she graphically starts to demonstrate) being that
she’ll carry him to safety with her!! Even as the storm clouds clear and the tired party
(enlarged now by two, since Steve was able to rescue Oscar and Calahan) trudges to the
shore to wait for the cavalry, Jaime gently talks Dr. Franklin down from his madness, her
redemptive actions prompting his cold heart to grudgingly and belatedly warm just a few
degrees toward the female half of humanity, and prompting a Shakespeare-worthy
soliloquy on how the most unpredictable things in life (like the power of nature and the
forgiveness of strong but beautiful and compassionate women) are actually the best. She
does step away toward her colleagues in the very end, but Jaime is in rare form here, a
prime example of why the Bionic Woman kicks such boob tube butt. A+ all around!!!!!
Black Magic (airdate: November 10th, 1976)
Vincent Price plays a double role as the rich dying brother and the elder sibling who
binds together the very Addams-like Carstairs family in this blatant rip-off of the 1960s
show about the hilariously horrible clan of ghouls. Cyrus Carstairs knows he is dying,
and calls his devilish family together for the reading of his Will, which leaves his
considerable fortune to “the smartest” among them, and initiates a wild romp of a
scavenger hunt, since, hating them all equally, Cyrus’ method of deciding which of his
kith and kin has the most on the ball is to set them to looking for the key to his treasure
with nothing but the meager clues provided by the Louis Carol limerick about the walrus.
None of this would be OSI business except that among the millionaire’s papers is a top
secret formula which must not pass into enemy hands, hence Jaime’s appearance in the
guise of a long-lost Carstairs niece. Jaime is gentle enough with the traitor, and even
sweeter to Manfred, who tries to get away with the OSI envelope in the confusion of her
capture of the foreign spies, but this episode is still just too campy for words!! There’s
no denying that Lindsay looks sexy in her gypsy garb, but that’s not enough to earn this
episode anything more than a borderline A-. Still, you can’t go wrong with Vincent
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Price. Interestingly enough, Lindsay appeared years before in an Alfred Hitchcock
Presents episode. This is way more fun, though.
Sister Jaime (airdate: Wednesday, November 24th, 1976)
Sometimes the writers of even the best shows on TV get lazy. Since being a nun worked
so well for Julie Andrews and Sally Field, why shouldn’t it work for Lindsay Wagner,
too? Perhaps because camouflaging her shapely figure in a habit is just so, well,
POINTLESS. This one plays out like a cheap knockoff of the work of those other
leading ladies of ten years before, and fails to deliver the BW value-added elements of a
compassionate redemption of the bad guy and Jaime’s realistic willingness to let people
see her bionics in action when necessary. This one earns a mere C- for effort.
The Vega Influence (airdate: Wednesday, December 1st, 1976)
With the weather in the real world getting colder, Jaime is dispatched to Thule air force
base in northern Greenland, for exactly what reason we’re never actually told. On final
approach Thule tower suddenly stops transmitting, causing Jaime’s military transport
(against every regulation in any imaginable procedure manual) to land anyway, so she
and Dr. Mark Marchetti (the medic who saved her when her bionics rejected back on The
Six Million-Dollar Man) can go searching for the cause of this unusual reception. The
base seems to be deserted, but Jaime and Mark know there’s no place for the base staff to
go up here at the top of the world, so they keep searching, and eventually come upon a
strange rock in one of the deserted science labs. When even Mark goes missing, Jaime’s
mild apprehension turns to panic, alleviated only when she finds another person just as
scared as she is: a young girl, hiding inside a fighter jet in the hangar. Now the two of
them must race against a squad of zombies – the entire compliment of Thule base, plus
all the men Jaime flew in with – to keep a mysterious alien life form from getting to
warmer climes, where it will be unstoppable, and will take over the minds of every
person on Earth!!!!! This one rates an A- for the way its unoriginal storyline is handled,
with warmth and unexpected well-roundedness on the part of Jaime and her young
assistant. There’re a couple of one-liners here, none worth remembering, sorry to say.
Jaime’s Shield, Part One (airdate: Wednesday, December 15th, 1976)
The Bionic Woman’s first calendar year is rounded out with a stupid under cover op in
which she infiltrates the first ever class of all female recruits at her local police academy.
Since it’s Lindsay, we’re willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, remembering that in
1976, female crime fighters were much more scarce in the real world than they are today.
But this one does nothing but play on stereotypes, pandering to such assumptions as the
idea that women in uniform must be up to no good (a foreign agent has infiltrated this
small-town P.D. in the guise of a cadet), and that everyone secretly wants to assassinate
his or her own minor dignitary (in this case an Indira-Ghandi wannabe, who just happens
to be passing through Ventura, CA on her way to – well, we’re not supposed to know, I
guess). Jaime spends all of Part One unsuccessfully tracking the agent provocateur and
failing to prove herself worthy to wear a shield, a transparent and unenjoyable remedy for
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which will be forthcoming in Part Two, making a girlfriend of the chief’s daughter (who
naturally has enrolled in the academy in disguise, since dear ‘ole dad won’t hear of her
joining the force) and just generally mucking around in perhaps the second worst Bionic
Woman plot (after a real clunker in Season Three). Which brings us straight on into…
Jaime’s Shield, Part Two (airdate: Wednesday, December 22nd, 1976)
In light of the super-sweet ways she treats later bad guys, Jaime’s takedowns of Lt.
Partnow and a mugger in this resolution of last week’s not-quite-cliffhanger are pointless
and potentially off-putting for anyone not yet a confirmed Bionic Woman fan. The
female Indian leader lifts not a finger in her own defense, confirming two stereotypes at
once (that women are too weak to resist danger and that all Indians are swamis).
Meanwhile, Jaime finally proves herself worthy of a local beat (never mind that she’s
been saving the Free World every week for almost a year now) by bionically capturing a
petty mugger wielding a knife, which she bends in order to convince him to give up.
