New posts

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 260126" data-attributes="member: 23">Assault On The Princess <img src="http://www.televisionofyore.com/uploads/9/3/0/3/9303799/season2-episode4-inside_1_orig.jpeg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />Jaime does The Love Boat before there even was The Love Boat. These Angels On A Cruise episodes are usually fun to watch for the combination of the exotic on a budget. Sometimes it’s good to have that sense of confinement and isolation. Especially when Jaime’s trying to track down an explosive. Once again, there’s microtechnology involved. This time the dangerous energy cell is described by Oscar as being about “the size of a flashlight battery”. It all seems very ahead of its time in terms of the quest for tech to become smaller and smaller. There’s some past-and-future soap pedigree on board. Ship captain, Lucky Harrison is Peyton Place’s Dr Rossi, while Ray Krebbs from Dallas is steering the boat. In fact, I’m fairly certain the photo of Harrison Oscar show’s Jaime is actually Ed Nelson in character as Rossi in a Peyton Place publicity still. At this point in his career Ed Nelson seemed to appear on pretty much every episodic series specialising in overconfident, slightly sleazy smoothies with a roguish twinkle and a chequered past. Both Lucky and Steve Kanaly’s Tanner are somewhat dodgy. Tanner is shown to be deliberately taking the boat off course for an assignation. But both develop an attraction towards Jaime. And both turn out to be reasonably decent guys. There’s a nice moment in the last half where, after helping Jaime, Lucky abandons her to make a break for it on realising the boat is going down. But even that has a twist. Best of all is the surprise return of Vito Scotti as Romero - the lusty-but-bumbling old Italian from Fly Jaime. Wisely, on seeing him, Jaime flashes back to my favourite line from that episode (“get your hands off my ham and cheese”). It’s great to see this bit of continuity, with Romero surprised to find that air steward Jaime Winters is now blackjack dealer Jaime Windsor. Naturally, Jaime pretends she’s never seen him before, causing him to pop up at inopportune moments trying to jog her memory by calling out random plane-related lines (“fasten your seatbelts” and whatnot) and generally sabotaging her investigation. More than once I’ve complained that nobody ever seems to recognise Jaime when she’s undercover, despite her high profile tennis career. Romero returning as this blast from the past covers some of this ground and I really enjoyed having this aspect explored. Since it was done in a lighthearted way, it also keeps to door open for a similar scenario with a more serious tone in future episodes. We can hope. It’s a nice episode. All the same, I was left with many questions: Why all the spectacle of “Jaime Windsor” being on the run from the police? Surely there’d be a more low-profile way to get her aboard. Why, after finding the device she’s there to retrieve, give it to Romero? Apart from the huge risk to his life, wouldn’t it be wiser to take it to the freezer herself to ensure it’s done properly? Why the tearful breakdown at the end of the mission? Jaime’s experienced more challenging situations than this. The biggest question of all is: what’s happened to Jaime’s teaching career. She’d have been on board for some days, yet no mention was made of how this fitted into her schedule. Apart from the text in the opening credits, I don’t believe even a token mention has been made of Jaime’s career or students for half a dozen episodes or so. </blockquote>

Verification: 6 + 4 =