The Bionic Review 1.2: "Paradise Lost"
Posted by Brendan Newton on 10.05.2007
Bionic Woman finds its' legs in this good episode.
This week’s installment of Bionic Woman, “Paradise Lost”, kicks off the show proper after this week’s pilot, has its’ work cut out for it. It aired directly after I watched the pilot of Pushing Daisies, one of the most fun, original series I’ve ever seen, a hard act to follow to be sure. Luckily, Bionic Woman was more than up to the task, with a good episode that was a big improvement over the pilot episode. This show has definitely found its’ legs, and it should get a nice long run in which to tell some cool stories. Of course, my saying that doubtless means that I’ll wake up tomorrow and hear that it’s been cancelled. *ahem* Anyways, here are my notes and thoughts on tonight’s episode. Spoilers will abound, so if you haven’t seen the episode, obviously don’t read this review.
-First off, I have to confess that I geeked out big-time when I saw Darin Morgan’s name as a Consulting Producer in the opening credits. No doubt some if not most people reading will respond with “Who the Hell is Darin Morgan?”, but any X-Files fans should know Morgan as the writer of some of the funniest, darkest, cleverest episodes of that (or any other) series, among them the sideshow freak episode and the one with the killer cockroaches. I worshipped Morgan’s work back when I was an X-Files’ addicted high school geek (I probably shouldn’t think too hard about what that says about me…) and was always disappointed that he hasn’t gone on to write and produce much else afterwards. He should be a welcome presence, and I would love to see what he would do with Bionic Woman’s characters and premise as a writer. It seems odd to hope for a show to last long enough for someone to make fun of it really cleverly, but affectionate satire is what Morgan does best, and I hope he eventually gets a chance to do so with this series.
-Wow. Bionic Woman takes a fairly big, gutsy step by killing off Will in this episode, or rather confirming his death after he was previously shot and his fate left up in the air. It seems to me that the Pilot was filmed in such a way as to allow for him to die or to survive, with Sarah shooting him almost in the shoulder (TV characters have survived much, much worse) and it was a fairly late decision to have him die; perhaps the network decided they wanted him gone, or test audiences didn’t react well to the character? It may simply just be a matter of the writers not being sure if they wanted the character to be in or out, but either way I’m surprised and impressed by the way they developed the character over just two episodes. As I mentioned in my review of the Pilot, the character of the older college professor who’s dating a younger woman is usually written as a sleazy type, and it was refreshing to see him turn out to genuinely care for Jaime, and shocking to have the character disposed of so suddenly and callously. Then, just as soon as it is made clear that the character is well and truly dead and not coming back, and Jaime’s grieving deeply, we discover that he may not have been as genuinely loving as we thought he was, seeing as how he had been keeping files on Jaime for years before they actually met (I thought the “loose floorboard” gimmick for Will’s hidden dossier was a bit lame; it would have been so much more clever to completely subvert the audience’s expectations and have the file just be left lying around somewhere!) The punches and twists keep coming with regards to Will, which is why I’m a bit surprised that he wasn’t mentioned again for the last two-thirds of the episode at least, and the character of his father who seemed such a promising villain last week did not appear at all. I’m sure we’ll get back to the issue of Will’s file on Jaime at some stage, and I still suspect it may have to do with her own unseen (but very much alive) father, who has to appear at some stage given the continuing references to him, or perhaps it has to do with Will and Jaime’s lost unborn child; had Will planned Jaime’s pregnancy for over two years?
-We saw a more prosaic side of Jaime’s life this week when we saw that, in addition to adjusting to her new bionic identity, she’s going through what have come to be known as the standard “quarter-life crisis” issues. Stuck in a dead-end job, confused as to what she wants for the future and what she’ll be capable of, and having to watch seemingly all of her friends basking in career and personal success while she reads What Colour is Your Parachute? in a vain attempt to find some direction. I for one can relate, and hope that in between the superheroics (which are pretty cool, the Bionic running effects continue to shine) we get more of this real-life stuff.
-Speaking of which, great stuff with Jaime and Becca’s relationship this week. For some reason, their dialogue together seemed a lot more natural and original than any of the stuff with the Bionics team (“pot’s not a drug, it’s from the Earth”). It seems as though the sisters care about each other in spite of themselves; as angry as she is with Becca’s drug use, Jaime shows herself to be a responsible, adult parent when discusing Becca’s situation with the principal. Becca’s angry, rebellious and constantly threatening to leave Jaime to live with their father, but at episode’s end, she reveals that the main reason for her attitude is her guilt about holding Jaime back from the life that she could have; we also learn in this episode that Jaime was accepted into Harvard but couldn’t afford it because she was looking after Becca, establishing both Jaime’s intelligence and her willingness to sacrifice all for those she loves. It’ll be great to see Becca and Jaime’s relationship develop as their scenes are well-written, the actresses have great chemistry, and Jaime will not be able to keep her new life a secret forever as it keeps putting a strain on their relationship. Eventually, Becca will have to be let in.
