I’ve waited to re-see the original The Bionic Woman series from the beginning for decade (I’m fricking old!), and at last, season one has made it to DVD. Now I have to wait for seasons 2 and 3 to get the green light for release (maybe another ten years?), while saving up 240 bux for the COMPLETE 6-season Six Million Dollar Man DVD boxed set for sale exclusively from Time Life right now!
Season one of The Bionic Woman allowed me to get a fix of the hot hot hot Steve Austin in his tight jeans. The first two episodes are actually episodes of the Six Million Dollar Man that introduce Jaime Sommers, and after that, Lee Majors appears in at least the first three episodes of the actual series, most often on the phone (kinda like when Chrissy was given the boot from Three’s Company). How I loved him when I was a young one. I wanted him to go bionic all over my ass (even though I didn’t know what that meant at the time…).
Anyway, back to bionic va-jay-jay. It’s ridiculous how much of this show I remembered as if I just watched it yesterday. The two Six Million Dollar Man episodes introducing her are awesome. Steve and Jaime are a match made in heaven and just about to get married, but Steve definitely doesn’t have bionic brains, because he thinks it would be romantic to get his tennis star fiancé to jump out of an airplane! Things get disastrous fast. In desperation, Steve convinces Oscar Goldman to hook Jaime up with bionics so they can go jogging together and keep pace (and yes, we all wondered what their bionic sex would be like). Something goes horribly wrong and Jaime’s nervous system is like, shorted out by the bionics. She goes crazy and apparently dies—until the next crossover episode “The Return of the Bionic Woman”. Jaime’s Alive! She’s alive! She’s like the bride of Frankenstein! The only problem is, she has lost her memory and doesn’t remember that she was in love with the hunkiest piece of electronics around. Steve is devastated, and Jaime spends the next three seasons struggling to truly remember what it was she wanted out of life. But rekindling her romance with Steve is the least of her problems. The government now OWNS her, so she’s at the beck and call of Oscar and the O.S.I.
Season one has some truly classic moments. The sexiest one has to be the bionic pillow fight between Jaime and Steve. HOT. Then there’s Jaime’s undercover identity as a teacher. She whips her brats into shape by tearing a telephone book in half. Remember those??? One of her bratty students is none other than Cousin Oliver (that’s believable). Glad to see he landed another job after getting The Brady Bunch canceled. And here, he’s actually funny! His best line is on a very PC episode featuring a new student—an Indian boy. This young Indian tells some seriously tall tales, and so Cousin Oliver says, “From now on, we shall call you ‘Throwing Bull’”. Doh! They were allowed to say that on television in 1976???
The rockin’ theme song to the show aside (can’t believe no hip hop artist has sampled it yet), there are some atrocious songs to be heard—there’s some sort of ode to Jaime throughout the first two crossover episodes, and I believe it is really sung by Lee Majors. I also believe Lindsay Wagner does her own singing on a painful rendition of “Feelings” in a talent contest in another episode. Agony. But hey, if the Partridges, the Bradys, Hutch, and Joe Hardy could sing their way through the 70s, why couldn’t the bionic people?
As she begins her bionic existence, Jaime lives upstairs from Steve’s mother and father, giving her a close-up look at her could-have-been in-laws (convenient, since she doesn’t have a bionic eye). In season one, Jaime takes on a friendly lion gone bad, Andy Griffith gone cranky, a beauty pageant (she goes all Miss Congeniality), the haunting of Kristy McNichol, and best of all—herself! One of my all-time favorite episodes is when Jaime is replaced by Lisa Galloway, a southern spy who has had surgery to look exactly like her. Lisa Galloway is sent in to terminate Oscar Goldman! But just when you think Oscar will never be able to figure out who the real Jaime is, Jaime does a bionic jump, to which Lisa remarks, in her best Texas twang—“I may have your looks, but I sure ain’t got your moves.” Awesome. But this isn’t the last we’ve seen of Lisa…
Which is why we need more more MORE Bionic Woman! So many great episodes remain to be re-seen!!! The two-part Bigfoot crossover episode. The two-part “Doomsday Device” episode. The three part “Kill Oscar” crossover episodes starring…the Fembots!!! The two part return of Lisa Galloway (or is that Jaime Sommers?). The creepy Indian demon episode. Max, the bionic dog!!! The return of the Fembots in Las Vegas (will they stay in Las Vegas? ).
This first bionic baby better sell, because the best of the bionics is yet to come.
