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Bionic Woman 1.7: "Trust Issues" |
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Monday, 26 November 2007 |
By John Keegan
Visit Critical Myth for an archive of John's TV Review archives, with more than 1100 entries.
“Bionic Woman” has always been a series in crisis. Every episode or so brings with it a new showrunner, and the show has suffered wild tonal shifts as a result. A show that once seemed ready to explore new ground has fallen back on questionable tropes that have been done to death. Even the concept has slowly but surely lost its novelty. Jaime Sommers and her bionics seem rather ordinary and underutilized, especially given that her limitations are never truly explored.
The writers’ strike has shut down production for the show, and there’s already talk that the final episode produced could serve as a series finale. If so, that’s probably not any contingency built into the episode on the production side; it’s spin after the fact. The show has undergone too many changes and setbacks for an early-season episode to bring things to a satisfactory conclusion.
There’s also the statement from Katee Sackhoff to consider. Sarah Corvus was a fixture of the first few episodes, and without a doubt, that guest character made Jaime Sommers look like a chump. More to the point, Sackhoff makes Michelle Ryan look like a rank amateur. The show has been suffering from her absence, and Sackhoff has made it clear that she has no intention of returning to the show if it manages to survive past the strike.
I cannot overstate the effect this would have on the show. The early episodes brought a necessary level of complication to the series. Corvus was a window into the kind of transformation that Jaime might endure, and saving Corvus gave Jaime a means of saving herself. There were also a number of long-term plot elements connected to Corvus. Without that mythology to draw upon, the series has been faltering, grasping at any chance to become a Michael Bay knockoff on the small screen.
One might wonder what all of this has to do with this specific episode. It’s actually quite simple. With the lack of creative focus and the loss of Sarah Corvus from the narrative, the show needed someone with gravitas to make up for the lack of strong characterization. Miguel Ferrer could do the job, but Jonas is toothless. Jae has been completely sidelined, it seems, and Jaime’s CIA boyfriend is about as bland as it gets. The only remaining option was Antonio, played as well as could be expected by Isaiah Washington.
The actor was only hired for a limited number of episodes, but the show will suffer tremendously from the lack of a solid supporting cast. His final appearance is actually one of the better episodes of late, particularly when the Jaime/Tom material is forgotten and Antonio’s machinations are front and center. If anything, the story underscores the utility of such a character, reminding the audience of everything that will be lost now that he’s gone. |
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