EPISODE REVIEW 3X08

Nov. 12, 1977

Dear Diary,

Mood Ring: Blue.. really, really happy!

Hooray! I finally got to see the Bionic Woman again tonight! It was a really good one, but I think Jaime might of made a little mistake and forgot to wear her bra in the beginning. For some reason my brothers decided to stay and watch this episode with me. I thought they didn't' like this show.

Oct 16, 2011

Dear Bionic Blondes,

Mood Ring: Blue (happy again)

Yes, I purchased a brand new nostalgia mood ring off the internet to start wearing again while I watch my favorite 70s TV show. It cost me $7.95, and that's not even in installments. Parts of this episode seemed familiar to me, so I know I must have seen the original broadcast, but as I could not recall anything else about it, I essentially watched it for the first time all over again.

Sisterfriends: This week Jaime showed up for her show 6 minutes late, after we watched Oscar nearly get some informant shot in a rose garden. Oscar's secretary Callahan returns in this episode, and we get to see Jaime and Callahan have their girl talks again just like the old days. Callahan appears to have put all those angry Fembot faces behind her now, and was really excited to tell Jaime all about her new boyfriend.

And then OMG, I’m like a deer caught in headlights… they cut to Jaime sitting in a chair across from her, wearing a very, very—and I mean I cannot stress this enough—VERY low V-Neck blouse that practically cuts all the way down to her navel. Like, if she wore this while teaching school at the Air Base, she would be called down to the principal's office and they would have to call Helen to come get her daughter. I believe this very risque top was like a cyan blue, but honestly, there wasn't a household in America that ever saw it. For all practical purposes, Jaime wore something in nude during the first half of Brain Wash. This blouse shall henceforth be known as “The Big Valley.”

Oh Yeah, The Plot: So, we learn Callahan is head over heels in love with some guy named John who owns a hair salon who isn't even gay. (I thought this show was supposed to be grounded in reality.) Anyway, she takes Jaime down to his salon to introduce them. We meet John, who is so smitten and lovey dovey with Callahan that he barely even notices Jaime, let alone her Big Valley blouse. (Are we really sure this guy isn't gay?) Anyway, John takes his sweetie back to a private room where he then drugs his date and gets her to spill OSI secrets. While flipping through a magazine in the outside waiting room, Jaime bionically overhears Callahan back there singing like a canary. Busted.

Back After These Messages:  Seriously, OMG, Jennifer Darling, as it turns out, is a very good actress. Guess it's hard to catch a break when they keep writing you as a plastic Fembot. At last, in this episode Callahan has a chance to exercise her drama chops, and proves she can hold her own in a scene with an Emmy-winning actress. You go girl. She was a delightful surprise to me tonight, and of course Ms. Wagner was awesome as usual, and I bet she enjoyed this co-star interaction MUCH better than last week's Motorcycle Boogie "actor" <--- and BTW those are air quotes. I'm liking this episode a lot, and my now blueish-purple mood ring agrees.

Agent Jaime decides to return to the hair salon to dig up some more information about this mysterious, private “Gold Key Room” where the secrets were leaked, and books herself a shampoo and set with Callahan's boyfriend. When Jaime enters this decked out den, she totally said, "So, this is where you did Callahan this morning."  (I just wanted to see that in print.)

Rinse and Repeat: John disappears for a moment, so Jaime goes rummaging through his cabinets and drawers and finds a wire leading to an electronic box. But then John interrupts her when he returns, wearing a hairbrush strapped to his belt like a gunslinger (LOL) and proceeds to give Jaime a shampoo.  It wasn’t my favorite 70s brand "Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific" —this was a special drugged kind and Jaime gets a really nice buzz going. She's all happy and tripppppppin. Then he sets her hair in some spongy rollers and while she’s under the hairdryer, he starts asking her OSI questions.

Jaime divulges she's bionic, then bends the arm of the chair to demonstrate. He records all these secrets which he plans to later sell, then brings her out of her twilight and hypnotically commands her to forget it ever happened.  Just as this salon appointment was wrapping up and John started to put the moves on Jaime, Callahan walks in the room and her jaw drops. Mine did too, but for a totally different reason.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

High Def: On the street outside, Jaime and Callahan have argument #2. It was another great and marvelously acted scene between the two, but of course I could not take my eyes off of Jaime's massively curly hair the entire time, which proceeded to take up three-quarters of my TV screen, forcing out the rest of the actors in the scene. Sorta like this ---> 

On my 50-inch HDTV set, all I can see right now are mountains of tight afro curls in amazing high definition detail. Everywhere.

