A tape of OSI secrets is up for sale in The Bionic Woman episode 9, and Jaime’s sent abroad to retrieve it before the competition does.
Creator: Kenneth Johnson
Director: Phil Bondelli
Genre: Adventure, Superhero
Number of seasons: 3
Episode Release Date: April 7, 1976
Where to watch: on digital platforms & VOD
The setup for The Bionic Woman episode 9 (“Winning Is Everything”), spoken aloud by Oscar (Richard Anderson) right there at the beginning of it, is thus: there’s this desert race soon to happen in (fictional) Taftan, and Jaime (Lindsay Wagner) is going to join one of the participating cars as a navigator, so that when the race passes through the (fictional) town of Ariram, she can quickly nip out and collect a cassette tape (recently appearing on the black market) that contains the last six months of OSI secrets.
Meaning that we’re informed of near-everything that is to occur in The Bionic Woman episode 9, not even five minutes into the watching of it. Thanks a bunch, Oscar.
But if the following forty-ish minutes are to be of unsurprising story beats then, there are fortunately a few new things to look at. Firstly, Oscar suddenly has a moustache. It looks like a fake moustache, and that’s because it is, being the single part in a one part disguise that supports Oscar’s inscrutable undercover transition from Oscar Goldman, government intelligence, to Oscar Bartholomew, race car sponsor. He’s done this because he wants to keep the OSI’s presence in Taftan on the down-low, being of the thinking that the race will have attracted other parties interested in the tape.
Secondly, there’s the new location: Southwest Asia! Crikey, ABC really spared no expense on this show. There’s a few rugs and the odd camel dotted about, so this can’t possibly have been filmed in the United States. And there’s even a heavily-accented race-commentary voiceover, just to further cement that The Bionic Woman episode 9 was absolutely, verifiably not recorded in California.
Thirdly, there’s the latest once-appearing side character: driver Tim Sanders (John Elerick), who Jaime’s going to navigate for (which we see her do zero of the whole episode), and who I think is meant to be… attractive? Jaime’s uncomfortably long looks and Tim’s immediately personal-space-invading hands are quick to make any connection-starved shut-in taste bile on their tongue. But it’s not like that describes me. No. I’ve more meaningful relationships that I could possibly count, and I’m outside all the time, regardless of the weather – promise!
Then, finally, there are the dune buggy-esque vehicles themselves, which are pretty nice to look at, speeding over the dirt and that. But even these moments, in that well-established and still-practised method, are cut with shots of the actors bouncing themselves about in a deconstructed version of the vehicles in a studio somewhere, which alleviates some of the magic. So it’s rather slim pickings altogether in The Bionic Woman episode 9.
Jaime and Tim spend the duration getting into race sabotage related trouble, perhaps caused by rival duos from China and Russia (with whom the Americans seem to have an antagonistic relationship originating from before the airing of this episode – I wonder what that’s all about?), and Jaime uses her bionic powers throughout to ensure the OSI’s retrieval mission is a success. But gosh, Jaime, isn’t that a bit risky with this Tim fellow so close to hand? Well, in that regard, The Bionic Woman episode 9 is much like The Bionic Woman episode 3, so if you didn’t really enjoy that one, I won’t hold it against you if you skip this one. Though perhaps I should have written so at the beginning of this little article, rather than at the end of it. Sorry about that.
Episode of The Bionic Woman is now available to watch on digital and on demand.
