
(S01E04) "I'm just a simple boob man." - Nathan
I think after this episode, we're all simple boob men.
This was the "let's position Katee Sackhoff on a table and make her wear a tank top and have wires wrapped around her chest to highlight her breasts as much as possible" episode. Not that I'm complaining. But it seems like a waste to have a character like Sarah Corvus and have her lying down for most of the time.
In this episode we learn that Jaime's new body comes with a limited warranty, and that her sister likes to pour beer on ice cream.
That's what it looked like to me anyway. Little sis is all alone while Jaime is on assignment in Paraguay and is about to pour what looks like beer on a bowl of ice cream. She isn't just a rebel, she has problems, I think. And not just about Jaime always lying to her.
Sarah Corvus is captured at a poker game, and she goes quietly with the team, though she probably could have escaped if she really tried. They take her back to TSO (The Secret Organization) where she is tied to that table I mentioned above. They're trying to find out stuff about her and also figure out what's happening with her body. That info is on a flash drive in Paraguay. Jaime and Pope go there to save the agent who has it and get the info on it. When Pope discovers the agent knows what's on the flash drive, he decides to kill the agent, but Jaime helps him escape.
Three things wrong with this whole plot:
1. We're supposed to believe that the incredible, deep dark secrets of Will's bionic program are so secret that you are killed if you happen to read them and that this info is on one flash drive some guy has?
2. Pope tries to fight Jaime to find the agent and says at one point, "just because you're a machine doesn't mean you can't be beat." Um, yeah, actually that's exactly what it should mean. She has two freakin' bionic legs and a bionic arm! (She beats him in the fight.)
3. You simply cannot bend a giant fan to stop it from going round and round and then later bend it back to its original shape so it goes round and round again. I think the original show used to do stuff like this all the time, but you'd think we would have learned something in 30 years.
4. Jonas really needs the Design on a Dime team to go to TSO and redo his office.
No idea why this ep was called "Faceoff," but overall I like it. The show is really silly in so many ways, but if you put all that aside you can enjoy it. It's not Alias, it's not Heroes. But it has its own charm. I like the fact that the agent and the flash drive have vanished and that Jaime only has 5 years to live. That gives the show a bigger plot and meaning.
Of course, if the show doesn't last 5 seasons they'll have to speed things up a bit.















Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
10-17-2007 @ 11:56PM
Dean said...
I caught the pilot of this show but did not watch any more until tonight's episode. I found myself amazed at the poor dialog, awful acting and zero screen presence from any of the cast. I had hoped that by the fourth episode things would have fleshed out a bit.
The whole scene with the fan was laughable. The "bionic" leaping from beam to beam was embarrassing. It looked as if the actress had never been in a harness before. The Blade Runnerish attempt to create a crisis by introducing the 5 year lifespan was beyond lame.
I tried to like this show, I really did but tonight's episode was the clincher for me I think. Everything just felt two dimensional to me and none of the characters are the least bit warm.
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10-18-2007 @ 12:18AM
JD said...
You tried to watch the show, but you've only seen two episodes. I think the 5 year plan is to make her a little less helpful to the bad guys.
I'll give it a few more episodes, but I'm gone either way come Jan, when Lost comes back. Hopefully they won't keep it a 10pm.
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10-18-2007 @ 12:30AM
RoseGold said...
they should just kill the jaime summers character and stay with the sarah corvus storyline I mean jamie is the dumbest person ever...am giving these show 2 more eps before I start watching criminal minds again
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10-18-2007 @ 12:36AM
Walt said...
Not enough low end stuff to keep the kiddies, and too many logic holes to keep the geeks. This episode makes the pilot look like freaking Shakespeare.
Sackoff's character wanting to be cured, but leaving? I missed why she left at that moment rather than hanging around to figure out if The Secret Organization techies had a cure for her.
And lastly, if you have a super powered being strapped to a table/chair, make sure you have a kill switch somewhere. StargateSG-1 did a much better job at securing powerful prisoners.
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10-18-2007 @ 7:05AM
greg said...
First of all Walt, she learned that they didnt have a cure, thats why she excaped. Secondly I like this show. I'm suprised at all of the complaints about Jamie's charactor. Everyone expects her to be this big super agent ( like Sidney from that other show ) but she isnt. She is just a girl who was thrown into this. Like Jonas said "she is green" Give her time to train and grow.