Both too fast and convenient a rite of passage, and patently unbelievable (wouldn’t her
veteran partner have insisted they bring along the deformed knife as evidence?), this
scene is made only slightly easier to watch by noting the fact that Jaime reprises a Season
One takedown by knocking the bad guy into a semi-soft stack of cardboard boxes, and
supports his knife hand gently with her left (unbionic) one, rather than simply snapping
his wrist like a twig, or shooting the knife out of his hand the way a real police officer
would have done. Eminently missable, this one rates a very low D-, redeemable only
because, having convinced her partner the mugger’s knife was “probably made of tin”,
Jaime must surely have given the poor sap a break when they arrived back at the station,
since she left behind the only evidence which would have made any charges stick. As to
throwing what we’re told is a forty-pound chair at Partnaw, let’s not even get into that
one!! Instead, let’s move right along to…
Biofeedback (airdate: Wednesday, January 12th, 1977)
Though it purveys yet another stereotype about “exotic” Oriental abilities, this first-of1977 Bionic Woman story brings us back to being able to enjoy the gentle,
compassionate Lindsay we’ve come to know and love. When sibling rivalry threatens to
tear both an OSI contractor family and the security of the Free World apart, only Jaime
(dressed in a simple mostly-black sweater) can restore order and give these feuding
brothers a second chance at family closeness. While Darwin Jones has the gift of such
complete control over his body’s autonomic processes he can get zapped, shot and nearly
frozen to death without a problem, Paten is high strung and mad as hell about losing his
research funding to brother dearest. When Paten defects to East Germany, Oscar sends
Jaime after him, and Darwin tags along! When the three are reunited in the villain’s
mansion, we see yet again why Jaime’s the world’s nicest superhero: she and Darwin
both want the same thing: for Paten to come home, make up with his brother and
continue his work for the right side. To get away, she hucks a floor lamp at the bad guys,
and when they arrive back home there are ABSOLUTELY NO NEGATIVE
CONSEQUENCES for the would-be traitor – except that he learns a lesson about the
importance of family unity, while brother Darwin discovers that being so wrapped up in
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himself all these years has been a mistake. Brilliant work: straight A, only less-thanperfect in relation to…
Doomsday Is Tomorrow, Part One (airdate: Wednesday, January 19th, 1977)
It’s just such a pain when you can’t keep up with the how-to shows on TV!! As Jaime is
cooking along with Julia Child one morning, Elijah Cooper (Lew Ayres) apologetically
interrupts on the emergency broadcast system. For the benefit of all mankind, Cooper
has decided to blackmail the world’s leaders into a nuclear truce by creating the ultimate
weapon of destruction: a device which will enshroud the world with radioactive particles
the next time a nuclear bomb is set off, ending all life on earth!! Cooper warns the world
that any attack upon his isolated complex will automatically trigger the device, and
requests that four eminent scientists – including Rudy Wells – come see his creation for
themselves to confirm its reality and lethality. Jaime is subbed out for the French
physicist on Cooper’s list, and it’s off to the races as she, Rudy and the others confront
Dr. Cooper, but fail to persuade him to back down from his intransigent stance. When
word comes that a small Middle Eastern country is planning a bomb test, the situation
goes from tense to critical, and since Steve is “still aboard the Skylab”, saving the entire
world from destruction falls straight into Jaime’s lap. As she bionically storms his
complex with the surprise aid of the Russian scientist, Jaime is torn between revealing
her special capabilities and playing it cool. But when Oscar phones to tell her there’s less
than three hours left till the bomb test, Jaime blows her cover and tenderly ushers
Ebtoohov through a minefield by listening out bionically for the high pitched hum the
mines make as they approach them. But Cooper’s defenses injure Victor, and Jaime must
continue alone, successfully breaking into the complex, only to be confronted by a
bewildered voice which seems to be coming from everywhere at once: the ALEX 7000
master computer, in whose very capable hands Dr. Cooper has placed his entire
operation. Hardly bothering with ALEX, Jaime finds Dr. Cooper having a heart attack,
and lovingly sits him down in his leather easy chair. Taking his hands in hers, Jaime
once more begs Cooper to call off his lesson, but he tells her he couldn’t do so even if he
wanted to. Cooper tells Jaime that one is never so close to life as when confronted by
death, then dies right in front of her!! Jaime is deeply moved, but her reverie is rudely
interrupted by ALEX, who has detected the detonation of the Mideastern bomb, and now
intends to see Elijah’s doomsday plan to fruition. As this first half of what may be the
best Bionic Woman episode ever comes to a close, Jaime and ALEX square off in a
winner-take-all duel whose prize is the fate of the entire planet Earth!!!!!
Doomsday Is Tomorrow, Part Two (airdate: Wednesday, January 26th, 1977)
Having just watched a scientist for whom she had unbounded respect and admiration die
in her arms, Jaime is now pitted against the luminary’s mirror image: the passionless and
ruthlessly efficient ALEX 7000 master computer, which controls the entire complex
housing Cooper’s doomsday device, and will stop at nothing to defeat any intruder who
would foil the stated wishes of its deceased master. As the mideastern bomb is tested,
ALEX triggers a six-hour countdown to Armageddon, forcing Jaime to attempt what its
disembodied voice repeatedly assures her is impossible: the dismantling of Dr. Cooper’s
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doomsday device. But before Jaime can take anything apart, she must get to it first, and
ALEX uses every tool at his disposal – including several rotten tricks – to stop her from
reaching the lowest level of the complex, where the doomsday device is housed. But at
length Jaime does reach the core, and begins dismantling the master computer’s central
memory array, prompting ALEX to advance the countdown and inform the world of its
destruction within a mere twenty seconds!!!!! In the event, however, Elijah is shown to
be a true man of peace, as instead of destroying the world, he has merely arranged for a
stone slab to be revealed, bearing a metal stele on which the Bible verse about beating
swords into plowshares has been inscribed. Jaime tearfully answers the nearby phone
and joyfully tells Oscar the good news, only to be rudely interrupted by ALEX, who has
no intention of “losing” at this juncture. Unable to see that its master never actually
intended to destroy the world, ALEX has discovered a way to bring Cooper’s nightmare
vision to pass, and now throws its entire pool of resources into the archetypal struggle to
win at any cost!!!!! Now Jaime must stop a B-52 from dropping one kind of radioactive
element on top of another type, stockpiled all around her, or every living thing on Earth
really will be killed. But ALEX’s defenses are still active, and it remains as emotionless
and obstinate as ever. In the end, Jaime’s only hope for defeating this high tech
superbully lies in a surprisingly low tech Achilles’ heel: an old sprinkler system which
was supposedly shut off when ALEX was installed.
Of course Jaime saves the day, and she, Victor Ebtoohov, Oscar and we viewers all learn
a simple but powerful lesson: that as long as there is hope, there is life. This episode
participates in a three-way tie for my all-time favorite Bionic Woman story, and its
sounds and images (Jaime storming Cooper’s ‘impenetrable’ fortress, the ALEX 7000’s
“soft soap” voice prematurely declaring victory every other second, and of course the
infamous “404 go code”, the three little numbers which very nearly destroy the world)
have formed part of my background consciousness these last thirty years. When Lindsay
Wagner appeared in a Sleep Number Bed commercial in 2005 it all came flooding back:
the primal contest between a petulant boy obsessed with winning to the exclusion of all
else, the girl whose love of life redeems even the wickedest evildoer, and of course the
simple, straightforward struggle to save the world from nuclear destruction – these
themes have resounded undiminished through the past three decades to be as timely and
relevant today as they were in 1977. In the aftermath of September eleventh, we can only
pause and wonder: what if there had been a sweet, gorgeous young woman with secret
super powers on hand that fateful Tuesday morning? Would we now be at war with
global terror? Or would love have won out and saved the day????? Are we as a society
even capable of producing that kind of uberfemme again? Will we learn the lesson a
simple tennis pro turned reluctant superspy taught us a generation ago? Have we got it in
us?????
