Bionic Beauty

Greetings from the other side. All women with television shows in the 60's and 70's had to do an episode in a beauty pageant, and an episode in a jail, and on occasion, go undercover as a prostitute.

Lindsay Wagner was definitely pretty enough for a beauty pageant, but she definitely can't sing. I don't want to be mean, but it was difficult to listen to.

The premise was ridiculous. It was suppose to be about a special micro chip that wss stolen, so I'm not sure how the beauty show entered into it. Using her bionics to open a window was funny.

Anyway, it's an average show. Even the swimsuit portion sucked because they had her wear a one-piece, when a two-piece would have been much sexier. After all, her beauty was part of what made the show.

One of Oscar's agents contacts him from Paris with the information that the winner of the next Miss U. S. A. Beauty pageant will be Miss Florida. Concerned that there could be a connection with a possible threat to national security, Oscar enters Jaime as a contestant ...

The bionic beauty soon discovers that the contest is rigged, and that Miss Florida will serve as a courier to deliver a stolen micro-computer circuit to a European nation...

But the bad guys catch on to Jaime, after suspecting she's more than just a contestant ...

Jaime is really reluctant to go undercover as a beauty contest, hinting that she doesn't like its shallowness- and you can't imagine her participating in something so glamorous and with fake smiles. It's a fun episode especially with Martha Scott on board as her sidekick! Some humorous scenes such as Jaime breaking a window by accident. The villains are part of the beauty pageant - the host is known as Mr Smile! I enjoyed it and I think Jaime has got a good voice, maybe a little unpolished, but I liked her tone. I mean, it's better than Steve Austin's voice.

I figured the show would just be an excuse to show off Lindsey Wagners... er... assets for the teenage boys who like science fiction, but it turns out to be an ok show. Not much exploitation, since most of it was in evening apparel, except for one scene in a one-piece swimsuit typical of the pageants of the 1970s. The spy plot was your basic Bionic Woman spy game, pretty well done with the mystery revealed gradually as Jaimie overheard bits of the plan through her super hearing. The final scene made me yearn for those days of the television code that taught positive lessons to the young. Today, nearly all prime time television is filled with cynical, "flawed", anti-heros. And then we wonder why children are growing up to be selfish sociopaths.

Let's face it, young people need heros and morals and to avoid cynicism. There will be plenty of time to learn about the selfishness and duplicity of people when they face college and the adult world. If they can be shown something positive to strive for and heros with good morality and altruism before that, perhaps they will try to make a difference in this messed up world.

They say we can thank Lindsey Wagner for the avoidance of guns and shootouts. I think also her emphasis on people being able to redeem themselves when they make a mistake was a truly positive contribution.

If you want something positive to show your pre-teens these days, the Bionic Woman is a good show for that. And this particular episode is a good one.

Not sure if Lindsay Wagner sang because of Lynda Carter in Wonder Woman, but the sad fact is that Carter can sing while Wagner is certainly pretty as well, but can't sing. It actually is very similar to a WW ep when WW entered a beauty pageant as well. Oh the days when such things were acceptable and popular.