Wonder Woman: The Complete Collection

All you really need to know about the ’70s-era Wonder Woman TV series is summed up in this theme song couplet: "In your satin tights/Fighting for your rights.” Stuck between flaunting former Miss USA Lynda Carter’s rockin’ bod and promoting the ERA-fuelled women’s lib movement, it likely didn’t satisfy either constituency (despite the included docs claiming the contrary). But transposed to our post-Kate Moss times, where most media images of women are stick figures — outside of hip-hop videos, anyway — Carter’s thick thighs, amble ass and God-given rack are themselves a political statement — tit-men will appreciate the sporadic visits to WW’s Amazonian hometown Paradise Island, where men don’t exist and the ladies traipse around in flimsy negligees while competing in slow-mo running races. The show is as camp as all get-out — it amazes how unsophisticated television was a just a few decades ago — but it’s camp of the best sort, with the still-cool Superfriends-style graphics, Wonder Woman’s indelible outfit, a totally visible invisible plane and awesomely evil German accents. Sure, three seasons are more than anyone really needs, but it does allow you to see how drastically the show changed between the first season on ABC and its two subsequent seasons on CBS. The series begins, as the original ’40s-era comic does, in the World War II era, with WW’s secret identity, Diana Prince, a bookish secretary, constantly spinning into her costume to rescue her boss/love interest Steve Trevor from the Nazis. Even an alien visit dovetails into a Third Reich threat. But suddenly it leaps into then-contemporary times, with the immortal Wonder Woman now paired with Trevor’s son, both of whom work for the ’70s equivalent of Homeland Security fighting terrorists, communists, dastardly disco DJs and, yes, Hitler’s clone. But even if the series never quite nailed the balance between sexism and feminism, nowadays both boys and girls can equally appreciate Wonder Woman’s big, star-spangled booty.