Deadly Ringer, Part One (airdate: Wednesday, February 2nd, 1977)
[NOTE: Emmy Award for Best Actress in a Dramatic Series: Ms. Lindsay Wagner, for
The Bionic Woman]
Lisa Galloway is back in this two-part nailbiter which opens to reveal Jaime crocheting
the soon-to-become-prophetic message: “To your own self be true” into a decorative
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pillow. Still indistinct, these words blur even more as Jaime drifts off to sleep. But when
she wakes up in a prison cell, Jaime’s sweet dreams become waking nightmares!! Jaime
soon discovers she’s been switched out with her old nemesis from Season One, who is
scheduled to receive corrective surgery to restore her own face in a mere twenty-four
hours!! But nobody will believe Jaime’s story – not even Oscar, as we head right into…
Deadly Ringer, Part Two (airdate: Wednesday, February 9th, 1977)
Having escaped from Lisa Galloway’s jail cell by being too tired to eat enough tainted
food to get a full dose of bionic-cancelling poison, Jaime reluctantly takes a guard
hostage and demands the prison contact Oscar Goldman, to whom she at length proves
her true identity. The two quickly capture Dr. Porter, who is himself fooled into thinking
Jaime is Lisa, a humorous touch which is quickly overshadowed by an insidious turn of
events: in her increasingly delusional state, Lisa has assumed Jaime’s identity in her own
mind, as well as in the wider world. Having overdosed on adrenelizine, a top secret drug
which temporarily confers bionic abilities but eventually drives its users insane and
finally kills them, Lisa has gone AWOL from Dr. Porter, and is now planning to become
Jaime Sommers. After a rocky start in front of Jaime’s class, Lisa is accepted as Jaime
by everyone in her life, but in a climatic scene where the two face off, Jaime must defeat
her rival without killing her, in front of her adoptive mom, Helen. Strangely, the person
who plays Lisa in this scene goes uncredited, but does fantastic work, as of course does
Lindsay, who won an Emmy award for this episode, a rare occurrence in an era when
fantasy-based shows weren’t taken seriously by the TV award-conferring establishment.
As this episode ties up its loose ends, we’re privy to a touching scene between the two
former enemies in which Lisa finishes Jaime’s pillow and commits to honor its message
as a way to repay Jaime for all the harm she’s caused her. It’s hard to believe Jaime
could be so forgiving of such a persistent identity thief, but then this is The Bionic
Woman!! Stay tuned now for…
Jaime and the King (airdate: Wednesday, February 23rd, 1977)
It’s nothing but fun and our best Lindsay-ogling moment yet as Jaime goes undercover as
the home-school teacher to the son of a petty potentate from the Middle East, whose new,
pro-Western economic stand might just get him assassinated! But before she can even
begin to protect this father-son pair, Jaime will have to convince them that a woman can
be more than a pretty ornament. This episode has everything one could ever want: plenty
of intrigue, lots of action and one of the world’s most fantastically gorgeous women belly
dancing her way into our hearts as she takes down the gunman in the shadows in the
gentlest way possible. This one’s an A+ effort all around.
Beyond The Call (airdate: Wednesday, March 9th, 1977)
It’s just so sweet when Jaime gets somebody completely off the hook, which is exactly
what happens when a decorated Vietnam vet snaps under the pressure of being reunited
with a Vietnamese daughter who blames him for leaving her behind. The man blames the
army, and plans to sell its newest weapon, placing his honors inside the nose cone.
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Meanwhile, Jaime is watching the man’s love child, and having a tough time keeping her
in line. But when a thunderstorm wreaks havoc on everybody’s plans, a soldier who once
went above and beyond the call of duty for his country will have to do the same again,
this time for his own flesh and blood. This one’s quite nice, but not the very best. I give
it an AThe DeJon Caper (airdate: Wednesday, March 16th, 1977)
Another low-key BW romp, this one sends Jaime to Paris in the company of a master art
forger to retrieve some of the world’s most beloved paintings and capture the men
responsible for commissioning the fakes. Jaime doesn’t even have to take anybody down
physically; instead, she actually saves both the phony art fence and Pierre the painter,
whose only real crime turns out to be a touching lack of self confidence which Jaime
tenderly talks him out of in the very last scene. Another miniature masterpiece on a
human scale: AThe Night Demon (Wednesday, March 23rd, 1977)
Jaime has a Native American friend whose scholarly research on his own people takes a
bizarre turn when he and an assistant unearth an evil talisman in the desert outside of
town. Jaime just happens to be dropping by to pay her friend a visit, but this will be no
vacation! The helpful grad student and the lecherous fellow who filled up Jaime’s tank
on the way in are actually using the myth of the ancient ghost to force Jaime’s buddy to
sell out and leave them his land because it’s got uranium underneath. The way she
discovers this, and the clever and painless (if somewhat less than fully believable) way
she gets them to confess make this another super sweet installment in the annuls of
everybody’s favorite superheroine. It’s worth a B+ all around, though it could have been
made truly perfect if somehow Jaime had found a way to help these poor non-hoods find
a fairer way to get ahead and stay friends with Bearclaw – something which would have
been perfectly in character, and would have brought forth the utmost in creative
storytelling by the BW team. I give this one a B+.
Iron Ships and Dead Men (airdate: Wednesday, March 30th, 1977)
When an old WWII battleship is salvaged from the bottom of the ocean, it reopens an
aching wound from Oscar Goldman’s past. His brother served aboard the ship, and was
on duty the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor. But when Sam Goldman disappeared –
along with the sackfull of cash he’d been entrusted to deliver somewhere – the army
branded him a deserter. Now Oscar reluctantly turns to Jaime, who lovingly convinces
him she’ll be glad to help in one of the most touching scenes in the whole run of the
series. When Jaime discovers that an old-timer running the local tavern is actually in
cahoots with two thugs who just tried to kill her, she confronts him and learns that all is
not as it appears. In the end, Jaime, a simpleminded friend she made on the salvage team
and the senior nare’dowell are able to retrieve the loot and restore Sam’s name without
hurting a fly. Sweet: A- work.
