The Bionic Woman

[Dr.Volt]

Ok, so the new Bionic Woman series is tonight.  It is said to be no more like the original campy, 70's series anymore than the new Battlestar Gallactica was like it's original namesake.  The buzz I've heard about it is generally good.  I'm gonna be watching it.  How about you guys?

[bredon7777]

The magic elves got me the pilot. It was Meh and lacked any real compelling reason to keep watching.  But I'll give it a few episodes to see if a reason to keep watching develops.

[Dr.Volt]

Well that's good feedback.  Interestingly, the Dallas Morning News gave the BW a B- for it's pilot.  But, I'm going to watch it anyway.  Taste is so personal and subjective isn't it?

Thanks for the reply!  Anybody else seen it yet?  Thoughts?

[GogglesPizanno]

I had a friend who's seen it describe it as super power Alias.
Which I guess if you like Alias is a compelling concept.
I didn't like Alias, so I'm not expecting much.

But then even though I should, I dont like Heroes either....so I may not be the best judge.

[Mr. Hamrick]

well it has Katee Sackhoff making some guest appearances (and maybe being a reoccurring character or a regular) and Katee is hot. and Michele Ryan is pretty hot too.  I'll at least watch the premiere.   :lol:

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

I don't know, so far, everything I've seen about it just doesn't impress me.  At all.  And on the whole, I like NBC's new line up this year.  I might watch the premiere tonight, if I'm back from church, and if it's on before I go to work, but even then, I'm not sure if I really care enough to be bothered.  I think I'd rather watch Criminal Minds.

[Panther_Gunn]

Thanks for the reminder about this.  I had wanted to check it out, but couldn't remember when it was starting.  Got the VCR set to record, so we'll see how it goes.

[Midnight]

The magic elves got me the pilot. It was Meh and lacked any real compelling reason to keep watching.  But I'll give it a few episodes to see if a reason to keep watching develops.

Ditto on the getting the pilot and the meh.

Except; I'm probably not gonna follow along. Not enough hours in the day.

[stumpy]

I'll probably give it a shot, just out of a sense of nostalgia. It's not on at the same time as Everybody Loves Frasier, is it?

Honestly, the original show wasn't very good either, from what I've seen of the repeats. This is the sort of show that has lots of possibilities to be interesting, especially given that the advance of technology makes the premise more believable and the special effects can do them justice nowadays. But, it has such a huge chance of being a really bad Alias-meets-Buffy disaster, with typical uncreative writers giving in to every predictable cliché for a butt-kicking-chick show they can imagine.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

I watched it.  It was okay.  It could have been good, but it had one glaring problem.

The main actress.

Seriously, I felt like laughing when she tried to act series and threaten folks.  I just can't take her seriously as any sort of warrior.  At all.

Fire her and get somebody else, then we might have something.

In the meantime, I'm watching the first few minutes of Life, and it I like.  I have to go to work in a few mintues, so I won't see anything else.

[bredon7777]

Interesting.  I bought Michelle Ryan as a warrior way more than Katee.  I've never watched BSG- is she that <bleeping> wooden and awful on that show?

[Ajax]

I agree that Bionic Woman is meh worthy. Not only that bug I agree with catwhowalks with Life being a cool series. It's one of those series that, yes are essentially a basic detective series, but has such an interesting character that makes it worth watching.

Anyways my problems with Bionic Woman are:
-Main character never clicked for me. Don't know why just didn't.
-Rest of the cast is one dimensional
-Fight scenes were....bad

[Mr. Hamrick]

ok, I may be the only one who liked the show.  Well, for the most part I liked it.

I don't think we are suppose to take Michele Ryan serious as warrior yet. 

I think the show could have potential.

[Kommando]

I enjoyed the pilot, and look forward to seeing how it plays out.  Its hard to judge a series by a pilot which is trying to get people who are unfamiliar with the original to get up to speed.  As for a weakness of one regular arm, well this is the 21st century which means she could get more borgified as the series goes.  The little sister character I am unimpressed with (unless she becomes Bionic Skipper to Ryan's Bionic Barbie), but the dynamics between the two bionic women was interesting and I'd like to see how it develops.

