TVSquad

No need to adjust your glasses at the title of this post. What we're talking about here is the inflation-adjusted price of the Bionic Man in the year 2008. This is according to CNNMoney.com, which looked at a number of pop culture icons and programs to see what the costs for various things would be. Using tools from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they were able to put estimates not only the inflation adjusted costs but the actual cost in today's world.

Take Steve Austin, for instance. The six million dollars that it cost to make the former astronaut stronger and faster in 1974 would actually be an inflation-adjusted $26 million dollars today. Factor in the actual cost of the bionic parts, more than $100 million, and Steve would probably be stronger, not faster.

Since NBC just launched the remake of the 70s sci-fi drama The Bionic Woman (I still love you Lindsay Wagner), some people are wondering if we'll ever see the original on DVD. TVGuide.com has an interesting story explaining why the original show (and the show it was spun off from, The Six Million Dollar Man) hasn't been released on DVD yet. And, you guessed it, is has to do with licenses and ownership.

When someone remakes a TV show or a movie, they often go more serious or darker. Is it because producers and directors feel they have to go "serious" to justify a remake? Do we live in more cynical times? Do the producers feel that they can't make a quality show that also happens to be light?

Kenneth Johnson, the creator of the original Bionic Woman series in the '70s (a spinoff of The Six Million Dollar Man), tells the L.A. Times that he's worried about the remake. I guess I would, too, if an NBC exec called my show "kind of cheesy." Although Johnson has been impressed with the work of producer David Eick on Battlestar Galactica, he's not so sure they're doing the right thing with the remake of his show.

Every day in this business, I hear ideas for TV shows and movies that blow my mind. Just when you think you've heard the oddest idea, along comes another one to top it.

Here's the latest. Lee Majors (The Six Million Dollar Man) and comic Jamie Kennedy are going to star in a pilot for FOX titled Me & Lee? That's not a question, that's the actual title of the show. The plot? Kennedy plays a guy with severe chronic back pain who goes to the secret lair run by Majors (who will play himself) underneath his Beverly Hills mansion. It houses a lab that Majors built after becoming interested in bionics after his show ended years ago.

Um...wow.

This could be the sign of a "bionics" comeback. As you've probably already heard, NBC and the people behind Battlestar Galactica are making a new Bionic Woman, with Michelle Ryan in the lead role.

[via TV Tattle]

One of the saddest changes in the television landscape has been the disappearance of the theme song. They're really not that important to the people who create TV shows now (or the networks who want to get more commercials in). Lost has just a single note as their theme song, ER has changed and shortened their theme song, Jericho has static, and Heroes doesn't have a theme song or credits either.

Luckily, the shows that still have theme songs also have opening credits. Shows like The Office and Dexter all have theme songs and opening credits. They're classic TV openings. Of course, it's nothing like years gone by, where almost all shows had theme song and opening credits. The Onion has picked 22 that they feel fit their shows perfectly. I don't know if that is the same as "best opening sequences," but the choices are interesting, quirky, a little maddening, and they left out a few, as I'm sure you'll agree.

Paul Dinello, one of the co-creators of one of the greatest TV shows of all time, Strangers with Candy, and the man who played gay art teacher Geoffry Jellineck on the series, is set to direct the new FOX comedy pilot Me & Lee?

The pilot is called Me & Lee?, just to clarify. I didn't want you readers to think I was asking you whether or not Dinello is directing the pilot.