-Molly Price and Miguel Ferrer continue to bring great presence to their somewhat limited and cliched roles. Really, they’re still just the generic government/military operative-types that seem to be in endless supply in the world of TV, with little to distinguish them from characters in a hundred other shows. I can’t fault the actors as they’re both great, but hopefully they’ll be developed a bit more throughout the course of the series; I felt that tonight’s episode could have spent a bit more time on that and less on the terrorist angle, although there was a cute (if forced) moment with Ferrer’s character revealing that he has a teenage daughter with whom he has the standard teenage issues surrounding drugs and sex, a neat parallel to Jaime’s own problems with Becca. That has to be leading somewhere, perhaps the two girls go to school together? Molly Price makes a blunt, deadpan character really interesting to watch somehow, especially when she’s earnestly delivering lines like “Put down the toothbrush!” when she and Jaime find the survivor of the terrorist attack. Great line with perfect delivery, and one of the few moments during the terrorist scenes that the writing went beyond the standard cliches. The chase and fight scenes with the terrorists were great, though; I especially liked the moment where, during a brawl with a terrorist, Jaime injures her hand punching the guy and has to shake it off. It’s just great to have the little touches in there that remind us that she’s still learning how to use the power she’s been given, and Michelle Ryan played the scene perfectly. My main problem with the terrorist subplot, though, was that we weren’t told anything about who these guys were, they were just random terrorist guys who wanted to poison the population of America for not apparent reason other than their being “evil” or something. I really hate it when shows do this; at least give me a couple of throwaway lines explaining that the bad guys are right-wing extremists or something. Otherwise, it just feels like the writers are in the room with me saying “umm, here are some bad guys or something. Watch as she kills them, enjoy.” What’s interesting about that? I was hoping the mass gas attack was going to be saved for a future episode, leading to a whole arc about where the gas came from, what caused immunity to it, and how it could be stopped, and perhaps leading back to Will’s father who developed it for the Bionics company, but they then killed the entire plot quickly in the episode’s closing minutes. Hopefully, Mark Sheppard will be back soon, because a series like this needs strong, complex villains with well-thought out backstories, as opposed to the forgettable grunts we got this week. The big take-down of the terrorist group was really well-done though, and it gave Isaiah Washington a chance to shine, so huzzah.
-On that note, Isaiah Washington’s character is a welcome addition to the cast. Again, this series shows that it knows when not to unnecessarily drag things out, witness Jaime’s quick escape from the compound last week, and the quick reveal of Washington’s character as a Bionics operative this week, just after the scene in which he mysteriously befriended Jaime. I was expecting and dreading a long, drawn-out reveal process that would go on long after the audience had gotten the point, that this guy was just a little too friendly to be on the level. Instead, we get a quick reveal so that the creators can quickly move on to developing the character in a more interesting way. Having never watched Grey’s Anatomy, I’m not at all familiar with Washington, but his performance on Bionic Woman was intensely impressive, especially during his interrogation scene with the terrorist leader. He’s clearly a pivotal character of the kind that’s always interested me, the sort of man who’s as kind as he is scary, who when it comes right down to it is with the good guys but who is willing to go to any length to make sure they win, to the point where it raises the question of whether his means can justify any end. Here, witness his off-screen torture of the captured terrorist; as always, not showing exactly what he did makes it that much more horrific, since the viewer’s imagination is left to run wild as to what sort of horrors the character is capable of in the name of saving lives. He’s unpredictable, and it will be great to see whether in the end his extreme methods will inspire or impede Jaime.
-The same kind of uncertainty surrounding Washington’s character surrounds the relationship between Sarah and Kim, which took on a new dimension this week when we discovered that not only is he fully aware that she lives, but is also still sexually involved with her, having a liaison at a hotel. This can only lead to tension between Jaime and Kim, as he’s still the lover of the woman who killed her own lover (actor Will Yun Lee plays Kim‘s reluctant, deep love for Sarah, mixed with the guilt of having had to shoot her, to perfection), and it will be interesting to see how this plays out and whether or not it cancels out their bonding during Jaime’s training montage (okay, so for a moment during that scene I was singing the “Montage” song from South Park, but it was a really good training montage, with a physicality that such scenes usually lack). Kim’s going to have some ’splaining to do sooner or later, but if that means more screen time for Sarah, I’m all for it. What a great character she’s turning out to be; whereas last week we were led to believe that she was the standard evil/crazy chick, this week we find out that she believes her programming was “hacked”, rendering her irresponsible for her actions, although it’s not clear if she was hacked for her original escape from the program or for when she killed Will, or both. The concept of bionic programming being hacked is a very interesting one and would be a good way for this series to differentiate itself from the orginal series, which of course aired at a time when few would have known what the term meant. Hopefully it’s an idea that will be followed up on, as it makes Sarah a much more complex character and raises the threat of Jaime being hacked as part of a future arc. And hopefully Mark Sheppard’s character will be involved as a credible central villain.
Overall, this episode was a big improvement over the pilot in terms of quality; the show just seems less new this week and a bit more aware of what it wants to be. The terrorist gas plot was decent for what it was, although I thought it could have been stretched out over a couple of episodes, and could have used more fleshed-out terrorists than the mysterious guys in khaki we got. Character interaction and development was great, especially the introduction of Isaiah Washington and the Becca-Jaime stuff, and the series has certainly managed to hook me in with the prospect of what might happen with these characters in weeks to come.
The 411: Good stuff this week, especially the ongoing Becca storyline. The terrorist plot angle fell a bit weak by not developing the bad guys to the point where their plot meant little if anything to the viewer, but the series threw in a bunch of great wild cards with Isaiah Washington's character, Will's death, and the suggestion that Sarah was hacked. Big improvement over the Pilot, and I think as everyone involved with the show gets more comfortable it can only improve more from here.
