Television Notes: Bionic Woman

October 16th, 2007

Bionic Woman

TelevisionI should like this show more. By “should” I mean there is a direct relationship to Battlestar Galactica (a show I love) which is understandable since they have the same producer, David Eick. The two shows also share some actors, most notably an evil, “previous model” Bionic Woman played by Katee Sackhoff, Mark Sheppard as another baddie, and I think I saw Chief (Aaron Douglas) in a brief scene. Bionic Woman is also “reimagining” of a seventies television show.

Unfortunately, after watching the first three episodes, I haven’t found it compelling enough. The first episode (Second Chances) felt extremely rushed - way too much story line crammed in, in order to get the show in the right place for episodic television. In the first episode alone, Jaime Sommers (Michelle Ryan) is introduced as an over-stressed, barmaid, whom we learn barely anything about before she’s hammered in a car accident and her new fiance starts healing her with bionic implants. Next come short scenes of discovering new powers, the death of someone close, and several conflicting interests, each of which could have been expanded into an episode apiece. All the information contained in the pilot could have been stretched out over several, or if the show really wanted to jump right into the action, been revealed through flashbacks.

In the second episode (Paradise Lost), Jamie quickly morphs into a martial arts killing machine, with not much explanation as to how she learned all this stuff - and the show gets cheesy: one-armed pull ups, crying in the bathtub, and Jamie discovering a top secret dossier conveniently located under some floorboards. Lastly, she seems too easily convinced to become a government agent (with slight, laughable protestations like “this will be on my terms”).

By the third episode (Sisterhood), things finally get somewhere, as Jamie is deployed on her first mission. There are some amusing confrontations between Sarah (the previous model) whose bionic modifications are killing her. But there’s more unintentional hilarity, such as Sarah coming over for a visit just to torture Jamie’s daughter sister… only to abruptly run out of the apartment, and later confront her at a salon. Lastly, this episode introduces a new supervisor (as if we needed any more) played by Isaiah Washington, who left Gray’s Anatomy at the end of last season. I have a feeling he’ll be looking for another series soon.

Sarah is well-played by Katee Sackhoff, but I don’t think it was a good idea to introduce the evil character so early on. I think the Bionic Woman would be better established doing some awesome missions over the first few shows, only to meet her arch-rival a bit later - the mustachioed evil-twin David Hasselhoff, evil Kirk, and the Battlestar Pegasus didn’t show up in those shows’ pilot episodes.

At the end of the day, all I really found appealing about Bionic Woman was wondering which Battlestar Galactica actor would appear in a cameo, and whether I should check out East Enders. In conclusion, I feel the show is too goofy to take seriously - and if it’s goofy camp you want, you may as well return to the original. All of its more compelling sci-fi aspects seem better handled on Battlestar Galactica - a show that grabbed me from the very first episode.

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