Rewatching The Bionic Woman - The Original

[giandujakiss]

It's been decades since I've seen this show, but the first two seasons are now out on DVD, so....

My first discovery: The pilot and related episodes - i.e., the whole set-up and backstory episodes - are appallingly awful. I mean, we're talking embarrassment squick territory. We're talking directorial incompetence rivaled only by early-season Highlander. And they're also incredibly dull because they aren't about Jaime at all; they're about the Bionic Man.



You may recall that The Bionic Woman was a spinoff of The Six Million Dollar Man. The premise is, Steve Austin fell in love with Jaime; Jaime was injured in an accident; Steve begged Oscar Goldman to make her bionic. Which would be just fine as a backstory, except first we have to see them date, then we have to see prolonged scenes of Steve begging Oscar, then she gets her bionics and there's the whole fun with her training, etc, and then her bionics start to malfunction. This leads to a plot where she ends up with amnesia - twice! That's right, twice. And the focus is entirely on Steve's angst because she doesn't remember him, and I really can't begin to express how incredibly boring it is.

Also, Lee Majors sings - sings! - a song, while Jaime is shown riding a horse in slow motion. Twice. Words cannot capture just how traumatic these scenes are; I don't think I've been this horrified since I learned the plot of The Human Centipede. I was hoping someone would have uploaded them to YouTube so I could inflict them upon you, but sadly, they are not there. You can hear a different version of the song, which I embed for your pleasure, but you must believe me when I say the version they used in the episode was even more awful than the version here:



I am amazed this show got past the first couple of episodes, where all that was going on was Steve dating Jaime, singing, and Jaime repeatedly forgetting him. Although in her defense, if I'd dated him, I'd want to forget, too.

Then! Finally, we get to the real episodes.

And you can definitely see - and this is a phenomenon I noticed in Charlie's Angels, as well - the producers are clearly afraid of making Jaime too powerful, too assertive, especially as compared to men. So the earliest episodes have her dealing a lot with children, and animals, and have these bizarre scenes where she can't bring herself to stand up to men who are in the wrong, so other men have to take her side of disputes for her to get anything done. Or she has to mess up in some way so a man can capture her, or a man has to fix her bionics (it's bizarre how many people she reveals her bionics to), or a man has to throw the punch that brings down the villain, etc.

But I'm still enjoying it now that the ridiculous Steve Austin/amnesia plot is out of the way.

And now I also remember just how hard I 'shipped Oscar/Jaime back in the day. Man, my mentor/mentee kink (which is second only to my buddy kink) really has a long history.

So the upshot of all of this is that I was prompted to rewatch dualbunny's Bionic Woman: Reboot vid, I Want What I Want, and of course, now I have to remind myself that the show was not anywhere near as interesting as it appears in the vid and therefore I have no need to obtain the DVDs.

Comments

[torachan]

Hahahaaaa! I loved this show SO MUCH as a kid (and 6 Million Dollar Man, too), but I'd be afraid to watch it now.

*needs an icon of someone squinting painfully*

[mamadar]

I actually kind of remember the singing.

Which is why I probably won't ever watch that show again. Ouch.

[kore]

I LOVED Bionic Woman and Wonder Woman back in the day. I had totally repressed all that shit about Bionic Man singing, tho.

[eveningblue]

I watched a few episodes recently on Hulu--glad I skipped the Steve Austin ones.

I really liked Jaime's understated style. There's one scene in which she quietly rips apart a phone book in order to scare the kids in her classroom. That is a classroom management technique I'd love to copy!