BIONIC WOMAN Recap: Pilot

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.