In
“Girl Driver,” a young woman, Freddie Charleston (Susan Lawrence), is a
mechanic and car lover running for Auto Club President at the local high
school. She is the first girl to do so.
But
a sexist boy at school, Mac (Steve Doubet), doesn’t believe that a female can
possibly know anything about cars.
Hoping
to settle the matter, Mrs. Thomas (Joanna Cameron) organizes a rally, a
competition for the two drivers. It will occur in the mountains, and involve
successfully following a map.
Mac,
however, decides to cheat.
It’s
a decision he comes to regret, however, when he runs his car off the road, and
nearly dies.
Fortunately,
Isis is nearby and ready to intervene…
This
episode of Isis (1975 – 1976) confronts an “attitude that is pretty old
fashioned,” namely that women cannot be leaders, or even more basically, decent
mechanics. Mac is the male chauvinist pig who says things like “No girl is
gonna beat me!”
Of
course, to prove his point about the inherent superiority of men, Mac cheats and nearly
gets himself killed.
Isis intervenes in
the battle of the sexes and teaches Mac a lesson about treating people fairly. By the end of the episode, he concedes that
Freddie is not so bad “for a girl” and that he might even vote for her for Auto
Club President.
Isis
demonstrates some amazing powers in this episode. She snuffs out a gasoline
fire in Freddie’s garage by declaring: “Power of fire at my command, disappear when I raise
my hand.”
Later, she gently rides Mac’s
plummeting car down the mountainside to a cushioned impact.
Perhaps most impressively, Isis is able
to look back in time, into the past, and see Mac cheating during the
rally. That’s a power she has never used
before, if memory serves.
Every
week there’s a lesson to learn on Isis, which can make the series a chore to get
through. On the other hand, it was aimed
at kids and every now and then a story would really work, sometimes in spite of itself.
For some reason I can’t fully fathom, I found
“Girl Driver” rather engaging, and found myself looking to see how Freddie
would manage a win in the rally, especially with a competitor dedicated to cheating.
Next
week: “Scuba Duba.”
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