BIONIC WOMAN Recap: Pilot - Give Me My Remote : Give Me My Remote

BIONIC WOMAN Recap: Pilot

September 27, 2007 by  

Bionic Woman Recaps

Our resident Sci-Fi recapper, Jo, is taking on recapping NBC’s new show BIONIC WOMAN for GMMR while her beloved BATTLESTAR GALACTIC is enjoying an extended hiatus. Read on to find out just went down in the show’s season premiere, and more importantly what Jo thought of the reinvention of the Bionic Woman.

Don’t forget to give this one the ‘ol “So Say We All” and let us know what you thought.

Episode Title: “Pilot”
Original Airdate: 9.26.2007

The halls of One Government Conspiracy are lined with dead and bloodied scientists. Future Hiro’s Less Cool Brother finds Starbuck, er Sarah Corvus, huddled over the mess. “Do you love me?” she asks. Yes, yes we do, Katee. He shoots her. Touching, but not as gut wrenching as that time when Helo shot Athena so she could…oh, it’s going to be a long wait til January…

Jamie Sommers, quiet bartender, cares for her lying and law breaking teenage, yet shockingly one dimensional, sister. There should be some good stuff in this relationship later on though. Jamie sneaks into a college lecture on bioethics given by her boyfriend Will. Oh, their little heart to heart why do you love me conservation rings a bell in my head. This is what’s wrong with this whole episode. The characters are talking to the audience and not to each other.


At dinner, Will is getting a promotion in Paris.

  • TV Cliché 1. (I’m getting a promotion at work. I get to move from my quiet office upstairs to a soon to be built office downstairs. Seriously, does any TV job promotion NOT end up in London, New York or Paris?) Jamie doesn’t want to leave her dead end job to go with him.
  • Cliché 2. Oh, because Jamie is pregnant.
  • Cliché 3. Will wants to get married because he’s loved her from hello.
  • Cliché 4. Oy with the poodles already.

Fortunately for the viewer, this baby naming in the car scene (stolen from Alias S5E1, eh?) is interrupted by a mack truck, driven by Sarah, which pummels into Jamie’s side of the car. Something tells me Sarah Corvus will be a constant scene corrector through this series. Blah blah Jamie is about to die. Will, leaving behind his notes from the lecture earlier today, whisks her off to One Government Conspiracy, run by the dude from Crossing Jordan. Jamie gets fit with a bionic eye, ear, arm, two legs, and a kitchen sink. What no HBO? No wonder our government can’t get anything productive done. It’s too busy hiding superheroes, finding moles in CTU, running secret underground labs and framing Lincoln Burrows.

Jamie takes to the news, well badly, and eventually realizes she doesn’t have to play by their rules and splits. I watching the episode for the second time on NBC’s new and improved online player and the music in the Target ads are more exciting than what’s on this episode. Blonde chick, Future Hiro’s Less Cool Brother (less cool because he doesn’t sport the soul patch) and Crossing Jordan Doc decide to hunt her down. Because in their infinitely advanced technology, no one thought to include a lo jack. At least Jamie discovers most of her new powers faster than the 20+ years it’s taking Clark Kent over on Smallville.

Jamie goes back to normal life and normal job. Sarah shows up at the bar. Jamie recognizes the insane chick that smashed into her. The two have the first realistic and engaging conversation in the whole episode. Sarah shoots Will, Jamie chases her down and the two mix it up in this spectacular rainy, fight scene that makes up for the first 37 minutes of the show. Sarah and Jamie’s fight is one part Alias and one part Matrix, which is to say all kinds of legendary.

I’ve never seen the original 70s series and don’t have much desire to. Overall the pilot definitely suffers from pilot-itis. Most of the characters feel flat, the dialogue’s stale and it’s a whole lot of back story crammed into 42 minutes. BUT it has potential. I believe in David Eick, the executive producer and one of the masterminds behind what else? Battlestar Galactica. Characters will grow as the actors get comfortable and dialogue is easy to fix. The only thing I truly hated was the the blend of collegiate angst emo music that doesn’t fit the tone of the show or the character of Jamie Sommers.

