Tag Archives: wonder woman

The Great Wonder Woman Rewatch

LyndaCarterWWCape Once upon a time I bought Husband the complete TV series Wonder Woman (1975-1979) for his birthday.

In an episode of questionable decision-making, I recently decided to blog my way through all 3 seasons of this glorious show.

OK. Look. Lynda Carter is awesome. Wonder Woman is awesome. This show? Not always awesome. Does it matter? A show can be glorious even when it isn’t always awesome, right? Absolutely!

Moving on…

What can you expect from this epic series of insightful posts? I’m not just recapping the shows for you – you’ll get cultural and historical context! Steve Trevor wardrobe snark! DC Geography lessons! And so much more!

Here’s a brief overview of the three seasons to set the stage, in case you’ve repressed or forgotten this magical moment in our cultural history:

In Season 1, Diana Prince/Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter) rescues Steve Trevor Sr. (Lyle Waggoner), one of the worst spies in the history of American spies, and returns to the U.S.A to help him battle Nazis. We’ll battle a lot of Nazis. A lot of Nazis. You won’t believe how many Nazis we’ll fight. We’ll also meet Wonder Woman’s younger sister, Drusilla/Wonder Girl (Debra Winger) and a host of other earnest Nazi-fighting characters, because Nazis.

In Season Two, we’ll follow The New Adventures of Wonder Woman, as the show was retitled when it hopped from ABC to CBS. Our story skips ahead to the groovy present-day 1970s, where we join the Cold War, already in progress. Diana Prince/Wonder Woman journeys from Paradise Island to assist Steve Trevor, JR, who not only looks exactly like his father, but is also one of the worst spies in American history.

Season Two has it’s finger on the pulse of the alien invasion zietgeist of the late 1970s.

Together, Steve and Diana also fight terrorists, jewel thieves, a Hitler clone, an evil toymaker, and psychic children.

You know, the usual scourges of the 1970s.

Changing the setting to the present day saved CBS buckets of money, but they clearly didn’t pour that money back into the show.

With the assistance of their polite super-computer, IRAC, Steve and Diana keep America safe from pretty much everything except Steve Trevor’s terrible, terrible wardrobe.

In Season Three we’ll groove to a disco-fied theme song while we plod through increasingly nutty plots involving (more) alien invasions, time traveling venture capitalists, skateboarders, trained dolphins, computer dating, teen idol kidnappers, leprechauns, and a villainous brain in a jar. Fortunately, Steve Trevor, Jr, Terrible Spy, is still here to grin his dopey grin while Wonder Woman saves the day over and over and over again.

Steve, Diana, and IRAC don’t have to battle the bad guys alone. They’re joined by Rover the robot dog, a chimpanzee, and a super-annoying kid!

Seriously.

It was the 70s. There were a lot of robot dogs, super-annoying kids, and chimpanzees on network television. It was a deeply confusing time to be a child.

*Related post: In the Future We Will All Have Robot Dogs

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for the love of god

Please please please let this just be an idle rumor. If Sandra Bullock is really going to play Wonder Woman in a big screen remake I simply don’t know what I’m going to do. This is a concept that upsets me no end. I don’t have anything against Sandra, but damnit she is not Wonder Woman.

If I ruled the world (and someone put a gun to my head and forced me to do a wonder woman remake) I’d cast Sigourney Weaver. She kicks ass. And don’t give me that “she’s too old” crap because Wonder Woman is 3,000 years old. She’s an amazon, remember? As long as you’re indulging me in this sick little fantasy let me add that I’d cast Janeane Garofalo as Wonder Girl.

No, actually, I want Gina Torres to be Wonder Woman and that’s all there is to it. Problem. Solved.

They’d have better chemistry than Weaver had with Winona Ryder in Alien Resurrection, that’s for sure.

wondering about wonder woman

This morning something occurred to me that I hadn’t thought about before. I was watching Wonder Woman, as I do every morning before I go to work. The Chinese Communists had captured Diana Prince and were tying her up. Diana had to just let them tie her up because of course she couldn’t turn herself into Wonder Woman right there in front of them – it would give away her secret identity.

Or would it? Wonder Woman’s golden lasso compels people to tell the truth, but she also uses it to make people forget things. Why not turn into Wonder Woman, make them forget that they just saw her turn into Wonder Woman, and then kick their commie asses?

Is there an ethical issue? Is it against the rules back on Paradise Island? Is Diana Prince extremely modest? Or would doing that eliminate the requisite scenes where Diana escapes, runs behind a tree and turns into Wonder Woman in “privacy” and then kicks their commie asses. This sequence is formulaic and yet always awkward and never quite believeable – even in the TV Superhero Universe. Changing the forumla would have required the writers to come up with more – and different – scenes to fill out the episode and would have thrown everything out of whack, I guess

I missed the ass-kicking scene since I had to run and take a shower. When I came back Diana Prince was having dinner with the Chinese Communist leader and the couple who had captured her in the first place. They were having a fine time and the leader, General SomethingOrAnother had given his blessing for the couple to disappear into Chinatown and not be commies anymore.

I couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on at the end of the episode and neither could Husband, who was stupified, sitting in the lazyboy sucking down coffee and looking totally perplexed. And he’d seen the whole thing. Some things are better left a mystery, I guess.

I think part of the problem was that our resistance was down. We tried watching back-to-back episodes of the Love Boat last night and I believe we may have actually injured ourselves in some way.