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Once A Thief (airdate: Wednesday, May 4th, 1977)
It’s no fun waiting more than a month for your favorite show to come out with a new
episode, and still worse when it’s to be the last one of the season. But in this case the
wait proves well worth it, as the BW team invite Elisha Cook, Jr. to help tell the truly
magical story of a loveable cat burglar and his pet chimp, two characters who need
Jaime’s loving redemption more than almost any of her other adversaries throughout the
entire run of the series. When master cat burglar Carl Inka “Inky” Voya learns that “a
couple named Elgin” are on vacation, he figures their isolated homestead will be “an easy
score.” When Jaime foils his plans, Inky tells his disbelieving fence about her super
powers, getting him booted from the only job he’s ever known! Now out for revenge and
renewed credibility among his goon friends, Inky carjacks Jaime at gunpoint and
blackmails her into helping him rob a bank the next day! But what nobody except Jaime
knows is that she’s got real redemption in mind for Inky. But with both sides of the law
out for a piece of his hide, Jaime must use all her mental and physical resources to keep
the bumbling bandit out of harm’s way. With an adorable assist from Ralph the chimp,
Jaime gets Inky completely out of trouble, and into a new life with a new mission: help
the cops shut down people like him!!!!! Perhaps more than any other episode, this
simple, low key story with the highest of stakes exemplifies what makes the bionic
woman the standout angel she is. BRAVO. A++ all round!!!!!
Episodes of Season Three (Saturdays on NBC, September 10th, thru May 13th, 1978)
Preamble
When TV shows change networks, it’s not always a good sign. Sometimes it just
means that execs want to try something new in the old show’s timeslot, and don’t want to
cut anyplace else to accommodate it. At other times, when a program gets a new home
its overall character changes, not always for the better.
In the case of The Bionic Woman, a new network signaled a few small but significant
changes of direction. If Season One was the time for Jaime to prove herself and Season
Two her time to shine, Season Three would bring new challenges and opportunities for
the former tennis pro turned reluctant supersleuth, including a bionic pet, a touchingly
normal boyfriend and last, but not least, a troubling sense of moving away from herself,
of constantly being off center and focusing on the wrong things. Looking back with
today’s more psychologically aware mindset it seems remarkable that the stresses and
strains of Jaime’s OSI moonlighting took so long to catch up with her. It certainly didn’t
take this long for Sydney Bristow to crack, though being a different person in a different
time, Syd was able to bounce back several times more quickly than Jaime Sommers, who
had to wait nine years for a comeback, and then appeared only sporadically, and only in
feature-length stories together with her old flame, Steve Austin. Why did The Bionic
Woman have to crash and burn in only half the time it took Syd and Vaughn to call it
quits?
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While part of the problem surely rests with NBC’s decision to send Jaime on
progressively hokier missions as time went on (one featured a very young looking Helen
Hunt as an extraterrestrial runaway, while in another a flying saucer descended on Ojai
and beamed up Rudy Wells), I think what really happened was that America just got tired
of its heroes, and began banishing them from the screen one by one. We still make
movies about superheroes, but today’s small screen idol seems to be an angry yuppie on a
mission to set things straight at the office – a barely fictionalized version of events on
reality television, which actually aim to depict events in the real world, rather than
allowing us to escape from it or inhabit Utopia for a while. While some of these
developments have worked out well (like Miami Vice, and some of the storylines on such
professional procedurals as LA Law), television in general – and crime fighting in
particular – have gotten less and less fun and ennobling as the decades have filed past us.
Whatever you choose to blame it on, this cultural trend is real, and I’m sad to say I don’t
think it’s going to die down or do a 180 anytime soon. Then again, as I write this, we are
less than one month away from the launching of a new Bionic Woman series, a
“reimagining” of the character of Jaime Sommers of the type we saw not too long ago
with the renewed conflict between Earth and the Cylon Empire on a CGI-ed up all new
Battlestar Galactica series.
Perhaps it’s best that the real Jaime (yes, I know) bowed out when she did. Turn on any
of today’s plethora of police chase shows and imagine the bionic beauty joining in, and
you’ll soon see what I mean. The Bionic Woman was the first non-comic book female
superhero on American television, and she’s still the best because she belongs to and
represents a simpler time, a gentler age when the good guys really were decent, the
crooks just had their heads in the wrong place and the world was still a sweet, sundappled place where having a pure heart was still the most important thing of all.
Romantic, maybe: but that’s one of my takeaway lessons from my all-time favorite TV
program.
So, let’s take a look at Jaime’s missions during the 1977-78 TV season…
The Bionic Dog, Part One (airdate: Saturday, September 10th, 1977)
Perhaps it was inevitable that being a woman, Jaime would both want a pet and also need
one to soften and humanize her image after all her crimebusting exploits. Anyway, that’s
probably what the movers and shakers at NBC thought. Max turns out to be a silly and
not very likeable addition to the BW cast, a dreadfully contrived element forcibly added
to a series which truly did not need it. Why couldn’t Jaime have been given a normal
dog? Why couldn’t she have had one right from the beginning, or perhaps adopted a
therapy pet to help her through all her trials and recoveries? Sad to say, the only thing
this two-part episode really adds to our understanding of the bionic woman’s life and
character is the opportunity for us to bask vicariously in the TLC she gives Max, and the
(blatantly contrived) reconnection saving him fosters between Jaime and an old flame
who will become her new BF. At least he earns his place in our hearts as well as Jaime’s
through his actions and his unjaded and wholehearted re-acceptance of the woman who
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once broke his heart. In this first half of the episode, what we mainly see is Jaime saving
Max from Rudy, who plans to put him down, believing Max is rejecting his bionics, and
that if so it probably means that Jaime and Steve are next. Defying the OSI and
becoming a fugitive, Jaime spirits Max up to Northern California, seeking to hide with
the one person she once hid from. This is C- work. But brace yourself: it’s about to get
worse!!!!!
The Bionic Dog, Part Two (airdate: Saturday, September 17th, 1977)
With Jaime and Max on the lamb in Northern California, Oscar and the OSI in
cooperation with local police redouble their efforts to unearth the fugitives, which drives
them and Chris into a nightmare situation, as a thunderstorm touches off a forest fire,
triggering Max’s fire-related PTSD, and causing him to go bionically berserk. Jaime and
Chris find Max just in time to have him save them from the inferno, thus proving to
Oscar and Rudy that Max should be spared. That’s it, folks. DFembots In Las Vegas, Part One (airdate: Saturday, September 24th, 1977)
It’s remarkable how many times TV viewers of earlier eras saw the three most
simultaneously titillating and frustrating little words ever pasted on the screen: “To Be
Continued.” As with the previous episode, this one didn’t need to be more than fifteen
minutes long. As Jaime and crew review their old cases (mercifully not on-air) they
come across one of Dr. Franklin’s “fembots” from Season Two. Though long
deactivated, the machine still stirs a primal fear in Jaime, who is more than happy to get
away from it by joining her colleagues on a much deserved weekend getaway to Sin City.
