Something that The Bionic Woman rarely did was to make any use of it's supporting cast. Most of the time Lindsay Wagner was largely carrying the plots and the episodes almost single-handed, bouncing off whoever that weeks guest star was. Only very rarely did the stories put Jaime in real danger either. This episode attempts to do both and mostly does it pretty well. After Jaime is hospitalised (yet again. For a super heroine this girl seemed to spend an awful lot of time in hospital) by a near-fatal poisoning it's up to Calahan, Chris Williams and Max to save Jaime and save the day. Great use of Max and Chris Williams who is starting to be fleshed out into a proper recurring character and a genuine love interest for Jaime who save Jaime's life several times over in this episode. A sinister nurse who bears a fairly obvious debt to Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest is a nice touch too. With hindsight, we know that the show was already on the way out for several reasons (Falling ratings, Network losing interest and Lindsay Wagner's desire to leave the show) but with greater use of the people around Jaime to add some variety to the show and lighten the load on both Jaime and Lindsay, this is a tantalising little glimpse of a direction it could have gone in if it had continued. A bit ham-fisted in places but I enjoyed this one.
2 Reviews
Bionic garbage
andulamb-0826110 July 2023
Warning: Spoilers
It would take too long to describe every stupid thing in this episode, so I'll just mention a few. First there's the terrible acting by many of the supporting "actors" --especially the actress who played Sarah, whose line delivery is terrible and who worked in every possible unnatural gesture she could think of. Then there's the stupidity of having the bad guys getting one of their own into the hospital as a nurse, who has the poison on her in case they need to kill Jaime immediately, and yet one of the bad guys shows up with some sort of deadly audio frequency thing that's tuned to bionics. Why??? The evil nurse had the poison! (Which would have worked because the antidote hadn't been worked out. Then there's the nonsense about the search for Rudy, whose out for a hike on a military base where he's surrounded by death rays and land mines. (When Max jumped out the window, and before the military guy said Max was going to die, I said to my wife "I bet he'll have to run through a mine field.") And what does Rudy contribute to the plot? Nothing. When Chris gets the poison from the evil nurse, the doctor at the beginning of the episode then had the information he needed to create the antidote. Rudy was completely unnecessary. Another thing: the bad guys call Jaime's buddies at the hospital THREE TIMES before they tell them what they want. The writers clearly had no plot and were just stalling for time. Let's see, what else did I want to complain about? How about the tube that's taped to Jaime's chin for no reason? How about sidelining your main character and making her groan and whimper for the entire episode? I could go on, but I won't.
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