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10-18-2007 @ 8:05AM
Sherm said...
I thought the same thing about the fan starting up again, what would have made more sense is if she straightened the blade out again, then used her INCREDIBLE BIONIC STRENGTH to give the blade a flick to make it spin incredibly fast....
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10-18-2007 @ 8:16AM
radwimp said...
Oh god... the dialog... Ryan's acting... the little sister... make the horror end.
I was really hopeful after last weeks improvement... but I don't think even Katee Sackhoff's character will keep me in this much longer.
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10-18-2007 @ 9:00AM
Joseph said...
Hmm, I'm somewhat at a loss here.
Where I come from, it's generally considered smart to *not* annoy your customers. I realize that we, the viewers, aren't really the customers but that doesn't change the fact that it's a good idea to throw us freaking bone every once in a while.
#1 and #4 really hit the nail on the head. I had high hopes for this show but, come on, it's just lame. I even thought the pilot had potential but I have to say I'm done with this show, sorry. It's just... bad - okay, that hasn't stopped me from watching other shows but there has to be at least something worth watching and this show doesn't really have anything going for it.
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10-18-2007 @ 9:07AM
Gill Garcia said...
I actually found that this show works for me as "background noise" while I'm working. I can halfway listen to the dialog, every now and then turn to see what's going on and not be too terribly disappointed or in a numbed state after watching the entire hour. Not to mention, reading Bob's review has caught me up on the storyline.
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10-18-2007 @ 9:08AM
atomicxb said...
Ok, I had high hopes for this show - coming from David Eick, I was prepared for the next Battlestar. Boy, was I wrong. Yes, last week's ep was better, but this week really killed it for me. I agree with everyone that Michelle Ryan is weak in this role - they should have made the show center around Sara Corvus. If anything good comes out of this show it's that Katee Sackhoff is getting more mainstream exposure and should get better roles once this and Battlestar are off the air. She's been the best part of Bionic Woman, but hasn't had enough screentime to keep me interested.
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10-18-2007 @ 9:26AM
Alex99 said...
I'm going to keep watching the show and reading this blog, but I'm going to stop reading the comments. In fact, I think that if I read one more pompous posting about ".... I really wanted to like this show..." or ".....I'll give it 1 or 2 more episodes...." I may hurl. Come on guys, this is light escapist entertainment, not Shakespeare. The original "Bionic Woman" was by no means high art either. Plot inconsistencies? Got 'em. Errors in logic? Yep. To me, those are some of the things that make shows like this fun. If it is not to your taste then by all means I hope you find something more palatable, but if not why keep returning here week after week to run it down?
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10-18-2007 @ 9:45AM
JeffL said...
I think that's exactly the point, Alex99. A whole lot of us (including me) were expecting something other than light entertainment. With David Eicke heading the thing, we were expecting the same quality as BSG. Instead we got a lame Saturday-morning cartoon, without the humor.
I actually turned this ep off after about 45 mins. I'll give it one more week, I guess, but I'm with everyone else. It's getting worse, not better.
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10-18-2007 @ 10:15AM
CJ said...
Why is the sister so annoying? No time is given to that.
Why did she give the dude she just met with all her secret the flash drive? Just plain dumb.
Why was she pouring beer on ice cream? I was hoping it was root beer, but that would make no sense in a bowl.
Why can't Jamie tell her sister? I'm sure it would keep her from misbehaving if she knew her sister could crush her throat in an instant.
Really? They don't have better methods to contain or shut down Sarah? Stupid.
The plot whole are growing people, time to get out the spackle already!
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10-18-2007 @ 10:56AM
Dani said...
I tried watching the show again but it's just to cheesey and i'm not sure if I want to keep investing in a show that may be canceled.
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10-18-2007 @ 11:02AM
Jimmy said...
After last week's much improved episode, written by Eick by the way, we're back to the mediocre plots. The only interesting thing about this episode was what we learned about Jaime's bionics. I also dislike the sister, but I think that's supposed to be intentional. In the end, Jaime will have to let her sister in on the secret. What will be good about that is the sister might find herself in the middle of Jaime's new world, which could actually make her more interesting.