Well, the upside is at least I don't even notice her Big Valley blouse any more. Same deer, different headlights.

Dream Weaver: That night in some frightening, 70s-decorated Washington hotel room with a yellow bedside phone, we see Jaime sleeping. Meanwhile, her long, curly hair extends past her pillow to the room next door and 4 floors down. She begins to remember some of her salon interrogation in her dream. (So why can't she have flashback dreams like this about her BF Is!Steve?!!) She wakes up and calls Callahan, who incidentally also has a yellow phone by her bed. (Guess these are overstocked in the props department now, too.) Callahan confesses she also falls asleep when her boyfriend does her hair, but scoffs at Jaime's suggestion that John is up to something.

Slap Happy: So then Jaime decides to go back to the hair salon to look for evidence. While she jumped a back wall under the cover of darkness, her giant hairdo was no doubt being picked up by Air Force radar as an unidentified flying object. At this point we see she has finally changed out of the Big Valley and is now wearing a nice, 2-piece magenta jump suit belted at the waist. While inside, Jaime found the hidden recording equipment and WikiLeak tapes, but then John stopped her at gunpoint.

Callahan shows up after the commercial, overhears her boyfriend dissing her and kicks into familiar Fembot action.  She and Jaime jump their captors, and while Callahan has her now-ex-boyfriend down on the floor, she hauls off and slaps him. YESSSS! The only thing that would have made that scene even better, is if Jaime could have gone over and slapped him, too for giving her this gawdawful hairdo. But Jaime is too polite, so I took it upon myself to mentally slap him on her behalf. I loved that they went ahead and gave John a dose of his own shampoo to get him to tell them where the sniper was. Very clever!

Cagney and Lacy Continued: Next scene, we see Callahan driving her little Chey Nova-ish car like a raving maniac through the streets racing to get to the stadium in time, with Jaime in the passenger seat pleading for her to slow down. Even at a distance you could tell it was Jaime, because her mastodon hairdo flowed out the window and trailed behind them for like six blocks. In the stadium, we see Oscar on the football field looking for his informant, and my... does he look handsome in this pink shirt, khaki trousers and dark blazer today. Mr. Preppy! Where was I? Oh, Jaime spots the sniper and pulls a flag pole out of the stadium and starts running with it like she was about to pole vault (LOL), but then uses it to simply knock the sniper's rifle out of his hands just in the nick of time and saves the day.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: In Oscar's office at the end, we see that Jaime's hair is at last back to normal. Whew! I wonder if they actually shot this scene first in the production schedule, because I’m convinced Lindsay is still trying to wash the 87 cans of hairspray out of her hair today that were used in the making of that curly "masterpiece."

And look, Rudy is here, too! He provides the chemical analysis of the shampoo that caused Jaime to have the worst hair day of her life. In this final scene, she is wearing a cute white cotton spaghetti strap dress and macramé type shawl with colorful little tassels, although at first I mistook them for dangling rabbits’ feet.  Jaime and Callahan have a heart-to-heart talk and make up. Hooray, they are best friends again. I just love happy endings.

John, the not-gay hairdresser: "You will tell people it's the best salon in Washington. You'll forget this session and wake up slowly, and feel better than you have in years."

You can forget about the haircut referral, buddy, but I will say I feel much better than I have in previous weeks watching The Bionic Woman. Hair-raising adventure and Big Valley blouse aside, I really liked this episode.  And my bright blue $7.95 mood ring concurs.

P.S. I am purposely not showing any photos of Jaime’s hairdo or the Big Valley blouse in this review as an homage to Alfred Hitchcock, who taught us that some things are even more terrifying if simply left to the viewer’s imagination.  And also because I suspect you are sneak-reading this at work, and I wanted to spare you from having to explain to your co-workers why you are screaming.

P.S. Again: Oh, alright. I could not bring myself to do Jaime’s fashion tribute video without including the infamous Big Valley blouse, so you will see a glimpse of it at 3:12 in Jaime’s Wardrobe Party, however, it has been properly censored as NC-17 in hopes that YouTube won’t flag my account. ha ha.