TVSquad

Thanks for the update! I decided to pass on the episode tonight since I figured I could get a good update here at TV Squad and it would appear that I did not miss out on anything. LOL

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"Regardless, it brings up the question, why is Ryan even faking an American accent? Can't she just play a Brit who lives in America?"

That's exactly what I've been saying since before this show first aired. It makes no sense to have her use an American accent at all! Maybe if she didn't have to focus on the accent all the time her acting would be better. She was good in the small part she had in Jekyll.

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This reminds me of an early episode of "House". Dr. House (an American played by Brit Hugh Laurie) makes a phone call using a fake name and voice, calls himself "Dr. Nigel Somebody," and uses a British accent.

But the cool part was that Hugh spoke in a very bad, FAKE British accent, nothing like his real one. This nicely avoided the problem of his voice sounding more natural as British, and reminded me why he's one of my favorite actors...

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To be honest I really liked this episode. I thought it was funny that she was able to use her real accent.

I never knew that a "hero" going undercover in a university was the oldest trick in the book....

Pope pretending to be Jaime's uncle (not cousin) did get Tom to shut up and leave them alone. Tom might have tried to stay around if he thought Pope was just a friend.

Who said the graphics are bad???? I always thought they were pretty good...

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To be honest I really liked this episode. I thought it was funny that Michelle Ryan was able to use her real accent. Besides, her accent is cool!

I never knew that a "hero" going undercover in a university was the oldest trick in thebook.... Pope pretending to be Jaime's uncle (not cousin) did get Tom to shut up and leave them alone. Tom might have tried to stay around if he thought Pope was just a friend.

Who said the graphics are bad???? I always thought they were pretty good...

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Michelle Ryan... I don't know what they're going to do with or about her. Tonight she had her real accent... and she used Britishisms when talking and suddenly I got it. I was thinking it was the fact that Katee Sackhoff is just wittier and prettier. I can totally get it when MR is able to be herself, she's definitely more endearing with her natural tone. Also her British accent is way different than I would have expected from her American one... I know one has nothing to necessarily do with the other but its quite a change.

Alright so this episode was super cliched and extremely easy to call... once CIA guy had covered for her twice and we saw the one guy actually use the chips to insert commands in the test subject. Saying that I'm going to defend this show for the first time. Now that we've gotten to meet the MR that the producers did when casting this thing I completely understand why they felt she could carry a television show.

Saying that... Katee Sackhoff will be back and unless she can translate some of that charisma to her American voice, which doesn't have the same coy charm or lightheartedness; we'll be back to wishing The Bionic Woman in the title screen is Sarah Corvus.

Hopefully Sarah will be back in a few weeks and we can continue with the main storyline. Although I did laugh at the Felicity references, and the whole Nathan eating chinese and calling while CIA guy hits on Jaime. There's a chance that this show just needed time to get better, but it may be that they just needed a gimmick to keep everyone around. They've earned another episode... but not a Season Pass... although I am coming around on getting Life a spot in my Tivo.

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I'm still enjoying the show. Sure, it was a plot that we've all seen but it was still enjoyable. I believe that as soon as we are away from the stand alone episodes, the show will begin to shine.

By the way, I think she threw a cantaloupe, not a melon. But hey, what do I know??

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I liked her accent and agree with he CIA friend it was hot, not a bad episode but I agree was somewhat predictable.

Initially I kind of expected this show to be similar to Alias which I loved but there hasn't been the excitement or engrossing action and story lines that had me wanting more like Alias did, but it doesn't captivate me like Alias did.

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Your point about the special effects being bad is correct, especially in the way she jumps from building to building. The bionics may make her strong but they cannot change the laws of physics. And those laws require that a launched object's path is parabolic. Always. You can't get around it, unless you have wings. (Look up a picture of a parabola to see what that looks like if you are not familiar with it.) For her to jump straight across between two buildings is impossible. Anyone who's lived on the Earth for a little while learns this intuitively even if he/she cannot describe it mathematically. In today's episode she flew from one building to another and it looked fake since it wasn't parabolic.

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Well, if you want the plot to be a "British Bionic Woman", you cannot have her bratty sister speaking American English. It would be strange to have a British family divorced and leaving their kids in US.

The whole concept was to have a sister's conflict a part of the storylines. I am not saying it was the right choice; I always wanted it to be a straight "superheroine action" drama (like the 70's starring Wagner), but NBC decided to go with this Feminist Bionic Woman concept...

