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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 263066" data-attributes="member: 23">Escape To Love / Max (continued) Jamie’s few scenes in Max are all from a hospital bed, where Rudy is said to be doing some routine maintenance on her bionic limbs. While this adds a certain realism, and it’s almost refreshing for Jamie to have a degree of normality, it feels plain wrong to have an episode of The Bionic Woman in which the titular character is a supporting character, and her usual activities are distributed among the “spinoff” characters: Max doing bionic duties, Bobby sneaking in to try and rescue his aunt and Val bringing the feminine charm. Spinoff theories aside, the other thought is that it might have come from necessity if Lindsay had some kind of injury which meant that she couldn’t be as active. It’s not unheard of for this to happen in TV series, and we certainly don’t see her doing anything other than sitting in bed. But I also noticed that Lindsay had visible tan lines on her face where she’d clearly recently been in the sun. Perhaps this episode was simply written round giving the leading lady a bit of R&R, with her returning at the end of some time off to shoot all her scenes in one day. Incidentally, as part of my exploration in trying to work out why Lindsay hardly appeared, I tried to see if she gave birth around this time. It appears not, since her first child was born in 1982. But it was news to me that at this time she was married to Michael “James Dempsey” Brandon. I’d had no idea. With the guest-cast on this series, Lindsay was already two degrees of separation from Dynasty. This not only puts a new spin on that, it also makes her a maximum of three degrees of separation from EastEnders. Back in Escape To Love, Sandor has fallen in love with Jaime and finds time during their hiding out to write a love song for her. It’s all a little saccharine, but all is forgiven thanks to a brilliant choice in the score. The song isn’t sung, but Jaime reads out the words while Sandor strums his little guitar (not a metaphor. It’s an actual guitar). The guitar is incorporated into Charles Albertine’s  score, with other instruments added until it becomes a full instrumental and the audience can experience how the song “sounds” in Sandor’s head. I find myself wondering if Charles wrote the entire song or put the music to lyrics written by episode scribe Ellen Wittman. Either way it’s a wonderful bit of detail.Sandor’s crush never feels as inappropriate as it could, mainly because Mitchell Laurance is in his late twenties here. He’s acting perhaps a dozen years younger than he is, which is a little jarring. This might be why the character feels as though he has a mild developmental disorder. Sandor’s behaviour continues to be frustrating at times. He makes a three act play over deciding whether or not he wants Jaime to rescue him. He ignores Jaime’s instructions to stay close to her, wandering off to pick her flowers and so gets caught in a trap, meaning they miss their chance of reaching the helicopter waiting to whisk them to safety. Later on he hands himself over to the enemy without consulting the people working overtime to rescue him. All the same, there’s a sense of a journey. He does attempt to overcome his fear about escaping. His crush on Jaime is endearing (up to a point). And when he ends up in the same situation of crossing the border at episode’s end, he eventually manages to stop making Zoolander faces long enough to run. It also has to be said that some of the frustration adds to the episode and makes Escape To Love a far more watchable episode than Max. Sandor is in an extreme situation, and responding as many people no doubt would. It’s good to see a character who doesn’t seem to get the rules of superhero sidekicks. His indecisiveness and hesitation amps up the suspense which in turn raises the level of threat, because it’s a complication for Jaime. In Max, Bobby might end up being a bit more go-getting than Sandor, but it doesn’t quite make up for the fact that he’s a bit of a nob to begin with.</blockquote>

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