All you Heroes fans who are cheating yourselves out of Battlestar Galactica, commit this name to memory: Katee Sackhoff. She’ll make every list of “should be an Emmy winner” this year. Course, she was already on a few, but being on primetime network will just up her visibility. Also, she is the greatest part of Bionic Woman. She plays Sarah Corvus. If you took the creepiness of Sylar, the vengeance factor from Evil Francie, and the bullet proof yet striking vulnerability of Starbuck and stirred, you’d end up with this character. Even if the rest of the pilot doesn’t move you, Sarah Corvus alone will bring you back for more.

Jo lives in small town Texas, not that far from Dillon, and loves writing almost as much as watching TV. Until TV Guide or a literary agent comes knocking, she’ll keep occasionally updating, but never proofreading, her own blog http://brickstorm.blogspot.com.

Filed under TV News

Comments

9 Responses to “BIONIC WOMAN Recap: Pilot”

  1. BIONIC WOMAN Recap: Pilot — All This Nonsense on September 27th, 2007 12:44 pm

    […] reading this post by: Give Me My Remote For more… RSS […]

  2. Becky on September 27th, 2007 1:00 pm

    Thanks for the recap. I kind of liked the show. I’m hoping it will get better because I agree that it was flat. I’ll keep trying it out for a while and see how it goes.

  3. jenintx on September 27th, 2007 2:17 pm

    Nice recap, and I definitely agree about the lackluster dialoge, especially in the beginning. I was cringing through the ‘do you love me?’ conversation. It felt forced and silly. The little sister was annoying the crap outta me, all trembly lip and bratty attitude. And this might sound stupid, but I’m not sure the actress who plays Jamie has enough magnetism to pull off such a strong character(for example her line about killing anybody they throw at her just made me giggle). But again, maybe that’s how’s she playing it since this is the first epi.

    Now Katee Sackoff has magnetism in spades, though I’m sure playing Starbuck has certainly given her an advantage. She inhabited Sarah with real menace, but with enough charisma to make her someone I weirdly wanted to root for. The fight scene was pretty great, though I wished it hadn’t been so cut up and frenetic. Anyway, I didn’t love it completely, but there was enough substance to keep me around.

    Also, am I the only one who rolled my eyes at that little girl in the car talking about how ‘cool it was a girl could run that fast'(paraphasing). Personally, I don’t need saccharine sweet girl power psa’s. I say show, don’t tell.

  4. K on September 27th, 2007 3:40 pm

    I completely agree with your review. I know that as we (roomie & I) watched the fight scene at the end; we said “is it wrong to root for the baddie?”
    I want to love this show. I’m always a complete sucker for any show with a bad a** chick…. but I thought Jamie came across as a bit whiny and annoying. I think that they should have cast the actress that plays Sharon on Battlestar as the Bionic Woman. Now that actress has the ability to play both victim and bad-ass!
    Well, I plan to continue watching a few more episodes and hopefully the pilot problems are corrected.

  5. If I Get Old on September 27th, 2007 3:47 pm

    I saw this in a pre-season screening and the annoying little sister is actually better now. She was apparently recast. The original sister was more homely looking and deaf so there was some reliance on sign language as well. The original apartment that Jamie lived in was also not nearly as nice as the new set that they decided to go with. My biggest disappointment with the show was that the lead actress comes across weak in almost the entire pilot. Here’s to hoping it gets better.

  6. Jo on September 27th, 2007 3:54 pm

    Yeah I felt Jamie didn’t pop too. But then again they didn’t give her a whole lot of good dialogue to work with either. Pilot jitters, I hope.

    after all, no pilot can compare to Veronica Mars or Kristen Bell…

  7. Carli on September 27th, 2007 4:07 pm

    Is it bad that I’m completely rooting for the so-called “villan” and not the “hero”? Katee Sackhoff made this episode and, I have a feeling, will make the show. Count me in…at least for every episode she’s in LOL Oh, and it was nice seeing Jammer, Chief and Romo too.

  8. Jo on September 27th, 2007 4:49 pm

    Jammer?! Where was jammer! I saw the Chief. Hee I’m rooting for Katee! But I root for Sylar too….

  9. Adderall. on May 20th, 2008 2:32 am

    Adderall.

    Adderall.