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yea everybody up there is right she's much better when she's able to use her accent...anyone from nbc reading these comments??? it's either that or making Katee Sackhoff the new lead on the show, those are the only things that will save this crapfest for me...i can live with the bad dialogue and sucky effects.

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Even though they mentioned it in the episode, it still makes no sense that they can see everything Jamie's doing, and even remotely give her an earache, but can't communicate with her without her holding a cell phone. (Anyway, didn't she short-circuit the thing in her brain that allows them to spy on her in a previous episode?
Did she allow them to replace it?)

The vocal change reminds me of halfway through the season of "Burn Notice," when Gabrielle Anwar inexplicably switched from an Irish accent to an American one. But even talking like a Brit, Michelle Ryan couldn't produce the much more natural acting style she had in "Jekyll."

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I haven't the ep5, just read it here. Here are my theories;
- She won't give knock-out punch, because she's afraid it could be fatal. Or she simply forgets that it's not a drill/training.
- She wants to lay low by using her bionic power sparingly.
- The special effect team uses computerized sling with powerful winches, so they're virtually able to create any 'jump curve' shape. So, I have to see the show first.

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>why is Ryan even faking an American accent?
>Can't she just play a Brit who lives in America?

The reason is clear. The American TV network executives consider middle America to be too dumb to handle it. They think that an accent that isn't American will be so foreign to them that they quite simply won't watch the show. How else can it be explained that no british show has ever (to my knowledge) appeared on one of the big 4 networks ? If they like a show, they can't just buy it and air it (The Office, IT Crowd, Coupling, etc etc). They feel that they need to buy the rights and re-make it "in american".

Give your audience some credit American TV net execs, they're not as dumb as you think they are.

British TV channels have no such problems. They show more than half of the shows America produces appearing on the main network channels in prime time unaltered.

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Bionic Woman is supposed to be a Superhero. Why is she still working in a Bar? You've got teenage girls watching this show. They look at Jaime as a role model. Have her quit the Bartending already!
What's the new CIA guy's name again? It should be Steve Austin and he should get to be Bionic in a future episode. Maybe NBC can do this show during ratings week. This would spice up the show enormously. Let's faze out the Sara Corvis character. She'll always be Starbuck to us Galactica Fans.
How about Lindsey Wagner as Jaime's Aunt or something? Lee Majors as her Grandfather. Let's give the original characters some notoriety. It's the least NBC can do to acknowlege the contribution these actors made to the original series.

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RE: How else can it be explained that no british show has ever (to my knowledge) appeared on one of the big 4 networks ?

Loads of British shows aired on the networks in the 60s and early 70s and even more in syndication on over the air tv.

Maybe America has turned more anti other cultures / accents since then?

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I really enjoyed this episode. For the first time, Michelle Ryan really seemed comfortable and I think it helped not having Katee Sackhoff around all the time to take away screen time. I'm glad to see Jordan Bridges will be in the next episode. He and Ryan had great chemistry together and Jamie having someone in her life who's doing the same kind of dangerous work could be just the "stability" the character needs.

I think you're being a bit rough on the issue of F/X. Knowing how cheap NBC Universal tends to be with its series, I have no doubt the budget is crap. Taking into consideration this is a cheaply made television series I think the bionics have been pretty good so far. I only wish there were more of them.

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Did anyone else notice the "bionic sound" when Jaime had to jump up on top of the building? It wasn't the original sound, but it finally gave the show that little bit of throwback that it needed.

I thought this episode was the best of the bunch so far. Sure, it's not all dark and moody, and it's not pushing the Sarah Corvus story, but it was fun. I think that for a show called Bionic Woman, it should give us some of that campy 70's fun we remember as well as that new-millennium darkness we've come to expect from shows in the past few years.

And I whole-heartedly agree with a lot of the posters here - let Michelle Ryan keep her British accent. Have Jaime fall down and bump her head or something to explain it.

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I am from the UK and watched the ep with interest as I knew the actress behind Jaime is a Brit.
Thjre's been a tendency to bring over a lot of Brits on many shows including many as quasi announcers. In the main they have 100% strong London accent, which not being a Londoner by birth, I find rather grating. i.e very harsh on the ears. So I am wondering if Jaime was "putting on" the London accent, or it's really hers. Either way my vote is don't go there again.

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" Jaime drinks way too much. It's Bionic Woman, not Alcoholic."

I guess it's how she deals with her issues...

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