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RSS'Bionic Woman': The policy of truthiness
Well, here's the silver lining of tonight's episode: at least no one shouted, "You can't handle the truth!"
Because really, what else can you take away from this subpar episode of Bionic Woman, a complete and utter step back from any and all advances made last week? This week's theme was trust, or the lack thereof, with pretty much every character not being able to trust one or more of each other. So we, the patient audience, viewed scene upon scene in which some variation of the phrase, "I just don't know who to trust," was uttered at some point or another.
Know what I trust? My instinct that this show wanted to plant seeds for later plot development, but forgot to actually put together a decent hour of television in order to do so. At the primary foreground of tonight's episode was the revelation that the bionics technology has a shelf life of around five years. Not bad for your average laptop, but plenty bad for a bionic woman.
Jaime learns this fact, a fact obviously already known by Sarah Corvus, via a rescue mission in Paraguay to liberate an American doctor held prisoner by terrorists. What's a rescue mission for Jaime is in fact an assassination mission for Antonio, who knows what the doctor has in his possession: Will Anthros' Flash drive, complete with all the information about the bionics in Jaime's system. This amazing plot coincidence led me to only one conclusion: I have GOT to find me a Flash drive with that type of memory capacity, because my current 1GB model just isn't cutting it for me.
Antonio and the doctor exchange cryptic dialogue as Jaime tried to figure out the motivations of each, and while the show strove for a Mamet-esque hall of mirrors, it only achieved a splitting headache on my part. I get it, Bionic Woman, I get it: in this super-secret, super-shifty world of international espionage and super-advanced research and development, very few people can show their full hand. But I was left as exasperated as Jaime, and that's not a good thing. (As to who provided the good doctor with said Flash drive: I can only assume it was Will's father.)
As for Sarah: as mentioned before, I'm pretty sure she's clued into her life expectancy, which would explain her outlandish behavior and lack of fear in the face of death. I had hoped that her willingness to get captured would be revealed to be part of Anthony Anthros' master plan, but alas, Anthony didn't make so much as a brief appearance in tonight's episode. So we're left wondering exactly how much Sarah is working for him and how much she's truly working for herself. And this wondering isn't the byproduct of careful plotting on the show's part: it's more to due with the inability of the show to follow a particular plot for more than five minutes without losing interest and praying we don't notice inconsistencies in characters' actions and motivations.
What I am hoping the show ultimately achieves, over the course of a full season, is a strong balance between the action plot of the week and an overall continuity in which Jaime (and perhaps Sarah) seek to reclaim their bodies for their own. No other show on television can boast so strong an opportunity for an intelligent, feminist perspective on the action-adventure front, the science-fiction front, and heck, maybe even the dramatic front. The reclamation of the female, physical self is literally built into the show's narrative. And while the introduction of a five-year end game is an encouraging first step, the show has a long way to go before earning the narrative payoffs that such a premise has established.
Did this week's episode mark an improvement or a downgrade for you? Should Jaime feel grateful for the life extension or bitter at her fate? And how much information can you fit on YOUR flash drive?
For more TV reviews and analysis, check out Ryan at Boob Tube Dude.
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Zap2it Twitter Talk 
Love your review cause it's so on money.
Last week's episode was actually the first time I was excited to see what was in store for Jamie and Sarah. Too bad it had to be this week's episode. Talk about a major step back. Back to jumping around and not having an really focus and no interaction between the two ladies.
And for all the talk about her costing $50 million and now we're told she will only last 5 years. Are you kidding me? I thought I invested my money poorly.
I can fit 2 episodes of Bionic Woman on my flash drive.
My flash drive currently is holding 20 do***ents.
This episode was definitely a downgrade. At this point what can be done except kill Jamie and let Katee run with this show :)
Katee is only signed on for 5 eps of the first 13 - which means only 1 more. I wonder what happens to this show then? Also, I wonder when they will use that last ep, next week or save for later?
The audience (or whats left of...) will die long before Jamie expires!!!!
This patient audience member left after the 3rd episode. I was not impressed from the start but was willing to give it a try. I was never given anything. Random thoughts of being bored, what else I could be doing, the other shows I had on TIVO to watch were what I was getting from each episode. I really wanted to like this show since I am a fan of the original. Why is it so hard for the so called "talent" of Hollywood this day and time to take something and just remake it, bring it up to date? First Wonder Woman and now Bionic Woman....maybe a little time spent with the originals would help. Or maybe women should be remaking these shows.
I only watch the show to see Katee steal every single scene that she's in. The rest of the show is a snore.
Rishi is wrong. Katee Sackoff is signed for 7 of the first 13 episodes. So those other six will end up being pretty boring.
You guys need to step back and see the other "cool" things that we got in the episode. The way that they continue to explore her abilities totally has me hooked.
For instance, the way her eye/brain calculated the speed required to stop the fan. Very cool.
So not loving this show.
What gives? I guess Ronald Moore is the magic ingredient in the Battlestar Galactica formula, because, this is just subpar. I guess David Eick just doesn't have the mojo that Moore has.
Michelle Ryan is so bland, and I've caught her using British pronunciations of some words, even though she's trying to do an American accent. Also, the dialogue is just PAINFUL. That whole scene between Sarah and the blonde lesbian sidekick of Miguel Ferrer--lame beyond lame. "You're caught between a rock and a hard place, Sarah". Honestly, these writers think they're being clever? It's like it was written by high school students.
Then there's the "beat the dead horse" tendency this show has, as mentioned in the blog. They even do it with the sets: just in case we forget Miguel Ferrer's character's name, they plastered it in giant letters on the door to his office.
This show lacks subtlety, consistency, and emotional authenticity. I was so hoping for it to be good, but so far, not so much. It was fun to watch Jaime beat up Preston Burke though. Or whatever his character's name is supposed to be, he doesn't have an office door.
Last but not least, they should avoid clichés like the plague.