I don’t watch a lot of TV shows. The time commitment involved is usually too much for me. Cultural touchstones like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and now Game of Thrones have all passed me by. (Part of it is I don’t want to pay for extra channels, and part of it is I don’t usually go for stories about gangsters or medieval fantasy, unless Chris Avellone is writing them.)

But there are a few television shows that I’ve seen every episode of, and one is the 1970s series Wonder Woman, starring Lynda Carter. It’s not because I made a particular effort to see it, but simply because the reruns happened to be on when I eat dinner. And so, quite by accident, I became an avid Wonder Woman viewer over the years.

Actually, let me clarify about the title: the first season is called Wonder Woman. Seasons 2 and 3 are The New Adventures of Wonder Woman. Season 1 is set during World War II when Wonder Woman, often disguised as her alter-ego, Yeoman Diana Prince, battles against various Nazi plots. The subsequent seasons all follow Wonder Woman into the 1970s America, where, disguised as Agent Diana Prince, of the fictional IADC (Inter-Agency Defense Command) she does battle with a host of villains, whose goals range from stealing nuclear weapons to rigging football games.

In both eras, Diana takes her orders* from a man named Steve Trevor, a Major in the WWII-era, and subsequently his son (who I think is sometimes referred to as “Colonel”) in the 1970s. Both Steve Trevors are portrayed by Lyle Waggoner.

Most of the episodes are, to be honest, incredibly silly. The special effects are laughable—lasers appear as straight single-color lines drawn on the picture, while Wonder Woman’s travels in the invisible plane are, well:

The plots are hardly better. I’ve often said one sure sign—maybe even surer than shark-jumping itself—that a show’s writers are out of ideas is the introduction of plots involving gorillas, chimps, monkeys, and other non-human primates. Wonder Woman resorted to that in episode six of season one.

The shows have a certain so-bad-it’s-good charm, but not in the way, say, Adam West’s Batman did. That show seemed like everyone involved was aware of how ridiculous the thing was, and everything was done with a wink and a nod to the audience that yes, they knew this was simply comic-book absurdity.

Wonder Woman is different. Everybody in it seems so earnest. Steve has genuine concern in his voice when he tells Dr. Jaffe to bring Diana safely back from the town where aliens are mysteriously taking people’s bodies over by means of large silver pyramids in order to catch a shape-shifting space criminal. None of the actors play things for laughs, even when they probably should. 

The other thing I enjoy is the relationship between Diana and Steve. Carter and Waggoner have good chemistry, and the characters seem to genuinely respect one another’s abilities. (Granted, the idea that Steve somehow fails to notice that Diana Prince is Wonder Woman is even more laughable than the comparable setup with Superman—Diana doesn’t even wear glasses all the time!)

It doesn’t hurt that Carter and Waggoner are both attractive—Carter was “Miss World USA” and Waggoner posed for Playgirl. The entertainment industry learned long ago that you can put on silly productions with bad writing if you give the audience some eye candy. 

And this brings me to perhaps the most notable aspect of the show: the costumes. In particular, the hats.

I am fascinated by hats, and Diana wears tons of them. I’m not sure if women actually dressed like this in the 1970s, but look at these:

If that doesn’t say super-spy, I don’t know what does. Here are a few more:

Sadly, the other characters’ costumes are not this strong. Here for example is some villainous alien, that I think was designed as a cheap Darth Vader knock-off:

All right, all right; I’ll get back to matters of substance. Like I said, the plots are generally hilariously bad—you get the impression that most of the villains were people who applied for jobs as villains in Roger Moore-era James Bond flicks, but were turned away for being too stupid. And even so, it takes Diana and Steve (and sometimes their comical 1970s conception of what a supercomputer is) to piece together the ludicrous plot.

But there are a few episodes that aren’t completely idiotic. “The Man Who Made Volcanoes” is interesting, because of the battling among three rival groups of agents: Diana representing the USA, some Soviet spies, and two Chinese commandoes, all of whom are assuming the others are responsible for the outbreak of man-made volcano attacks. And in the end, it turns out it’s none of the above, but a rogue scientist. (Played by Roddy McDowall, who was such a good guest villain they brought him back again as a different character) I like the idea of a bunch of competing interest groups, rather than just one “bad guy.”

“The Murderous Missile” is also kind of cool. It has almost a horror vibe to it at the beginning, when Diana stumbles across a town full of people acting like friendly-yet-oddly-sinister yokels, who keep feigning incompetence to keep her from leaving. The denouement is incredibly stupid, and the special effects are bogus as hell, but I liked the premise.

But the best episode, and indeed the only one that I would go so far as to call actually good, has to be “The Richest Man in the World.” I love the whole concept here—the eponymous rich man is kidnapped and robbed to allow criminals to take over his weapons company. A recluse, he’s unable to prove to anyone that he is really the wealthy CEO he claims to be. He meets a poor orphan boy, and together, they work with Wonder Woman to piece together who betrayed him.

Jeremy Slate, the actor playing the rich guy, is really good–he’s arrogant, yet charming, and bewildered at having to do everyday things like driving. And the story is actually pretty coherent—my only complaint is that Wonder Woman herself is about as irrelevant to the plot as Indiana Jones is to Raiders of the Lost Ark. But just as Indy is so cool with his fedora and whip, so Diana is cool in her grey hat and driving glasses.

If you’re keeping score at home, that’s 56 stupid episodes to three decent-to-pretty-good ones. Not an awesome record, I admit. And if your only on-screen experience of Wonder Woman is the recent film, you’d probably watch this show and be disappointed. The movie approached things with a more serious, realistic sensibility, to say nothing of the advances in special effects made over the decades. 

But unlike a lot of people these days, I generally don’t take superheroes that seriously. Some mostly-harmless, stupid fun is all I expect from them. “Gritty, dark, superhero film,” still sounds like an oxymoron to me. Which is not to say that I don’t think superhero stories can have emotional depth, but just that it works better if that emotional depth is of the uplifting sort. 

And hats. Hats are always a plus.

*I think it tells you something about the gender politics of television in the 1970s, that yes, we could have a woman be an immortal superhuman, but only if she had a male boss.