#57: On the Run

Air Date: 05/13/78  written by Steven E. deSouza    Directed by Thomas J. Blank

The finale to the show is a bit unusual because those involved knew that the show was ending, including Lindsay Wagner who wanted to move on. So, Wagner specifically asked the writer of this episode to come up with a proper way to send off Jaime Sommers and the rest of the cast. The result was a story which finds Jaime at a crossroads - she had become depressed over how her life is going and this is punctuated by the latest incident: while watching over a diplomat's daughter, a scuffle with bad guys damages her bionic arm, exposing some circuitry (eerily similar to a scene in the first Six Million Dollar Man telefim). This sends the little girl into panic; even worse, later, when the girl calms down, she still regards Jaime as some kind of robot hero.  Jaime resigns, including a long resignation letter to Oscar. She plans on relaxing at home until she figures out her next move but government forces are not about to let her simply drift away on her own agenda, perhaps even to betray the U.S. According to a senator (Skip Homeier) and another high-ranked OSI man (Andrew Duggan), her bionics makes it necessary to squirrel her away in some 'resort'-type area to restrict her movements, for national security reasons.
This last seemed like a direct steal of the whole concept of The Prisoner series. The government is seen in a sinister light here, unusual in that it was always some other government that was the problem in other episodes, not the USA. Jaime is on the run here from her own benefactor and employer, a turnaround of great proportions. This brings most of Jaime's friends at OSI into the action - her boyfriend Chris (Christopher Stone), Rudy and of course Oscar, who manages to warn her just before she's 'picked up.'  Too bad that Callahan was missing in this one; that was a shame. The denouement may seem anticlimactic, swiftly returning things to the status quo after everything looked quite gloomy, but this was a pretty thought-provoking episode in all, suggesting how all our neatly-stacked lives might suddenly tumble without much warning. In essence, it was Jaime giving a reality check to herself and overcoming a kind of midlife crisis that recalled her identity crisis when she first gained her bionics. In addition, this episode was an opportunity to show the great warmth in the friendship between Jaime and some of her OSI buddies, notably Oscar. BoG's Score: 7 out of 10

Star Trek TOS actor alert: actor Skip Homeier appeared in two TOS episodes - Patterns of Force and The Way to Eden