But when she hears a certain high pitched hum she’ll never be able to forget, Jaime
knows her worst fears are coming true, and that she’ll have to face the cyberfemme killers
all over again. This time they turn out to be controlled by Franklin’s son, who has sworn
revenge for his father’s incarceration and humiliation at the hands of the OSI. (This
alone should be enough of a clue as to the low quality of this story, since in usual Bionic
Woman fashion, Franklin was probably pardoned after vowing never again to take
women for granted or take more than a passing interest in the weather.) As this first
chapter winds down, Jaime & Co. have located Franklin Jr.’s base, and are about to storm
it to disable the laser weapon he has pointed at the Earth.
Fembots In Las Vegas, Part Two (airdate: Saturday, October 1st, 1977)
When Jaime and her OSI colleagues arrive at the young Franklin’s base, they discover
that the junior maniac is planning to destroy the world to get back at Oscar for jailing his
father for life after the weather machine fiasco. He’ll only stop the countdown if both
Oscar and Jaime agree to surrender themselves to his tender mercies, something they of
course reluctantly agree to do. But Franklin fires the weapon anyway, leaving Jaime to
rush out into the open field surrounding his complex to absorb the deadly energy, thus
saving mankind – a stunt Wonder Woman would repeat seven weeks later in her “Man
Who Made Volcanoes” episode. But the most incredible surprise has to do with the
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young madman himself…D+ for action in which Jaime doesn’t hurt Franklin. In fact, as
you’ll see if you watch this episode, she actually can’t hurt him, ‘cuz he’s…..
Rodeo (airdate: Saturday, October 15th, 1977)
This season more than the other two will feature Jaime heading into stock settings chosen
for the opportunities they present to doll her up without ever stretching the bounds of
good taste. In this tribute to the West As It Never Was, Rudy and Oscar send her out to
secretly keep a fellow OSIer safe from himself as he pursues his favorite pastime: roping
steers. Having created a secret code which resides nowhere but in his head (just as
Mozart did with his music as revealed in the movie Amadeus), Dr. Cole will need a
bionic bodyguard this time, because a few headstrong steers aren’t the only creatures out
for a piece of the man’s hide. This one is (just barely) saved from impossible hokeyness
by the angelic way Jaime tucks Cole in after a night of hard drinking, and the super sweet
way she breaks the emasculating news of her real mission when they’re captured and she
has to go into overdrive. NOTE: The writers are overly fond of a certain tag phrase used
to describe a bit of excess body fat, which they have Lindsay use to label the henchmen
she and Cole have captured, marring this episode at the very end. Hit mute as soon as
you hear Oscar’s voice as the truck pulls back into the rodeo grounds, and notice that this
is the first product placement piece Lindsay did for Ford, almost two decades before she
officially became their spokesperson. B+ work. Would have been an A- but for that
pointless comment mentioned above.
African Connection: (airdate: Saturday, October 29th, 1977)
When word leaks to the OSI that one of their own secret gadgets is about to be sold to an
Idi Amin-wannabe in a country where one of Jaime’s old school chums hails from, the
bionic woman is dispatched to see to it that the only way the dictator will be reelected is
if his people are foolish enough to actually want him in power again. Of course they
don’t, and together with a loveable drunk faux Africanner in his jeep called The Princes,
Jaime singlehandedly and doubleleggedly saves the day in black sub-Saharan Africa in
some of the nicest and most enjoyable ways to watch, painlessly sidelining child soldiers
by gently sending them rolling down grassy embankments and “shooting” them with
tranc darts with her bionic arm. Since the despot will just buy another vote rigger if he
discovers what’s happened, Jaime makes sure never to confront him directly. AMotorcycle Boogie (airdate: Saturday, November 5th, 1977)
The third part of my three-way tie for the best Bionic Woman episode ever, this one sees
Jaime heading behind the Iron Curtain with the help of Evel Knivel (the real one, not an
actor) to retrieve a computertape with top secret info on it. Notable for the sweet way she
treats both Evel (whom she refuses to believe is really the famous motorbike jumper
throughout most of the episode) and the East German guards she encounters, Lindsay is
also in rare form appearancewise here, dressed in bluejeans and a simple, shortsleeved
red and white blouse – a bit of campy patriotism that’s not even apparent until you think
about it. A+
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Brain Wash (airdate: Saturday, November 12th, 1977)
Another adorable episode, this one returns to the touching theme of Jaime’s close
friendships with her coworkers. When OSI receptionist Peggy Calahan (Jenifer Darling)
reveals the time and place of a top secret meeting between Oscar and a South American
defector, Jaime only feels bad because she heard the conversation with her bionic ear.
Complicating matters, Calahan loves the man, and makes a counter-accusation against
Jaime that she’s just spinning tales out of jealousy. But knowing full well what she
heard, and wanting to investigate the new hair stylist-love interest in her friend’s life
further, Jaime breaks into his salon in the wee hours of the following morning, only to be
confronted by the bad guy and a gun-toting henchman. Now it’s Calahan’s turn to save
Jaime, as she overhears the man who supposedly loves her confessing to Jaime that he
was merely mining Calahan for info, and had no personal interest in her whatsoever.
Surprising the gunmen, Calahan gives “John” a vicious slap to the face, while Jaime
shows more restraint, disarming the men and tying them up while keeping her expression
and demeanor sweet and soft. Unable to bring herself to threaten John into revealing the
secret rendezvous location, Jaime interrogates him under the influence of his own truth
drug, a shampoo he’s been using on the high-powered women of Washington (though
why she doesn’t just ask Calahan to save time is the real question, probably best
answered by pointing out that such a sweet scene as this would then have had no reason
to be filmed). Jaime and Calahan discover that they have just five minutes to race to a
nearby stadium and save Oscar and the defector from a sniper in the stands, whom Jaime
takes down in a downright tender way, saving his life by lashing his leg to the railing he
was about to jump off of to get away from her – one that leads to an unbroken fall to the
level of the playing field far below. Another A+, this time not significantly marred by
anything, and therefore voted the favorite episode by the attendees of the first annual
Fansource Fan Appreciation Weekend conference in Hollywood. Another example of
exactly what’s so great about The Bionic Woman!!
