episode #23 - Jaime's Shield

episode #10 of 2nd season / Air Date: 12/15/76 written by James D. Parriott Directed by Alan Crosland

Jaime joins the police dept. of Santa Regina; this copies the premise of an earlier Six Million Dollar Man episode, The Bionic Badge, but is much more involved and a 2-part episode. One of the reasons it's a 2-parter is that it covers several weeks of time - very lengthy by the standards of a typical episode. Jaime has to go through the whole police cadet training program in this one (the prospect is particularly annoying to her since she will be away from her students all that time and a substitute teacher will have to be used). Oscar sends her in because OSI has learned that an enemy agent has infiltrated the police program, for reasons unknown. There are several female cadet suspects; the main suspect turns out to be the daughter of the police commissioner (Arch Johnson), there in defiance of her daddy . Jaime's training officer (George Maharis) turns out to be the cop who gave her a ticket on the day of her assignment, in one of those off-the-wall TV coincidences.
This episode was surprisingly diverting as it placed Jaime in an unusual scenario. She proves to be a star cadet mostly thanks to her bionics and there's also the detective story part of it as we try to figure out which of the female cadets is the villain (this is revealed at the end of part one - is it the most likely one or the least likely one?). There's also the mystery of what the intent of the villain is - no one knows during the first part. This police dept. turns out to be riddled with traitors - there are a couple of veteran male officers involved besides the female plant. There's also a memorable scene of a masked gunman (a disguised cop) rushing into the classroom, firing his gun, as a test exercise for the students - I'm sure I've seen a similar scene on one of the TV cop shows, maybe on The Rookies. Continued in Part 2. BoG's Score: 7 out of 10