[GhostMachine]

i would say i'm disappointed but i didn't have my hopes up after the clips...

michelle ryan is not not able to channel a strong woman for her role. that's my observation. the writing is very chopped up like 20 different people with different ideas wrote it. it has no cohesion as a result. the decision to keep only one bionic arm was dumb. if u want to build in a weakness then make a good one. it just looks dumb in action scenes.

I kind of agree with you about Michelle Ryan, but keep in mind the character is supposed to be a normal person who suddenly ends up bionic. In the original series, Jamie was an athlete - she was a pro tennis player who was injured in a sky diving accident. In this series, she's a bartender. So I don't think she's supposed to start out as strong mentally as the character in the original series is.

I don't agree about the writing, however. The only problem I have with it is the name of the nanites or whatever; it sounds like she's made out of coal!

Don't really care one way or other about only having one bionic arm, but I do think it makes for an interesting weakness in fighting Sarah, since both of Sara's arms are bionic.

However, one thing that doesn't make sense to me that they haven't mentioned yet, but I hope they do in the future:

Considering Sarah was made bionic 3 years earlier and Will's father has been in prison for at least that long while Will worked on the tech, shouldn't Jamie's bionics be more advanced than Sarah's? In other words, Sarah's advantages of being a trained soldier and having two bionic arms should be countered by Jamie's bionics being better than Sarah's.

I just hope they don't decide to bring in Steve Austin at some point, or have a major swerve down the road where Will ends up bionic, too.

[GogglesPizanno]

Oh man it was so dumb.
The acting was bad.
The writing was bad.
And they introduced what I would call the kiss of death on an action show "the kid subplot"...
...who's a hacker as well??

"Its a unix system, I know this!!"

[Protomorph]

Sounds fairly lackluster. I didn't catch it. How many bionics can be bought with $6,000,000 these days?

[thalaw2]

I caught this last night but didn't finish it because I didn't have time.  I'm not too worried about how it ended because I wasn't too happy with the show either.  I agree that the acting was not up to par.  Maybe it will take some time for the series to find it's legs.

[GogglesPizanno]

Maybe it will take some time for the series to find it's legs.

Maybe they shoulda bionically enhanced THOSE!

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

I kind of agree with you about Michelle Ryan, but keep in mind the character is supposed to be a normal person who suddenly ends up bionic. In the original series, Jamie was an athlete - she was a pro tennis player who was injured in a sky diving accident. In this series, she's a bartender. So I don't think she's supposed to start out as strong mentally as the character in the original series is.

Yeah, well, she DID have all the knowledge of training of a solder implanted in here brain.  Yes, they did mention that.

And even an ordinary person can be a little more convincing when trying to threaten someone.

Besides, there isn't a single character, even not including her, that I find compelling.

Chuck--interesting characters, good humor

Life--quirky characters, interesting premise and story

Bionic Woman--uninteresting, unconvincing characters

nuff said

[Mr. Hamrick]

it's funny, cat.  As much you are praise the show Life, I loathed it.  I found the main character to be too quirky.  I found his whole Zen Buddha approach to police work and dealing with witnesses got old very quick.  He is at best a cheap cross breed between Monk and Detective Goren on Law and Order: Criminal Intent.   His partner was rather bland but that might be just in comparison to him.  She would've worked fine on a show like Law and Order (ie: a more by the book show) and in fact came off like she was trying to play against a Goren type character. 

The premise of it seemed a little hard to swallow as well and the way the characters came off were a good portion of the reason there.

[bredon7777]

Besides, there isn't a single character, even not including her, that I find compelling.

Agree. Yet, anyway. I'm still willing to give it time.

Chuck--interesting characters, good humor

I'm sure you mean generic cutout one dimensional annoying characters, and roll your eyes instead of laugh humor here.