Escape to Love (airdate: Saturday, November 26th, 1977)
A B+ effort in which Jaime is dispatched to rescue the timid twenty-something son of a
“Vestian” defector, who was too wimpy to run across the border with his dad, and is
believed by Oscar to be in need of gentle handling by a female agent if he’s going to get
out at all. Once again, Jaime’s offensive takedowns are a little hard to watch. Still, the
BW team is careful to show how low-impact these really were, with Jaime gently tying
up the first guard and merely pushing the other (both mere teenagers) across the room
with an open hand. Both are also wearing helmets, so that angle’s covered, too.
Meanwhile, when “Sandor” falls head over heels for Jaime she must break him out again
when he turns himself in upon seeing she doesn’t love him back. After Sandy is reunited
with dear old dad and all is well again, Jaime gives him a super tender pep talk about
never letting someone’s refusal to return his love diminish his ability to love, and
reassuring him of all the lovely young women he has yet to discover. Nice enough, but
not the best.
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Max (airdate: Saturday, December 3rd, 1977)
One of two non-BW-centered episodes of Season Three, this is a stupid story about how
the bionic dog is kidnapped, but breaks out and saves the day. NO GRADE: JAIME IS
NOT SIGNIFICANTLY INVOLVED.
Over-The-Hill Spy (airdate: Saturday, December 17th, 1977)
The year is rounded out on the world’s best TV show with a quaintly touching piece
addressing ageism in the workplace. OSI legend Terrance Quinn (Richard Erdman) has
reached mandatory retirement age, but Oscar needs him for one last assignment: track
down and bring in his old rival, a Soviet spy identified simply as “Slotsky”, whom, Quinn
notes bitterly, is still working, despite being his contemporary. Oscar promises Quinn a
ten-year severance package at full pay, on condition that Terrance cooperate with Jaime
in bringing down Slotsky. A bunch of contrived hijinks ensue which, though mildly
entertaining, make a caricature of Quinn, culminating in an escape by Jaime from a
wooden trunk which can only be accepted as not totally brutal by accepting the fact that
the bionic woman has an undisclosed power to put people out painlessly before they even
know what hit them – a position for which there’s plenty of indirect evidence, including a
much more enjoyable offensive takedown she performs a few minutes later in which she
sends a parked car careening into the getaway vehicle of a fleeing courier in possession
of a top secret microchip. Upon seeing the crash, Jaime is visibly shaken, and goes to the
man’s aid, gently sitting him back in his seat, making sure there’s no blood and adding a
couple of tender head pats before turning him over to Oscar, who just happens to have
magically shown up. Right on the borderline between a B+ and an A-, this one would
have been better had it not beaten the “I am not too old to work” theme to death, and then
showed Quinn as indeed being an Over-The-Hill spy after all. Oh, yeah: When Quinn
captures Slotsky on his own, Jaime finds them, and gives her partner the A.O.K. to walk
off into the sunset with the man, which he does – most likely ripping open his golden
parachute and landing them both in the poorhouse!!!!! LOL
All For One (airdate: Saturday, January 7th, 1978)
The BW team inaugurates Jaime’s final year with an installment which remains super
sweet until the final confrontation, a sequence you should skip right over. Jaime is sent
back to college when it becomes apparent that someone at “South Coast University” is
siphoning off thousands of dollars out of OSI coffers every few days by hacking into
their most guarded computer system. Before she’s even got her bearings on campus,
Jaime is accosted by one guy on a bike – the computer bandit, in fact, as she will later
learn -- and another, your standard caricature of a jock, straight out of Central Casting,
who falls for her BIG TIME when she sends him head first into a stand of bushes after he
refuses to hear the word “no” (a scene which is rendered less painful to watch in the usual
way: by having the kid wake up groggy, but obviously unhurt, wondering what the heck
just happened to him. The computer bandit turns out to be the black kid in charge of a
stand-alone hotdog stand on the quad, a brilliant but needy nerd who has decided to put
his thirty-eight best friends through school on the government’s tab! But just as soon as
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Jaime captures him and learns the truth, the real villain of this piece, the guy who would
likely be the kid’s faculty advisor if he were attending classes, too, shows up and
chloroforms Jaime and the bandit, along with his small group of friends -- notable among
whom is Lindsay’s third husband, Henry Kingi, in his role as “Mango” -- tying them all
up inside the lunch wagon, which he then rigs to explode!! Go ahead and watch this
episode up to the point where Jaime tells the group she’s going to apprehend Tharp, at
which point try to have a more thick-skinned friend hit fast forward for you, stopping in
time for the final scene which takes place the next morning, in which Jaime informs the
hacker that not only won’t he be prosecuted, but he and his thirty-eight friends are now
on full ride OSI scholarships through the remainder of their entire educations!!!!! It’s
endings like this which warm the heart and make you pause wistfully to reflect on how
sad it is that the real world can’t be more like The Bionic Woman. This is solid A- work,
marred only by the scene I just told you to skip.
The Pyramid (airdate: Saturday, January 14th, 1978)
Finally breaking clear of Steve Austin, Jaime has been dating a few different men
throughout Season Three, including Chris Williams, an outside contractor for the OSI
with whom she was once quite serious, until she inexplicably ran out on him. Having
been reunited in the “Bionic Dog” season opener, Jaime and Chris decide to take their
dating to the next level with an evening outing which turns to terror as a giant mummy
comes to life and attacks them when they break into an abandoned building after Jaime’s
bionic ear picks up a strange hum she decides to investigate, rather than just leaving well
enough alone. What could have been impossibly corny is sweetened by Chris’s
nonchalant acceptance of Jaime’s bionic superpowers, and the selfless way she is
prepared to put those abilities – and indeed her very life – in jeopardy to save the world
from destruction. As the aliens blast off and Chris and Jaime call it a night, we finally
begin to hope that the bionic woman will be able to build a real relationship with a
normal boyfriend, something both male and female viewers can take heart in. B+ work,
since Jaime does trip up a security guard with a barbell. It’s under duress and in an effort
to save the world. But still!!
The Antidote (airdate: Saturday, January 21st, 1978)
This is the second (and thankfully last) episode in which Jaime’s just not involved in the
action at all. Instead, Max saves the day when the bad guys poison Jaime to get her to
reveal the secret location of a meeting between Oscar and some petty potentate or other
whose peace summit they’re hoping to derail. NO GRADE: JAIME IS NOT
SIGNIFICANTLY INVOLVED.
