Rose(-tinted) crush

My first real crush as a boy, after the prototype crush I had on my second teacher (the brunette-hair-down-to-her-waist, guitar-playing, hoop-ear-ring-wearing Miss Broad) was Lindsay Wagner. Or, more precisely, her most famous screen role, Jaime Sommers, The Bionic Woman. You could keep your Charlie's Angels as far as I was concerned (although I watched that too, of course, and did sort of like Jaclyn Smith), it was the tennis-pro turned schoolteacher who somehow warranted a multi-million dollar upgrade after a parachuting accident that always did it for me. She had brains (a schoolteacher knows everything when you're that age, right?), was super-powered (a bionic arm to go with bionic legs and, erm, one ear) and looked nice enough to make me feel funny in a way I didn't really understand at the time. It's no coincidence that the girl I always ran after when playing kiss-chase in the primary school playground looked like a pint-sized Jaime...

Watching clips now, The Bionic Woman hasn't aged terrifically well. It's hard to imagine watching whole episodes, even through the rose-tinted haze of nostalgia. By contrast, contemporary shows like Columbo and The Rockford Files still hold up, I think. But anyway, Jaime Sommers... the title sequence is archetypal Seventies US fare: the premise, the background, and lots of lingering shots of the star. And then there's a little clip of Jamie defeating a HAL9000 rip-off, in a race against time before they get nuked. Yes, really. Heavy stuff for a show aimed at kids, and actually pretty well done, I reckon.

Now, let me wallow.