Caught the premiere of the Bionic Womanyesterday and, holy cow, it was not good, not good at all. First impressions, especially where TV shows are involved, count for a lot, and sometimes if a show has a weak start it takes much cajoling to get me back on board. It happened with both Battlestar Galactica and Heroes, and given that Battlestar eventually wound up being one of the best shows on TV for a year and a half and this show (again a 70's genre remake) is brought to you by one of Battlestar's champions, it's the only reason I'm going to give it another shot.
But it pains me. It pains me so. We meet Jamie Sommers, a hyper-intelligent bartender dating a college professor and caring for her troubled teenaged sister who was abandoned by their father. Jamie and her boyfriend, Will deal with some impromptu relationship issues such as him moving to France and wanting her to come along ("but I have a job" she says) and Jamie telling him she's pregnant in turn. It's an overwrought and thankfully brief ten minute lull before Jamie and Will are pinballed around between a transport truck and a telephone pole. Will survives with cuts and bruises, Jamie loses an eye, an arm, and both legs (from the severity of the stunt crash they show, they should both really be dead). Of course Will isn't what he seems, working for an underground organization (presumably governmental) where he's developed nano-technology that regrows Jamie's eye, legs and arm, but imbuing her with speed and strength and bionic sight and hearing, and oh yes, digital rewiring of her brain so that she's combat-ready.
There's drama and intrigue, as Jamie, having escaped, must face her new condition by going back to her bartending job, oh and having sex with Will despite being really unsure of who he really is and what his motivations are. Then there's Sarah Corvus, the mentally unstable, emotionally needy first Bionic Woman, who is on a mission to kill Will and to either befriend Jamie or kill her (she was also, coincidentally, driving the transport that kick started the show). And that's a large part of the problem with this show is there's no understanding the characters or their motivations as they all seem to turn on a dime. Jamie and her sister are at each other's throats one moment, and best friends the next. Will's superiors in the organization all act like hard-asses but never seem to go the distance. Everyone in the show bandies between nefarious and amiable so there's no being sure, aside from Jamie, who's really good or bad or what they're really after.
The scenes where Jamie discovers her bionic powers steal quite liberally from the first Superman and Spiderman films, and Jamie's reaction to having speed and strength is borderline apathetic. Her first fight scene, so cheesily staged, finds her squaring off against a thug with a knife in a back alley, when suddenly she kicks his ass. And her shaky-cam fight with Sarah Corvis is equally difficult to embrace, especially as it first seems Sarah's toying with her, and by no logic other than she's the protagonist does Jamie get the upper hand. After the fight she agrees to work for the organization, but on her own terms, of course.
There's no plot threads that cry out for more explanation (some side plots introduced just seem out of place in this pilot) and the show is perhaps too tightly wound in its own circular logic to escape into something more interesting down the road. The cast is decent but left with a horrendous script to try and emote. Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck on Battlestar) seems to relish her role as the rather insane anti-Bionic Woman, but teeters the ham-fisted line. Star Michelle Ryan does better than I thought she would, but the drastic shifts the script demands of her character - between demure and confident, meek and hyper-intelligent - just make her come off looking uneven. As for the rest, they're all dispensable. Get rid of them and few will even notice their absence.
Pushing Daisies airs before Bionic Woman next Wednesday and so I'll give this show at least one more shot before giving up on it (but if Pushing Daisies turns up to be a loser as well, Wednesday nights will prove dead to me until Lost gets going).