BIONIC WOMAN Recap: Sisterhood

Title:”Sisterhood”
Original Airdate: 10/9/07
GMMR Recapper: Jo
This episode is the tale of two shows. One is called bad dialogue parrot plot. One is called The Greatness of Katee Sackhoff.

The sisters are at lunch. The younger one is unnaturally whiny. Jonas calls Jamie and good gravy, it’s a good thing she doesn’t work for Sydney Bristow because she can’t keep her cover too well. Good thing also her sister is selfishly absorbed and dim. Jonas brings up there *is* a lo jack, but the the way it came out of his mouth, clearly someone’s reading my recaps…I also noticed a general improvement in music…we’ve gone from unadulterated loathing to acceptable.

Jamie gets babysitter duty and no one cares. Jamie gets more training and still no one cares. Sarah Corvus and Dead Will’s dad are hatching a plan to get some firmware upgrades straight from Jamie. Sarah’s having some up and down problems, like she’s bionically bipolar or addicted to drugs and according to her, dying. Um, if Katee Sackhoff doesn’t get an Emmy nod from this role, we should plan the revolt now.

The Sommers family drama snooze fest fills time until Sarah comes to talk to Jamie for the first of 18 times about how she needs her help. Oh and Jamie’s ticked about the Truman show feed One Government Conspiracy’s got running on her. Wanna Be Marshall hits on her again, and I’d like to see this running gag become less predictable and more funny. Second meeting of the Bionics goes just about as boringly. Third meeting is actually entertaining because it involves four Serbian gangsters and a smashing good time in a nail salon. Meeting number four – Jamie refuses to help Sarah get well. But meeting four also has the one liner of the night. “…maybe form a union”. Heee. Maybe the writer’s room is in the midst of a creative war, where the good ones are writing for Sarah. Somewhere in the midst of this garbage, Jamie’s babysitting charge has repented of her wild girl ways. Wait, I missed “the more you know” music in that lesson…

Then Sarah threatens to kill Jamie’s sister, with some unbelievably creepy yet funny dialogue, and I keep my fingers crossed hoping she will snap her neck. Is that sick of me? This scene is the tone the entire show should take to go from blah to awesome.

I don’t think Michelle Ryan is a bad actor at all and I find Jamie Sommers charming in some ways. But she’s preachy because this show has a tone problem. It’s like the writers aren’t in agreement over what kind of show Bionic Woman is and should be. The action adventure worked for Alias. The campy thing is working for Chuck. But what we really need is a dark, edgy spy game, like MI-5 or so. You would think the BSG creative team (um, awesome) plus the Friday Night Lights guys (um, also awesome) would make TVs squee with enjoyment. Too much of a good thing? I know I came into this showing expecting BSG quality, which has yet to surface, but I guess I was biased towards tone too. If it weren’t for Katee Sackhoff and the GMMR recaps, I might’ve already jumped ship and come back around sweeps. If by some cosmic glitch, the producers are reading this, I’m available for whatever writing bottom feeder position you’d like to offer.

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.