The Martians Are Coming, THE MARTIANS ARE COMING!! (airdate: Saturday, January
28th, 1978)
Airing on my mother’s thirty-third birthday, this is a fun enough chapter in the exploits of
everybody’s favorite female superhero. When a flying saucer descends on the coast near
Ojai and whisks away Rudy Wells, Jaime and Oscar are first hampered, then aided in
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their efforts to rescue him by a local reporter who smells a government conspiracy where
there isn’t one. Instead, it transpires that an outside contractor and his wife have been
corrupted, and they capture Jaime and sock her away in the one place her bionics alone
can’t get her out of: a freezer! Since only Jaime’s hearing remains enhanced in the cold,
the by-now smitten reporter gets exactly what he most wants: an invite to have some very
up close and personal contact with Jaime’s right arm. Warming it up just enough to
allow Jaime to bust them out and escape, the man is as bemused as everyone else who’s
ever seen Jaime in action when she brings down the “UFO”, which of course turns out to
be nothing more exotic than a helicopter surrounded by a holographic projection. This is
a B+ episode which could have been an A- had Jaime been able to rehabilitate the old
couple as she’s done with so many other not-so-bad guys before them. Also, while on the
surface it’s a fun, realistic touch that Jaime is dating around, and thus happy to let the
reporter who saved her life take her to dinner, this bit of overarching storyline will come
back to bite us BIG TIME in a later episode. Watch and enjoy, but brace yourself: from
now on, the series begins to subtly run downhill, with only Lindsay’s humanizing
tenderness keeping some badly executed installments afloat.
Sanctuary, Earth (airdate: Saturday, February 11th, 1978)
A very young looking Helen Hunt falls to earth in this cute but hokey episode aboard a
satellite she causes to malfunction in order to escape the evil clutches of some bounty
hunters from a planet at war with hers, as the bionic woman faces her last extraterrestrial
threat. Jaime disarms one of the men super sweetly with a head of lettuce, then calls Max
off the pair after she and “Princes Aura” break free of their immobilizing ray, having
gotten in touch with their feminine inner strength -- yet another nice touch which shows
how considerate a crime fighter she really is. Sad to say, this one could have been much
better had we simply been shown how the Uluans felt about the situation. But once
again, we are only allowed to root for the girls, never knowing anything of the gunmen’s
possibly mitigating motivations. So this ends up as merely A- work.
Deadly Music (airdate: Saturday, February 18th, 1978)
An OK one in which Jaime gets to do something cool: dive to the bottom of the ocean to
place underwater earthquake-sensing equipment. When one of her pair of diving buddies
reluctantly places a shark-attracting depth gauge on her, Jaime slips it right back on him,
then softly but firmly gets him to spill the beans under threat of letting the leviathans
have their way with him. We know she’d never let Ritter be killed, and we’re also sure
she goes back and frees the shark from the steel muzzle she puts on it. Still, it’s
surprisingly frightening stuff, all things considered. BWhich One Is Jaime? (airdate: Saturday, March 25th, 1978)
Delivering her second gentlest physical takedown (after the bar-bending stunt in
Motorcycle Boogie), Jaime has to storm an abandoned amusement park and save
Calahan, who has been mistaken for her and abducted by a gang including Brock Peters,
who somehow know all about her bionics!! Unfortunately, Max pitches in, too – in a
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truly frightening and gratuitously violent way. Despite being one of my favorite
episodes, I can really only give this one a B+ overall, applauding everything about it that
doesn’t have to do with Max for what it shows about how compassionate Jaime is, even
with a bunch of thugs who plan to dissect her.
Out of Body (airdate: Saturday, March 4th, 1978)
A nice rest from the high action pieces, this one shows Jaime at her most loving, and
delivers a powerful message about the difference between justice and revenge. When an
American Indian teenager she loves who works at the OSI is almost killed by a security
device, it looks like he was trying to break into the safe it was protecting. But the boy
can’t tell Jaime the culprit was really his boss, at least not directly, for he is in a coma!!
Over the half-week period it takes Littlehorse to finally lead her to the truth, Jaime can
tell that her friend is trying to reach out to her. But with rage in his heart, the brave
cannot leave his body or fully enter another’s consciousness. In a maudlin touch, the
boy’s ancestors come to him in his dreams and instruct the wronged teen to let go of his
hate, at which point his spirit is finally able to direct Jaime to the place where the crime
occurred, where she quickly learns who was responsible for his near death. But just as
Jaime’s friend must purify his motives in naming his attacker, so she ends up confronting
the elderly turncoat in an almost unbelievably gentle way, made somewhat more credible
by the very firm grip she takes of her emotions by way of tightly grasping the railing
she’s about to jump over, and non-angrily instructing him: “You don’t really want to
push this, do you? OK, this way, wideass.” Cute. A straight A performance.
Long Live The King (airdate: Saturday, March 4th, 1978)
WARNING: This episode SUCKS!!!!! The synopsis which follows is in no way meant
as an endorsement of this abominable episode. As you’ll see in a second, this one
violates all the cardinal Bionic Woman principles, and then some. What makes it worse
is that Lindsay is doing her usual superb acting job, and looking as stunning as ever here.
She’s clearly trying her best, but that doesn’t make this episode one bit better!! Way too
eager to show how scared Jaime is of guns throughout the entire series, the BW team has
her disarm two separate gunmen in undeniably bone-crunching ways, and then shows her
actually enjoying the time she spends in the company of a weasel of a man she’s stuck
working with, even though she points out each of his glaringly obvious flaws as soon as
they manifest themselves!!!!!
OK, enough about how bad it is. Here is the “plot”, such as it is:
Oscar calls Jaime up to New York to meet him in advance of the arrival of yet another
petty potentate from the Middle East, this one, according to an actual line of Jaime’s:
“one of the most democratic kings this world has ever seen.” Playing a role he’ll reprise
later in the year in Wonder Woman’s final season Skateboard Wiz episode, Sam Slone
(John Reilly) latches onto Jaime from the very start – something she doesn’t exactly put
an immediate stop to – a sad commentary on how off center this usually fiercely loyal
angel has become, even in her personal life. Jaime crushes a phone bug bionically, and
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saves herself and Slone from a car wreck, which are both OK uses of her bionic super
powers. But both her offensive takedowns are COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE in
their gratuitous violence. In one, she crushes a photographer-gunman’s wrist, then judo
flips him, when she could easily have just grabbed him around the waist and held him till
the palace guards arrived (a move made all the more heart rending when you realize its
real purpose: to allow the camera to pan up from Lindsay’s feet to her gorgeous-as-usual
face). Later, Jaime chucks a SOLID MARBLE TAILOR’S OBELISK at a guy, after
having knocked his fellows over in the kinder, gentler way that’s been good enough for
every other bad guy she’s ever foiled. Boo!!!!! My grade for this episode: A BIG, FAT
GOOSEEGG.
