A beauty contest features heavily in The Bionic Woman episode 7; a plot involving the city of Paris, a key, and a dead OSI agent makes up the rest.
Creator: Kenneth Johnson
Genre: Adventure, Superhero
Number of seasons: 3
Ep. 7 Release Date: March 17, 1976
Where to watch: on digital & VOD
The Bionic Woman episode 7 is called “Bionic Beauty”, and discovering that was, if you’ll believe it, enough for an episode from an entirely different show to be brought to my mind – “Beauty on Parade”, from the first series of Wonder Woman (1975).
That episode was about Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter) going undercover at a beauty pageant run by Nazis, and I didn’t much like it because the competition of said pageant was rather centre-stage. Does this woman have nicer legs than that woman, for example. And if yes, then the two of them must surely be bitter rivals.
So I was hoping that this immediate title association was to be just as immediately dismantled by the actual contents of The Bionic Woman episode 7, but it wasn’t. For “Bionic Beauty” is about Jaime Sommers (Lindsay Wagner) going undercover at a beauty pageant run by thieves. Was there a big beauty contest boom in ‘70s America or something?
Putting aside the Wonder Woman comparisons for a sentence or two – of which there will likely be many (but I did hold off for six whole episodes, which I reckon is pretty good going) – this episode of The Bionic Woman again opens with Jaime pottering about her home, using her bionic powers for the completion of household chores. Of course, we wouldn’t want to forget that she is still but a woman. Jaime might save lives now and then, but maintaining the domestic image makes her… relatable, I suppose? I never saw Wonder Woman doing any of that. But at least Helen (Martha Scott), Steve’s mum, is there too, which is a nice surprise. I’ll take any recurring characters I can get.
Seconds later, Oscar (Richard Anderson) is again letting himself into Jaime’s home, this time to ask her if she would enter a beauty contest on behalf of the OSI. Jaime says no, but Oscar’s always got some persuasive story prepared, and here it’s that an OSI agent has recently been found dead, floating in the Seine, and the last message received from said agent was this: “the next Miss United States will be Miss Florida”. Jaime doesn’t care much about a potentially rigged beauty contest (and who would?), but it’s this fact of the dead agent that convinces her to sign on.
Oh, and this is totally unrelated I’m sure, but apparently the OSI has recently lost a very important thing, the silly bunch. But if it was easily lost it’s probably nothing, right?
Helen then stays around for the entire episode too, to make the surprise of her presence all the nicer, acting as Jaime’s chaperone at the pageant. She’s not been informed of Jaime’s true reasons for being there, but I’m sure she’ll be brought into confidence by the end – most of Jaime’s sidekicks do. Which is something I first thought rather original, right up until it was repeated in almost every episode.
On arrival to the contest, Jaime almost immediately eavesdrops on a shady interaction between a Mr Raymond (Bert Parks) – who runs the show – and a certain Miss Florida (Cassie Yates), but she hardly has time to untuck the hair behind her bionic ear before all the competitors are being ushered into pre-recording the ‘talent show section’. There, Jaime sings a song. For two and a half minutes. A full-length song. Did Lindsay Wagner have an album to promote or something? I know Lynda Carter soon did!
Later that day, Helen comes onboard with what’s really happening when Jaime goes to quite blatantly climb out the window of the room they’re both sharing. I was expecting this little revelation to come at a moment more tense, but dropping out a window in the dark of night will do. Jaime’s looking to follow Mr Raymond, and just so happens to do a bit more eavesdropping, thanks again to her bionic ear. This time, Mr Raymond is talking to someone about how the next Miss United States will be smuggling something for him on their prize-winning flight to Paris. Because apparently Miss United States is not required to go through customs.
It’s interesting that the first thing Miss United States gets to do as Miss United States is leave the United States, but also, it’s just us ugly people that have to go through airport security is it? Maybe being pretty does have its perks.
It is also mentioned at some point that the thing to be smuggled is, in fact, a very important thing – “the key to the entire defence system of the United States”. Oh Oscar, you didn’t go misplacing the key to the entire defence system of the United States, did you?
Miss Florida, meanwhile, spots Jaime sneaking about outside, and dobs her in to a Mrs Belding (Helen Craig) – who seems to be in charge of the competitors and their lodgings. The two of them together scupper Jaime’s curfew breaking and, Mrs Belding informing Mr Raymond of the infringement, she’s confined to her room until the pageant really begins, tomorrow evening. Jamie sends Helen out in the morning to inform Oscar of all that’s occurred, but she’s caught using the phones without Mr Raymond’s approval, and so she gets stuck back in the room and all. Quite restrictive places, these beauty pageants (in more than one sense, I’d wager). Maybe being pretty does have its disadvantages.
Jaime and Helen are let out of the room in time for the ‘bathing suit section’ however, which is much like how you might picture a ‘bathing suit section’ to be, and also happens to decide the five finalists.
They still do this Miss United States thing, don’t they? Do they still have a ‘bathing suit section’? Oh, they do? But they call it a ‘competitive swimsuit segment’ now? Strange. A little curious, sure, but strange.
Jaime ends up being one of the five finalists, perhaps due to her earlier singing, which is heard again, in full, underneath the ensuing backstage sequence, that ends with Jaime being chloroformed – like what often happens in Wonder Woman!
Mr Raymond’s crony (responsible for said chloroforming) tries to stick the now unconscious Jamie with a needle full of stuff that will keep her ‘sleeping’ until the episode is well over, but can’t get it into her arm. “Try the other one mate, her left arm isn’t bionic”, but the goon thankfully doesn’t hear me, and Jaime wakes up to then win the pageant. Easy peasy.
The Bionic Woman episode 7 ends with the baddies pointing a gun into Helen’s back, and then pointing a gun into Jaime’s back, before trying to make off with the key to the entire defence system of the United States – which looks like a circuit board cuboid thing – but Jaime stops them driving away by lifting up the back of their car (exactly how Wonder Woman does partway through “Beauty on Parade”, wouldn’t you know?). At least this one then has a final moment where Jaime and Miss Florida make up, and, holding hands, walk off into the figurative sunset. In your face, Wonder Woman.
To be more level-headed here at the end, if I had watched The Bionic Woman before Wonder Woman, these comparisons certainly would only have come when I was writing about “Beauty on Parade” instead, for these two episodes really are similar. I even went on IMDB to see if they had been written by the same person. They weren’t, but I did find out that “Bionic Beauty” actually aired seven months before “Beauty on Parade”! Isn’t that a twist? The Terminator (1984), now Wonder Woman (1975); what else is The Bionic Woman a precursor to?
Now, for the sake of a closing statement, I’ll admit that my continued lack of beauty pageant understanding likely clouded my possible enjoyment of The Bionic Woman episode 7, as it has done before, but if there’s anything certain I could take away from it all, it’s the thought that I’ll have to watch some more of The Six Million Dollar Man (1973) someday, just to check if we ever see Steve using his bionic powers to finish up household chores, or see him forced to parade around in his swim trunks.
Episode 7 of The Bionic Woman is now available to watch on digital and on demand.
