The Bionic Woman was a “spin-off” of the one of television’s most popular shows, The Six Million Dollar Man. Lindsay Wagner starred as title character Jaime Sommers, a woman who had been given enhanced “bionic” limbs during a life-saving medical procedure. Just like her friend Steve Austin (Lee Majors), whose artificial limbs were estimated to be worth six million dollars, Jaime Sommers now owed her life to the governent doctors who had treated her.
With The Six Million Dollar Man acting as the lead-in for The Bionic Woman, the show was an instant hit when it debuted in 1976. Heroine Sommers struck such a chord with viewers that she quickly became an iconic '70s figure.
Watching the 13 one-hour episodes of the first season recently, I was struck by how different the tone was from The Six Million Dollar Man. Although the show was written by men, there is a distinctly feminine, even femnist feel to it at times. Clearly, a great deal more effort was put into this program than its spin-off origins suggest.
Jaime Sommers became a freelance agent for the group who had saved her life, the OSI (Office of Scientific Intelligence). Supervisor Oscar Goldman (Richard Andersen) claimed she would a have a light schedule of assignments, but as the season unfolded she became one busy bionic babe.
Goldman like her to work undercover whenever possible. Her best assignment was as a contestant in the Miss USA Beauty Pageant. In “Bionic Beauty” Bert Parks more or less plays an evil version of himself who is attempting to smuggle out top-secret technology. Before Jaime can foil his plans, she must first compete in the talent show however. Her version of the song "Feelings” is so incredibly bad that I could not figure out whether it was intended as a joke or not. The DVD set is worth getting for this scene alone.
Every once in a while Jaimee is faced with some pretty strange situations. In one instance, a woman undergoes plastic surgery to become her twin. The imposter manages to wreak havoc for a little while, but not long. She was never a match for the real Bionic Woman.
Article comments
1 - El Bicho
Sounds cool. Very nice of them to include the $6m episodes. I smell an exchange coming once I get caught up
2 - Greg Barbrick
Bicho -- Yeah, I hear ya with the exchange. I must say that the additional episodes really add to the set as a whole. Well done.
3 - jp
I had the BIGGEST crush on Jamie as a kid!
4 - Alex
I'm glad I'm not the only one to be pleasantly surprised at how good the original Bionic Woman was (and I think a similar reassessment will happen once the parent show hits DVD next month). I do have to disagree with the assessment of her performance of "Feelings". While no classic, it's actually one of the few renditions of this incredibly cliched song that didn't make me want to jump out a window. The same can't be sad for Lee Majors' singing on Sweet Jaime which is fine as a one-time thing but the decided to use it on virtually every one of the "pre-series" episodes and that got to be really annoying. Still, I had a blast watching these episodes, which really whet my whistle for the SMDM box and for the remaining BW seasons (please, Universal, don't abandon this like you did Kojak!).
5 - Greg Barbrick
Alex - You are SO right about that Lee Majors song. Absolutely terrible! I am looking forard to the SMDM shows also.
--Greg