BIONIC WOMAN REVIEW
Bionic Woman |
I've been resisting watching the new "Bionic Woman" series, mostly because of my fondness for the old 70s series starring Lindsay Wagner as the iconic female cyborg, Jaime Sommers.
Wagner herself has said in interviews that the priority for the writers and directors of the original series was to be entertaining. They thought of the show as an adventure series for kids, that adults could also enjoy.
You had to know that when the remake was pitched, words like "edgier," "darker," and "up-to-date" would have flown around like bad guys at the ends of Jaime's fists.
For me, that's most often translated in practice as full of guns, full of boobs, and full of attempted relevance.
I made an honest effort to watch the updated brand-spanking-new 2007 series this week, knowing that this far in, you'd have to expect a lot of the rough edges would have been smoothed. If a show is going to find its stride, this is definitely enough time to give it.
What I found was a series centered on a twenty-something Jaime, stuck in college and lumbered with a teenage sister. Suddenly, the independent womanly Jaime of the 70s is an escapee from Dawson's Creek? There's some backwards progress for you.
It doesn't help that it's almost impossible to believe the round-faced Brit Michelle Ryan as an athlete. A runner-up for the Vesper Lynd in the latest Bond installment, yes, but as a hard, capable mature individual, not a bit.
You can almost hear the execs - "Yes, that's what we were aiming for - a Jaime Sommers with more appeal to the younger, target demographic." Maybe they're even right. But I liked the maturity of the original Bionic Woman, because I could buy her as a spy. This girl? I think she knows (and cares) about world affairs about as much as George W. Bush's daughters have been able to learn from dad.
Wasted Talent
There's also the regular slot filled by Miguel Ferrer (Crossing Jordan), an almost tragic waste of a great actor in a mediocre program. Ferrer brings gravity and pathos to whatever he does, but I couldn't help wishing he'd chosen another vehicle to continue his television career.
That puts me in mind of his Jordan co-star, Jill Hennessy, who even at Michelle Ryan's age had a dignity and presence that far belied her years. Someone like that as Jaime Sommers would be sensible. Someone like Ryan - well, not for me.
The dialogue and set-ups in the new Bionic Woman are mechanical and lacking in much imagination, and the show features probably the worst fight choreography I've seen in years. You can watch Jaime not quite connecting with bad guy heads, accompanied by Sam Raimi whoosh and whap sound effects.
I guess it's reasonable, when series writer David Eick cut his teeth on Hercules, The Legendary Journeys. I loved Herc for what it was, a delightfully tongue-in-cheek adventure series with enough pathos to be romantic and enough giggles to be quotably fun.
But you can't really see what Eick learned working afterwards on the superior Battlestar Galactica, a show that has transformed the earlier sci-fi classic (which had a definite sense of humor) into a strong and rather majestic modern exercise.
He's also borrowed Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck) from Battlestar, and done a good job of wasting her here as well.
All in all, I can't see that this new "Woman" is much more than the troubled child of a better show made thirty-plus years before. Much as I love Ferrer, I'll be giving it a miss. It's not quite moronic, but definitely less than Bionic.
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