There’s no mission for Jaime Sommers in The Bionic Woman episode 4, but trouble nearer home, involving the school bus driver, keeps her busy.
Creator: Kenneth Johnson
Genre: Adventure, Superhero
Number of seasons: 3
Episode 4 Release Date: February 18, 1976
Where to watch: on digital & VOD
The Bionic Woman episode 4 (“A Thing of the Past”) opens with Jaime (Lindsay Wagner) and the school bus driver, Harry Anderson (Donald O’Connor), taking her class out for a picnic. They stop off at Harry’s service station first to pick up some baseball gear (there are two shady blokes there who feel they recognise Harry from someplace, but don’t worry about that for now), and then they’re on their way.
Once at the park, Harry gets to cooking up some burgers and hotdogs, whilst the kids get to having a grand old time. In honesty, I’m a little jealous. No school ever took me for a picnic. Actually, maybe once. I vaguely remember us all walking to some rich guy’s house, and then stopping to eat ice-cream on the way back. I’m totally clueless as to what that was all about.
All it seems to be about in The Bionic Woman episode 4 though is getting the kids outside for a bit. I didn’t notice them bringing along any pens or textbooks or other educational paraphernalia. But, I suppose mathematics isn’t going anywhere, so what’s the harm in taking a day out of the timetable for a picnic?
Then, led by a kid wearing a tucked shirt and a waistcoat – man, weren’t the ‘70s something? – the schoolboys start up a girl-exclusionary game of baseball. Upon confrontation, Jaime, being a woman, and, up until a few episodes ago, a professional tennis player too, doesn’t take well to the waistcoat kid’s declarations that boys are better at sports than girls, and that including the girls in their game would ruin it. So, Jaime makes a deal with the little guy: if he can strike her out, the boys can continue as they were, but if not, the girls get to join in.
Without surprise, yet still with disappointment, Jaime resorts to using her cyborg powers to secure a victory for the girls, launching the ball beyond ordinary capability. What a great moral. Girls can’t play sports, but, maybe they could, if only they were represented by a woman with super-strength. The waistcoat kid even goes on to say to the girls that, sure, they can play, but only if they’re as good as Ms Sommers, which, obviously, they aren’t – they don’t have bionic arms.
I would like to blame this on the 1970s of it all – did I mention this kid was wearing a waistcoat, to school? – and sweep it under the rug, but, these kinds of possible-to-idolise female characters continue to be similarly non-human today. Yes, Captain Marvel is an inspiration, but she can also shoot photon blasts and dive through space.
Still, back to the picnic. Well, it actually concludes pretty suddenly after this. We don’t even see the girls playing any baseball before everyone’s back on the bus and headed home! Then, on a road that looks suspiciously like the same one the last two vehicle accidents have occurred on – not a good sign – the bus happens to develop a fault, and Harry sends it off-road to slow it down. Once at a standstill, the bus somehow catches fire, and Harry carries the last kid to safety just moments before it explodes.
The dude’s a hero, but he doesn’t seem too jazzed about it. His picture is in the papers, and now you can worry about those two shady blokes, for they recognise Harry in his newspaper portrait as being someone called Walter Kreuger. It turns out that, fifteen years before, Harry/Walter was witness to a mob-associated hitman going about his business (if you catch my drift), and these two shady blokes reckon that, knowing this, they’re in for two pay days. First, they’ll blackmail some money out of Harry/Walter with a threat to reveal his location to the still-operating hitman – named Mr. Stone (Roger Perry). Then, a little while down the line, they’ll get paid by Mr Stone when they reveal that information anyway.
Harry/Walter confesses his side of things to Jaime, and she strikes upon a solution: just testify against Mr Stone, receive a bit of witness protection, then, resume your new life once the hitman’s in prison. Job done. And, you’d be surprised if it was you, but Jamie just so happens to know someone who can help! Oscar (Richard Anderson) is of course keen to do what he can, and Steve Austin (Lee Majors) himself is soon flying down to Ojai to pick up Harry/Walter – I suppose he just wasn’t very busy, maybe The Six Million Dollar Man was between filming?
You know, writing of Steve, I wonder how many more people sat down to watch this episode because they heard that he was going to be in it, and then were forced to endure the implication of girls playing baseball? Poor souls!
Overall, The Bionic Woman episode 4 has got a bit of The Equalizer to it. But if The Equalizer centred on a cyborg woman, and came out ten years earlier. So, not much like The Equalizer. What I mean is that, it’s all locally-based in this one, and Jaime isn’t getting into scuffles because the OSI sent her on a mission, but because she wants to help someone out of trouble – someone she’s been marginally acquainted with since her own school days.
And I think that’s what I’d rather watch. I’d prefer to see some established locations, and some established characters (besides Oscar). Having continuity of that sort may be a more convincing reason to watch over simply: “hmm, I wonder where the OSI will send her this time?”. Perhaps the poor timing of my Breaking Bad rewatch coinciding with my writing about The Bionic Woman has me wanting too much, or perhaps my watching The Bionic Woman so far from its context is the thing that’s unfair to it.
Maybe I needed to have been there: chatting with the other mum’s at the school gate, saying I’m glad that I let my daughter watch last night’s episode of The Bionic Woman, or, being in the office, talking about Billie Jean King over the watercooler and suggesting: “hey, we should go for a picnic sometime”. Instead, I’m sitting here in the middle of the day, thinking about going to see Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga later, a flatscreen on the wall in front of me, a router and an Xbox in my vision, now typing this out on a laptop. Maybe I can’t experience this the way it was intended to be. Or maybe I’m overthinking and romanticising the past again. Yeah, I suppose it could be that.
Episode 4 of The Bionic Woman is now available to watch on digital and on demand.
