Gapers Block
March 4, 2005
Wonder Woman: The Complete
First Season
Executive produced by Douglas S. Cramer.
Starring Lynda Carter, Lyle Waggoner, Beatrice Colen and
Richard Eastham.
Wonder Woman: The Complete
Second Season
Executive produced by Douglas S. Cramer.
Starring Lynda Carter, Lyle Waggoner, Saundra Sharp and
Tom Kratochzil.
When I was a kid, I watched the Wonder Woman TV
show religiously, simply because it was a super-hero show.
Even then, I didn't think it was a terribly good show, but
it was a comic book on screen. I was always a little curious
why my dad watched it with me fairly often, too, but that
became clear to me a few years later.
In a way, it's prescient that the first lengthy shot of
Lynda Carter in "The New Original Wonder Woman,"
the 1975 pilot for the 1976–79 Wonder Woman
series, is of Diana running down a beach on Paradise Island.
The show was, essentially, a Baywatch of its time: little
more than a justification to ogle attractive women for an
hour, with a bit of action thrown in mainly so the right
parts would jiggle in the right ways at the, er, climax.
Of course, ogling women in action shows is a reliable, if
not foolproof, formula that dates back to The Avengers,
the '60s British TV show featuring, in its most popular
episodes, super-spies John Steed and Emma
Peel: hot woman + fighting = ratings.
The producers of The Avengers knew exactly what
they were doing when they replaced the attractive but bland
Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman, who went on to earn her fame
as Pussy Galore in Goldfinger) with the smoking
hot Diana Rigg's new character. A woman had "M appeal"
if she was sexually attractive; it was one of the innumerable
'60s slang terms that never made it out of the decade alive
(or, for that matter, off England's shores). The term "jiggle
show" was supposedly coined to describe Charlie's
Angels, which starred a trio of Emma Peel rip-offs
and, like the Wonder Woman series, also premiered in 1976.
It aptly describes, however, not only Wonder Woman,
but a host of programs that came after it, whether they
are overtly sexualized or not, or whether they are action
shows or not. But where the best jiggle shows, such as Alias
and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, are solid, well-written
action shows beyond the hot woman or women at their center,
there are a dozen Birds of Prey for every Buffy.
Although nostalgia and my fondness for Lynda Carter's unbelieveable
curves compel me to enjoy the show more than it deserves,
Wonder Woman is one of the former. Which is to
say it wasn't particularly good.
Even as kids' shows go, Wonder Woman was incredibly
sanitized in the two most crucial points for a show built
around a female action hero: sex (or titillation, rather)
and violence. For God's sake, she throws her opponents against
walls more often than she throws punches. And in spite of
a few rare, eyebrow-raising bits such as Steve Trevor's
secretary "innocently" leaning her breasts into
Trevor's arm in the pilot, the show is practically devoid
of the sexual innuendo of the original Wonder Woman
comics as envisioned by "Charles Moulton" —
actually William Moulton Marston, a psychologist, swinger
and bondage fetishist who also invented an early type of
lie detector. The early Wonder Woman comics were
chock full of the obvious bondage scenarios that would arise
from a character who carries around a golden lasso capable
of forcing anyone to tell the truth, but the camp of the
Wonder Woman TV show seems to be off limits when
it comes to even PG-rated eroticism.
With its Amazon princess and the endless sapphic innuendo,
Sam Raimi's Xena: Warrior Princess was, in many
respects, a better Wonder Woman TV show than the real series,
even compared to the latter's significantly improved second
season, which leaped forward to the 1970s and took itself
somewhat more seriously. Xena's action was exponentially
better executed, it was funnier, and it had stronger characterization.
Even its approach to feminism wasn't as simplistic as in
Wonder Woman. I mean, seriously, capping episodes
with Diana Prince grinning like a brain-damaged idiot and
saying things like "where I was raised, we were taught
that good must triumph over evil, and that women —
and men — can learn" isn't terribly progressive,
even for 1970s television. Emma Peel embodied a stronger
feminist message ten years before, just by kicking ass.
Wonder
Woman: The Complete First Season, which includes
"The New Original Wonder Woman," is available
on DVD from Netflix and other fine establishments.
Wonder
Woman: The Complete Second Season was released
on DVD earlier this week and includes the 90-minute season
premiere, "The Return of Wonder Woman," and the
other 21 episodes in the season.
The Greatest American Hero:
Season One
Created by Stephen J. Cannell. Executive produced by Juanita
Bartlett.
Starring William Katt, Robert Culp and Connie Sellecca.
In the series pilot for The Greatest American Hero,
William Katt stars as Ralph Hinkley (later changed to Hanley
after
some guy saw Taxi Driver and tried to assassinate
Reagan), a remedial English teacher given a suit and
cape by aliens and entrusted with a mission to fight evil.
But, when Ralph immediately loses its instruction book,
he's left to figure out how to work its superpowers on his
own. The powers include flight (which he never quite masters),
superstrength, invulnerability and a bizarre, inconsistently
utilized vision power that lets him see into the future
or something. Ralph is aided in this mission by Bill, an
FBI agent played by Robert Culp, who is the only reliable
actor in the cast, unless you count Michael Paré's
recurring role as some Vinnie Barbarino knock-off from Ralph's
class.
The pilot's final scene, with Ralph flying contentedly
over Los Angeles while the theme song plays with its lyrics
for the first time, is easily the high point of the show,
in spite of special effects that fall far below those in
the first two Superman movies, which predate the show. You
just can't deny it: The Greatest American Hero
has the greatest theme song in the history of television.
But other than that, it's little more than a good, dumb,
fun waste of time.
The pilot and the rest of the first season's seven episodes
are pretty funny, both intentionally and unintentionally,
such as one scene where Ralph "corrects" Bill's
pronunciation of "forte"
and reminds him that he's an English teacher, so he should
know. Unfortunately, even the intentional kitsch isn't funny
enough to make up for the sub-Doctor Who special
effects and sloppy scripting. Those who would rather see
an intentionally good show than an unintentional one may
be left wanting.
As with far too many television programs, The Greatest
American Hero's refusal to move past its initial premise
is one of its least forgivable drawbacks, and this problem
carries through into the following two seasons. Although
there are a number of fun moments in the series' run, it
would have been nice to see Ralph (William Katt) actually
learn how to use his powers properly at some point in the
show's run. The closest we get is in the premiere episode
of the third season, not yet scheduled for DVD release,
when Ralph gets a new instruction book for one very fun
episode, only to lose it again after being shrunk and menaced
by ants. For real.
Believe it or not, the sight of a grown man in tights flying
into a wall eventually ceases to amuse.
The
Greatest American Hero: Season One includes the
original pilot, all seven of the first season episodes and
the unaired pilot for The Greatest American Heroine
(which is awful). One disappointing note about the DVD release
is the substitution of several songs throughout the series
(such as Elton John's "Rocket Man" in the pilot)
with generic rock songs, presumably because Anchor Bay Entertainment
was unwilling to pay for the rights to the original songs.
If that bothers you, I've heard of a little something called
BitTorrent.…
The
Greatest American Hero: Season Two, containing
22 episodes, will be released April 5, 2005.