Rancho Outcast (Saturday, May 6th, 1978)
The bionic woman’s penultimate mission takes place two full months after the previous
train wreck – most likely the amount of time Jaime spent riding a desk for the hideously
excessive force she used in protecting the king of Darpur. This time she’s back to her
old, angelic self as she travels to the notorious non-extradition hellhole of “San Rafael” in
the company of a crook earning his parole by identifying the target she is after. But
“Peetie The Weasel” lives down to his name by having lied to the OSI about ever having
known the man, leaving Jaime to flush him out on her own. But when the man she thinks
she’s after turns out to be a woman, Jaime is captured by the management of the seedy
hotel they’re all staying at, who will kill her unless Peetie keeps his word and comes to
her aid. Jaime is selfless enough to urge him to run, but could you abandon Lindsay
Wagner? Didn’t THINK so!!!!! I’m glad to say, this is straight A work.
On The Run (airdate: Saturday, May 13th, 1978)
It’s tricky writing the last episode of a series. Why is the hero bowing out now? What’s
changed that s/he can’t continue saving the world and warming our hearts every week
anymore? In what the Sci-Fi Channel Encyclopedia of Television Science Fiction calls
an homage to the show The Prisoner, Jaime resigns from the OSI, and is then warned by
Oscar that his superiors intend to lock her away on a remote ranch forever, so no enemy
will ever be able to learn her secrets. Running away from her home and her friends,
Jaime is tracked down by Chris, who assures her he loves her for herself, bionic or no,
and will run with her forever if need be. Jaime only half believes him, and sneaks out to
protect Chris from being implicated in her escape. The next day, she takes refuge in a
park, and has a very touching scene with a little boy who is sad because he can’t play ball
with his father anymore, since the man is blind. In order to bookend the series, they
make it a tennis ball, which Jaime crushes in a flush of frustration that “Tommy” can’t
see how he’s judging his dad based on an unimportant physical factor, just as her slimy
government minders are doing to her. But Jaime empoweringly apologizes to the boy,
and convinces him to give his dad another chance, spending quality time with him to
honor who he is, not focusing on what he has become. Jaime ends up learning this
lesson too, so she willingly submits when the bureau hacks surround her, and in the final
scene of the series, tells Oscar she’s come to terms with her unique status, and will go on
missions again, so long as he respects her, and will abide by some strict limits, though
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she’s not even positive what those limits will be yet. A very fitting end to a fabulous
series. A- instead of A+ because of how forced much of this treatment was. Oh well.
That’s the way it is sometimes.
[NOTE: It’s very nice to see Jaime treating the two goons at the beginning of this episode
way better than they deserve, given what they just did (kidnap the little girl she was
babysitting). But the very fact that the BW team broke the basic unwritten rule of never
putting any truly small child in danger is just one of several interesting and utterly
convincing details we are given which show how truly frazzled the bionic woman has
really become. Lindsay, of course, plays the whole thing to absolute perfection, pulling
the single best burnt-out expression I’ve ever seen on TV, or in the movies. The team
breaks one more rule, too: Jaime hurts Oscar’s arm as she squeezes it in angry frustration
at being told what the OSI plans to do to her. This is GREAT STUFF, folks. It’s truly a
crying shame this fantastic series had to end when it did. BOO, HOO!!!!!!!!!!]
A Few Fun Lists
The Sweetest BW Episodes:
Most Fun Ones:
Winning Is Everything
Fly, Jaime
Mirror Image
Canyon of Death
Assault On The Princess
Doomsday Is Tomorrow
Once A Thief
In This Corner, Jaime Sommers
Kill Oscar
Doomsday Is Tomorrow
Brain Wash
Sanctuary Earth
Which One Is Jaime?
Motorcycle Boogie
Episodes to watch to ogle Lindsay:
Ones Which Show How Sweet Jaime Is:
Bionic Beauty
Fly, Jaime
Mirror Image
Angel of Mercy
Winning Is Everything
The Ghosthunter
Assault On The Princess
Biofeedback
Jaime and the King
Doomsday Is Tomorrow
Beyond The Call
Once A Thief
African Connection
Motorcycle Boogie
Rancho Outcast
The Bionic Dog
Escape To Love
Which One Is Jaime?
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Action-Packed Episodes:
Nice Guys Jaime Forgives
Winning Is Everything
Fly, Jaime
Mirror Image
“Lucky” Ed (Assault on the Princess)
Dr. Cooper (Doomsday Is tomorrow)
Major John Cross (Above and Beyond)
Kill Oscar
Doomsday Is Tomorrow
Deadly Ringer
Inky (Once A Thief)
Slotsky” (Over-The-Hill Spy)
Benny (All For One)
Peetie The Weasel (Rancho Outcast)
Jaime’s Gentlest Takedowns…:
…and her most questionable
Dr. Ellis Hatch (The Jailing of Jaime Ray Raymond & Co (Bionic Beauty)
black guy from (Mirror Image)
Vic & Henderson (Jaime’s Mother)
Briggs & Henderson (Canyon of Death)
Dr. Franklin (Kill Oscar)
Bill & Len (Road to Nashville)
Hassan (Jaime and the King
Ivan & henchman (Biofeedback)
Inky (Once A Thief)
mugger (Jaime’s Shield, Part Two)
jail door guard (Motorcycle Boogie) three guys (Over-The-Hill Spy)
Stratton & Burns (Which One Is Jaime?) Tharp’s henchmen (All For One)
Dr. Jennings (Out of Body
photographer (Long Live The King)
The Three Best Episodes…:
…and the three worst…
Doomsday Is Tomorrow
Once A Thief
Motorcycle Boogie
Max
The Antidote
Long Live The King
AND THERE YOU HAVE IT, the greatest superhero show ever to air on television. My
eternal thanks go out to Lindsay Wagner, and to everyone else who worked with her to
make this the sun-dappled, inspiring and empowering viewing experience it almost
always was – for showing both boys and girls that the way to become men and women is
to lead with your heart, stay true to yourself and put other people first. Even more
importantly, thank you all for showing us that what defines you as a person comes from
the inside out, and that so long as you put your best foot forward – no matter what that is
– you’re doing exactly what you were put on this earth to do. I’m still almost blind
without my contact lenses. But after three decades of basking in the warm glow of
Lindsay Wagner’s portrayal of the world’s only real female superhero, I can clearly see
that it’s the unique gifts each of us gives from the very core of our inner selves which
make this world a better place to be. In the end, I guess you don’t even have to be bionic
– just true to yourself, full of love and compassion, and ready to do your best no matter
what situation you find yourself in. THAT is what made the bionic woman such an angel
– such a shining example for us all. Rock on, Jaime!!!!!!!!!!
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