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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 260713" data-attributes="member: 23">Kill Oscar (Parts II and III) / Black Magic <img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EZC3Cd7XYAEZScb.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 600px" /> A three-part story running for some two and a half hours in total is a very ambitious project for this franchise.While it’s mostly successful, by the third episode I did start to feel that it might have benefited from being a two-parter. Some scenes plodded and - unusually for this series - scenes that featured dialogue frequently lacked energy and sparkle. There were very few scenes that explicitly screamed “filler”, but a general feeling that the story was stretched just a little too thin hung over the second and third episodes. I did appreciate that each of the episodes had slightly different tones. As expected, Jaime did most of the work in her initial instalment, while Steve was the key player on his show. Part III seemed the most bionically balanced and felt like a true team-up. Which is appropriate since this is the final crossover between the two series.Part I remains the most fun and exciting instalment for me, in large part because it introduced some great characters and the existence of the Fembots was still concealed from the main characters, giving us some fun interactions. Parts II and III didn’t quite hit the same highs, but were great fun all the same. Evil Oscar battling Steve alone was worth the ticket. Then there's the curate’s egg that is Black Magic. Going heavily in its favour is the guest-cast: Julie Newmar; William Wyndom; Hermione Baddeley; and Vincent Price, no less, in a dual role. The premise - part Cluedo; part And Then There Were None; part Carry On Screaming, part Scooby Doo - is a fun-but-hackneyed one. Unfortunately, the execution is more hackneyed than fun, and feels blandly generic. There’s little that’s uniquely Bionic Woman, and one can’t help feeling it was a script lying round from some other episodic show lazily re-written to include Jaime. None of which is necessarily that bad. I have a soft spot for haunted house films. And feuding relatives battling over a will. And the isolation of being surrounded by water with no escape. This episode has all three. Dragging the entire episode down into puerility is the plot of a werewolf-like creature roaming the island, and abducting relatives from the household which is just incredibly tedious. I don’t know whether it was intended to be funny or scary, but it’s neither. And it tested my tolerance. In the last act there was even a Scooby Doo style unmasking. In many ways it’s an unmissable episode due to the cast. It’s just a shame there are elements which feel unworthy of the cast and this series. The actors look like they’re having great fun with it, but I suspect it was more fun to film than to watch. </blockquote>

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