Regardless of the stupid, racists remarks Isaiah Washington said about his Grey's cast mate, I really liked his character on that show. Here, I can just can't get into the character of Pope. He just seems so superfluous.
Call me sentimental, but I love that they've brought the bionic sounds back into the series, but updated them to a more modern sound.
I still believe they are relying too much on the Sarah Corvus character. Jaime needs a big villain, but she shouldn't be on every show. As long as they keep relying on Sackhoff, Ryan is never going to be the focus and that a disservice to the actress and the series.
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10-18-2007 @ 12:10PM
Matt said...
I want to love this show, but the writers and directors are making it very hard for me not to end up so annoyed that I turn it off completely.
As someone near 40 that fondly remembers both of the old shows (my prize possesion was my Six Millon Dollar Man lunchbox), I had high hopes for what they could do with a reinvention of Bionic Woman. Even though some of the Battlestar Galactica people were involved with the show's creation, I wasn't expecting a carbon copy of BSG's atmosphere, but I was expecting them to do something new with the material, while at the same time retaining the same "wow" factor that made fans of the old show. For those of you to young to remember the old Battlestar, it was a show with a great premise, fairly good but often overused special effects (especially for it's time), great characters with often cheesy dialogue, great villains with often cheesy dialogue, very often kitschy and melodramatic storylines, but there was always a sense of moving forward. When BSG was reimagined, they retained kept the good things about the old show and improved or tossed out the bad things (great premise, great special effects never over or underused, great characters, dialogue, storyline, etc), and always kept things moving forward.
It is just me, or do you get the sense from Bionic Woman with each episode that the writers are casting around, trying to figure out what the show is about. The pacing of each episode is uneven, it's peppered with characters that seem unnecessay mainly because they're either given little to do or terrible dialogue, and some of the plots are incredibly underwhelming (I'm thinking of the "climactic" showdown with Jamie and the soldiers in the store at the end of Episode 2 - very ho hum).
It's like the writers can't decide who they are trying to appeal to, or they are trying so hard to appeal to everyone that they're failing miserably across the board. At the end of each episode I'm always left with a terrible feeling that they ....just.... missed.... the.... mark.
One of the earlier comments really struck me when the person said that this show makes great "background noise." I have to say that I absolutely hate to agree. I hate it because I don't want background noise, I want to be riveted.
So far, here are some of the things I feel are causing problems with the show (I welcome ANY comments you may have):
1. I believe Michelle Ryan is a good actress and has the right stuff for the role, but the story creators are really making it hard for the fans to like her. She's the "good guy, " the central character, so she has to have a certain softness, a moral center, to be that character. But for god's sake, don't make her a saint, and stop giving her terrible dialogue. Instead, give her some truly intense scenes, put her in jeopardy, put her in real danger and make her use her bionics not just in brute force ways, but in ways that are both intelligent and cool (one of the earler comments about the fan scene hit the mark, it would have been so much cooler if she had bent the fan blade back into place, saw the soldiers about to fire, looking at the fan motor and seeing it smoking and ruined, and then with all her strength and a scream spinning the fan incredibly fast to deflect the bullets). It also wouldn't hurt to get her a personal trainer and tone her up for the role. While she's got a great figure, in many scenes she doesn't appear athletic when compared to the ripped Katee Sackhoff, which makes her come off as unbelievable (bionic's notwithstanding) in many of the action scenes.
2. "Wanted: More Cool Bionic Stuff" - After all, what's the title of the show again? Is anyone else getting a little tired of the fight scenes where Jamie gets in a few hits, gets smacked around a bit, and then finishes off someone with a bionic kick or knocks them into a wall (as opposed to through a wall). Granted, the old show was often over the top, but one thing they got right was when a bionic person pushed someone or hit someone, they weren't getting back up. The old Steve Austin and Jamie Sommers would regulary throw someone dozens of a feet away when fighting them (and instead of slowly bending a padlock open, why not rip the whole lock and door knob assembly clean from the door, let's see the door splinter and hear the metal squeal as it pulls free). And what was with the whole toe repair scene last night. I found it extremely annoying that they would show us a laser beam somehow shocking her toe "into submission" but they wouldn't actually show her jacked up bionic toe, but rather the camera did the incredibly annoying "object in the foreground blocking the view" trick. I for one would much rather have seen an up close view of it smashed all to hell and then have them work some technical magic so the anthrocites would begin repairing it. It's also very disconcerting to me when bionic woman uses her super strength bionic power to.....push down a car window. Who else would like see cars getting their roofs and door ripped off, super fast running, and maybe, just maybe, cool bionic jumping scenes that don't look like the guys working the digitally removed wires drank too much on their break.
