Cast
- Michelle Ryan ... Jaime Sommers
- Miguel Ferrer ... Jonas Bledsoe
- Chris Bowers ... Will Anthros
- Molly Price ... Ruth Treadwell
- Will Yun Lee ... Jae Kim
- Lucy Hale ... Becca Sommers
- Thomas Kretschmann ... The Man
- Mark Sheppard ... Anthony Anthros
- Katee Sackhoff ... Sarah Corvis
Invasive Procedures
Jaime Sommers is a bartender with a recalcitrant kid sister, Becca, to take care of. Her steady boyfriend, Dr. Will Anthros, seems to be holding back something about his work, but he's excited when he finds out Jaime is pregnant and seems willing to consider marriage.
All that changes when a semi smashes into their car, critically injuring Jaime. Before passing out, though, Jaime glimpses a blonde woman climbing out of the truck. Will has Jaime airlifted to the secure military facility where he works and decides that his only option to save her life is a series of operations that will replace her legs, right arm, right ear, and right eye with cutting-edge bionics. His boss, Jonas, is opposed but cannot stop him.
When she wakes up, Jaime is confused by Will's explanations and by the sensations she's feeling as anthracites work to integrate her bionics into her body; lifting up the covers and seeing her partially-fleshed legs she screams in horror and hurls Will across the room.
Eventually she flees the complex, returning to her old life. Meanwhile the blonde woman, Sarah Corvis, visits Jaime at the bar and reveals that she was the first bionic woman. Sarah staged the car crash trying to kill Will; after a rebuke by the mysterious man she's working with she tries again, shooting Will through the window of his apartment just as Jaime has come to him for explanations of her newfound fighting aptitude, which is a byproduct of the implants.
Jaime pursues Sarah and fights her, but cannot defeat her. She finds Jonas and agrees to work with them, but on her terms.
Girl Power X-treme
Anyone wondering why it was Bionic Woman that was remade, and not the guy version it was spun off from, gets a big elbow in the ribs about halfway through the pilot. Jaime, speeding away from the complex, outruns a passing car. A little girl in the back seat spots her and tries to get her mom, who's driving, to notice as well. Mom predictably tells her not to lie, but the kid's response is a glib, "I just thought it was cool that a girl could do that." Okay, message received.
The high-velocity running and other abilities are realized very well, and the tone works in suggesting that Jaime's life is pretty flat before all this, but working with Jonas and entering this new life will box her in even more. Ferrer is a good choice, creating a solid presence to anchor the show; action veteran Will Yun Lee is in position to act as trainer and mentor. Katee Sackhoff was an excellent choice for Sarah, conveying a heady mix of menace, sympathy, and derangement.
Unfortunately the two central characters are weakest. Neither Chris Bowers nor Michelle Ryan has the heft for these roles. Bowers just doesn't show us the cold-blooded steel you'd need to defy your superiors and turn your girlfriend into a military experiment. In casting Ryan I know they were going for an Everygirl, and that's fine. But I didn't get a full commitment out of her. I didn't believe her pouring drinks, I didn't believe her talking about having a baby, I didn't quite believe her fighting with Katee. One moment I bought was her screaming at the sight of her mechanical legs: that moment gave me a cold thrill.
Super-strong Plot Holes
There are a few rough patches in the plot. Random example: the cover story they come up with to cover Jaime's absence is a skiing holiday. Becca sees through this, because Jaime doesn't ski. So why did they pick that for the cover story? A bender in Tijuana would have been more believable.
Will introduces the bionics to save her life ("you were dying"). And yet we find out later that the procedures included implants in her brain that turned her into a trained fighter. Those were necessary to prevent her from dying? In fact everything replaced was nonvital. People live without limbs, ears, and eyes. If they'd given her a bionic liver I'd believe that it was to save her life, but I just don't buy that Will did all of this without having his own agenda.
Watching the first half I was distracted by the fact that the Winchesters were in that exact same semi-smash car crash at the end of season 1 of Supernatural (Dean ended up dead, and then John ended up dead instead). If only Dr. Will had been around to plug things in here, screw on attachments there, things could have turned out very differently.
The "We're going to do this my way" ending is getting old fast. We just heard it on Chuck, and now Jaime does the same thing here. And each time I thought, you should not get away with that, because you do not hold all the cards. Now Reaper's ending made sense: Sam realizes that, powers or no, the Devil holds all the cards, but Sam can carve out something positive anyway. Funny that the one about the bounty hunter for hell ended up being the most realistic of this week's new shows.