Seriously, Bionic Woman may have been meh, but it was miles above Chuck, a show I actively disliked. And do you have any idea of the amount of work necessary in making me dislike a show that has Seth Green, Adam Baldwin, and a smoking hot blonde?  Seriously, you really have to work at it.

</threadjack>

[stumpy]

Meh. Not terrible. I will try and watch a couple more episodes to see where it goes. I'll admit that this is the sort of show where I am giving more of a shot than I would a show in another genre with the same quality. Not sure why - guess I miss Buffy...  ^_^

But, really, I hope they get past this cliche of tossing around lines that remind me of bad high school fiction contests. ("How can you protect me if you're scared of me?" "Technology's at the point where science fiction isn't fiction anymore." Puh-lease!)

[bredon7777]

Meh. Not terrible. I will try and watch a couple more episodes to see where it goes. I'll admit that this is the sort of show where I am giving more of a shot than I would a show in another genre with the same quality. Not sure why - guess I miss Buffy...  ^_^

But, really, I hope they get past this cliche of tossing around lines that remind me of bad high school fiction contests. ("How can you protect me if you're scared of me?" "Technology's at the point where science fiction isn't fiction anymore." Puh-lease!)

There were two that really got me:

1) Calling the nanities in their bloodstream "anthrocites". As someone else said it made me think their veisn were filled with coal.

2) The bfs bio ethics class discussion "how much of yourself can you replace before you're no longer human?" Ow. Anvil much?

And yes, I miss Buffy too, and this isn't even close.  Hell, it isn't even close to Alias, which itself was a pale version of Buffy.

Joss really needs to come back to TV  *sigh*

[cmdrkoenig67]

I didn't like it...

The acting was not very good, I agree with Cat about Ms. Ryan not being able to convey a threat very well.  I agree about Ms. Sakoff (sp?) being a bit stiff at points...I also agree about the script being a mess and some of the lines were terrible.  The "creator" of the series (apparently he's the guy who made the Battlestar "remake") claims he never saw the original series "The Bionic Woman"...Why remake something you've never seen?  Why not just create something new in the same neighborhood, but with new characters?
 
I can't stand the younger sister, she's a huge cliche (From what I've heard, this is a mostly re-shot pilot too, there was a deaf little sister in the original pilot that was apparently so terrible, they had to do the reshoot).  It also seems like they went out of their way to make blatantly obvious that the main character is a loser, A high school drop-out, bartender, raising her little sister, who also happens to be pregnant?  Come on!

I really wish they had changed the name of the title character...This is not Jaime Sommers.  If TV series "creators" really have to remake series and then change everything about the series...They might as well change the main character's name too and just make a whole new series.  A sign of a bad remake is all of the spirit of the original is removed...And the spirit has been totally exorcised from this "remake".

BTW...The series is titled "Bionic Woman"...Not "The Bionic Woman" (regardless of the title of this thread)...The producers of this series said she can't be called "The" Bionic Woman is there's more than one in the series.

Dana

[MJB]

I finally watched the pilot last night on NBC's website. I thought it was... okay. I'll watch the second episode tonight to see if I'll stick around for more.

-MJB

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

It should be noted that Bionic Woman was one of only two breakout hits among the new series, the other being Private Practice.

However, all of NBC's new shows did decently, and NBC got second place over all and first in the lucrative 18-30's audience, meaning that NBC has successfully turned itself around from a struggling network to, at least so far, a thriving one in a single year.

[Bujin]

I will say that I did like Michelle Ryan.  I thought she was believable and, well....purty.  :)

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Caught the last 20 minutes of tonight's and it did seem a lot better.  I still don't like the lead though.

[bredon7777]

Yes, the last 20 minutes of tonights episode was a lot better. Sadly, the first 40 were just as, if not more boring than last week.

They really need to find a) a better balance and b) a hook soon

Oh and [spoiler]
Is anyone else finding it odd how political the show seems to be becoming?[/spoiler]