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2007-2008 Season Post-Mortem Part 1: Bionic Woman |
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Thursday, 22 May 2008 |
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By John Keegan
Visit Critical Myth for an archive of John's TV Review archives, with more than 1100 entries.
| This season, I’ll be summing up this unusual 2007-2008 season with a post-mortem on the majority of the shows I’ve reviewed during the year, ranking from the very worst to the very best. In some cases, the term “post-mortem” is all too applicable. This is Part 1 of this 11-step journey, focusing on the short-lived “Bionic Woman”.
It almost seems cruel, at this point, to revisit the many flaws of “Bionic Woman”, as it has been off the air since long before the writers’ strike and had absolutely no chance of survival. Yet it is precisely the kind of cautionary tale that the networks will ignore time and again. For every successful nostalgic relaunch (“Battlestar Galactica”), there are several abject failures. “Bionic Woman” was one of them, and it’s hard to imagine that the trend will be any different for upcoming shows like “Knight Rider”.
“Bionic Woman” seemed to have the right pedigree. David Eick was one of the architects of the new “Battlestar Galactica”, and after a fairly energetic original pilot, there was a great deal of hope that the series would succeed. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before the production staff was abandoning ship, practically changing showrunners on a weekly basis, and the constant shifts demanded were impossible to reconcile.
The pilot set up a few key plot threads and introduced Sarah Corvus, the psychotic “original bionic woman” played by a deliciously unbalanced Katee Sackhoff. All things being equal, newcomer Michelle Ryan, the one playing the starring role of Jamie Sommers, couldn’t come close to the same intensity. Ryan’s struggle to find her character was apparent, and Corvus’ character arc quickly become far more interesting.
It was the duty of the writing staff to provide Jamie (and by extension, Ryan) with a compelling and strong supporting cast. Instead, most of the Berkut Group regulars were unprofessional with mood swings that defy the laws of physics. Jonas, the leader of the covert operation, never displayed the presence and tone that a mercenary commander should. Instead, that was left to the guest role of Antonio, played perfectly by a much-maligned Isaiah Washington (who can act rather well, despite his personal issues).
As mentioned in one of the reviews written during the series’ run, it came down to consistency: “consistency in how Jamie is portrayed, consistency in how Berkut is portrayed, consistency in how Berkut deals with Jamie”. And the consistency was broken by the endless shuffle of showrunners. Just when the show seemed to shift from the Corvus plot thread to a more traditional black ops group, a bland love interest was introduced, forcing Jamie into an even more awkward learning curve.
The lack of consistency came from the top and infected everything below: the change in showrunners forced the writers to change plans episode to episode, which brought about conflicting motivations in the characters, which led to confused and erratic acting, topped off by sloppy direction and editing (because, after all, the show changed tone week to week). It’s a miracle that the series lasted the eight episodes that it did.
Considering all the problems in the production and the inferior final product, it’s surprising that the season managed an average Critical Myth rating of 6.0. That is still well below average, but it indicates that the many lows were balanced out by a few select highs. With more stability at the top, the show might have course-corrected. Instead, the show became one of the season’s first casualties. |
