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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 259498" data-attributes="member: 23">Mirror Image <img src="http://www.televisionofyore.com/uploads/9/3/0/3/9303799/season1-episode13-inside_orig.jpeg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />Let’s see: the blonde heroine is kidnapped and replaced by a Southern woman who’s had plastic surgery to become an exact double. It’s your basic precursor to Krystle in the attic. Except Jaime isn’t locked in an attic. She’s drugged, put into a large wooden crate attached to an anchor and thrown into the Atlantic. These guys don’t mess around. The Frankenstein who created Jaime II is Dr Courtney, AKA Dallas's Matt Devlin. There’s something about Don Porter that I find unsettling in a way I can't quite pinpoint. But then I always feel bad for feeling that way as he (Don) seems so nice. All of which means I’m conflicted. It’s ideal casting, really. A blessing of this story is that it moves quickly. It could have been padded out to two or even three stories. Instead it’s condensed goodness as the conventions of the doppelgänger story are quickly ticked off one by one: the unravelling of the bandages from the face; the reveal in the hand held mirror; the dialect coaching… and so on.I’d assumed most of the episode would be Lisa impersonating Jaime at OSI but was pleasantly surprised when she was caught out quite early on in the piece and the story became about the turnaround, with Jaime pretending to be Lisa in order to smoke out her contacts. Only for another twist on the story to come when Lisa escapes and two identically-dressed Jaimes are running round the same building, eventually coming face-to-face. As Lisa, Lindsay’s Georgia accent sounds delightfully iffy, but at least it makes sense when Jaime attempts the accent and it’s even more iffy, but nobody notices. Lindsay does nice work though. Her frosty smirks and overconfidence as Lisa-doing-Jaime are subtle, but just enough to create a different energy. There are times when some of her little mannerisms could have been more different - some of the small moments of Lisa-doing-Jaime were a bit too natural and accurate, especially the interactions with Oscar. The real fun came for me in the Jaime-doing-Lisa scenes. Smoking cigarettes badly; being shocked when Lisa’s boyfriend passionately kissed her; trying to work out what Lisa’s natural accent was; bluffing her way round a strange building with which she was supposed to be familiar. There’s something about them that helped me appreciate Jaime - and Lindsay - even more. The writing was good, and these moments ticked all the boxes of enjoyment that a doppelgänger    story should tick. It’s a nice touch that Lisa Galloway smokes, even if it partially spoilt Lindsay’s wholesome image for me (I assume she smoked in real life to be able to smoke naturally on-screen). It’s also a pretty bold move considering how verboten it seemed to be during this era, and I suppose the series got to have its cake and smoke it by associating nicotine use with villainy. That’s far from the most boldest aspect here though. There’s a scene in a bar where Jaime is approached by a patron who buys her a drink and asks if she’s in business, to which she naïvely answers in the affirmative, not quite getting the implication at first, only for him to become handsy, and then annoyed when she bionically rebuffs him. I’ve long thought of the series as one aimed at children, so having the lead mistaken for a sex worker seems that much more edgy. The devil’s in the detail, as always, and I loved the little touch of Jaime sunbathing on holiday only to discover that her bionic skin doesn’t tan. </blockquote>

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