3. Katee Sackhoff. Whether by her own acting chops, writing for her scenes, good direction for her scenes (maybe she's boning someone to get the choicest ones) or all of the above, she is absolutely stealing the show out from under everyone else. This would be great if she were surrounded by everyone else turning out great performances with great dialogue, every great show has one great character that fans love for their scene stealing ability, but this is not the case. Her scenes and screen presence are always compelling, and her very greatness on the show makes it very uneven. I hate to say it, but she may end up killing the show if a) the producers and writers don't start massively amping up everyone else's dialogue and performance, or b) retool the show to bring her in as the main character (seriously, as much as I would miss the idea of Jamie, you could kill her off in a tragic episode that somehow redeems Sarah's humanity and goodness, and even maybe make the sister character interesting by having Sarah take her in/watch over her in an effort to make up for the sister she had that was killed in the car accident). Pretty much anything else is a lose-lose situation. If the show keeps going the way it is, Katee's scene stealing is going make everyone else look awful, which will drive viewers away. Or if they write her out of the show and make no other changes, the show will seem incredibly bland and will die a slow death.
4. This will seem trite, but, by the Lords of Kobol, don't end an episode with Jamie standing at a window with some soft pop/rock song playing looking all pensive. Give us some kick ass cliff hangers, or take a few notes from the Law & Order class of some ending episodes with a twist, or on a thought provoking or even sometimes downbeat note, please don't end them like an episode of "Felicity."
Please remember everyone, I WANT to love this show. And like any good masochist worth their salt, I'm going to hang in there until it either gets great or until the bitter, embarrassing end (think the last two seasons of the "X-files"). It's got great potential, I've just got the sinking feeling that it's all being pissed away.
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10-18-2007 @ 1:13PM
CJ said...
Oh... one other complaint, (I have a similar complaint with 007 often) who sends an operative in dress shoes that would be very difficult to run or fight in. With Bond I always have to assume the Q made him some cool rux shoes with some good rubber traction. The guys at THO don't seem that slick.
Maybe they are saving this for down the lines, but with our software world, it would be cool to see Jamie getting software upgrades for certain mission, sort of like Q with the gadgets...
Also, please start fleshing out more villians! (and we all know Will isn't dead, so get on with it already.)
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10-18-2007 @ 1:12PM
Mechelle said...
This show cracks me up to no end. It's actually funny. Well, it's not supposed to be I know, but I enjoy it just for the mocking/what the hell? potential. Also Katee Sackhoff owns my fangirl soul. I love her - she rocks as Starbuck times ten and completely owns every single scene she is in during Bionic Woman. If somehow Jaime was killed off and Sarah Corvus decided to take Jaime's place in the "company" deal...I would probably love this show to pieces. Jaime in general just does not work for me. The actress is so boring and blah, the sister storyline, despite the girl playing her being incredibly adorable and I think a better actress than Jaime, feels completely off, and also all the stories are wacky and not pieced together well.
Still, I will watch until Katee leaves or her character is killed off. Until then...I will laugh every week at the insane moments and horrible dialogue. You have to admit it’s pretty damn funny. Jaime's constant bipolar mood swings? Sarah's random comments about glass houses and sex and curtains? Hahaha!
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10-18-2007 @ 4:55PM
redeemed said...
I am having a hard time liking this show as well. The dialog is so poor. The actors don't seem like they care much almost as if they realize with writing this bad what's the point. I am going to hang in there for a few more weeks, crossing my fingers for a brain transplant or something.
Funny I have never like Katie/Starbuck on BG but I find she is the best thing on this show. (although just between us Jamie's sister is so stinkin' cute that I can almost overlook how lame she comes off, but that makes me feel like a perv. so yea don't like the show.)
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10-18-2007 @ 1:18PM
rick cokely said...
Matt said: "maybe she's boning someone to get the choicest ones"
Would you say that about Katee if she weren't a woman? J/W.
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