Bionic Woman

After almost two weeks of strep throat, stress, and the flu I have awakened from my fever dreams to discover a whole new world:  the writer’s strike is finally over, and new Bionic Woman footage will be coming soon.

First, the news about Jaime Sommers.  Season One of Bionic Woman is set for a March 18 DVD release, which will contain all of the episodes to date as well as new footage in the form of special features.  According to TVonDVD.com those special features will include a “making of the car crash” segment, footage from the stunt scenes, pilot commentary with producer David Eick, and segments on real life bionics.  Personally I am most excited about the commentary, as it has the potential to shed some more light on what happened to the show between last year’s up fronts and today’s bionic quagmire.

Second, the news about the writer’s strike.  How nice to come back to the world of the living and find that my Christmas wish has come true, and the writers are getting back to work.  It has been a long few months, but it looks like our favorite characters will be back on the small screen soon … including, perhaps in the fall, Jaime Sommers.

In the meantime be sure to check back here at Watching Bionic Woman, as we still have plenty of news to cover about the show.  We have the last two entries of our Will Anthros Wish List coming soon, updates on the cast and crew, and Michelle Ryan herself finally hit the red carpet in London again this week after a long absence.   So be sure to come back as there are more posts, and more Bionic Woman news, coming in the next few days.

It seems there is a problem with the spam filter on the network, and as a result ALL of the comments on this blog for the past few weeks were labeled as spam … even our comments. 

Please know that comments were not an intentional block on our part, but a programming error that will hopefully be fixed in the next few weeks.  As frustrating as it is, we were vaguely relieved to discover this was why we were not having any comments … Ryan and I were slightly worried that we had somehow run you all off!

So our sincere apologies to everyone who took the time to leave a comment on this blog, especially since we missed so many good ones as a result.  I went back and tried to manually find and approve them all, but if I missed yours please do not hesitate to let me know.

Until this problem is fixed I will be trying to mine the real comments from the hundreds of spam comments this blog gets every day.  Things can get lost in the shuffle, however, so I want to give you that warning, and also issue an invitation … if you are not hawking porn, or predatory loans, or pain killers, or any of the bizarre products people try to sell through this blog then feel free to send me an e-mail and I will post your non-spam comment for you.  It’s the least we can do for those of you who leave comments until this problem is fixed.

Special thanks to Jim, a reader who stopped by the blog last night and reminded us that there is a lot to celebrate about Bionic Woman.  The show aired what could conceivably be its last episode last night, and all of the critical bashing and ratings trashing aside there have been moments along the way that were a lot of fun. 

Jim would like to say thank you to the cast and crew of Bionic Woman for their hard work on the show:

“I am going totally positive into episode 1.08. I want to thank Michelle, Michael, Nathan, Kate, David, all the actors, producers, and yes, even the writers, all of whom put a lot of hard work into the show. They deserve our thanks, and while we can critique the final product, their efforts to create a product deserve our appreciation. Whatever happens after Wednesday night, I will be grateful for their efforts. As Gene Hackman said to his basketball team in the movie ‘Hoosiers,’ on the eve of their make or break game, I say to the BW team on the eve of theirs; ‘If you put your heart and soul into it, if you give it everything you got, I don’t care what the scoreboard says at the end of the game, in my book, we’re going to be winners.’”

We echo Jim’s sentiment of thanks, and would like to thank him for stopping by and commenting and showing his support for the show and for our blog.

Bionic Woman is taking some time off for Thanksgiving, and Ryan and I have decided to do the same. It is a lot of fun doing this blog but a lot of work too, and we would like a few days with our families without thinking about how the inconsistencies of the show drive us crazy or whether the producers will ever allow Ruth to come out of the closet.

There are a lot of good posts out here to keep you company for a few days if you are interested, or feel free to post your own thoughts and we will respond next week (I know I still owe you a post Kel!).

So until then enjoy your weekend, and check back here when we will have new posts and NBC will she showing a new episode of Bionic Woman!

Although Michelle Ryan has been M.I.A. this past week for her scheduled media promotions, WatchingBionicWoman.com’s very on Margie has been keeping busy with hers.  First a print interview with Bionic-blog.com Friday and Sunday a guest of famed radio host Shaun OMac.  Shaun is the best known for creating the save Jericho series peanut campaign. 

Margie spent the hour discussing Bionic Woman,  and the 2007 fall premiers.  You can listen to the entire show here.

Bionic Woman is a show that claims to be about female empowerment, even though it is really a show about a woman whose options are narrowed rather than widened when she becomes an unwilling subject in a government bionic weapons experiment. Some commentators have written about this dichotomy in perception between the show’s attitudes towards its bionic women, and it will be interesting to see how that dichotomy resolves itself throughout the season.

In the interim, it is important to remember that violence is not something that is confined to our television sets. With offhand scenes of violence in almost every television show, and the deaths of the war dominating the news, it is sometimes easy to become numb to the horrific effect each violent act can have on individual lives.

Domestic violence is a devastating epidemic and silence is its friend. October is Domestic Violence Awareness month in the United States, and a time to stop the silence that surrounds this epidemic and open our eyes to the cruelty that is close to home. If you know someone you suspect is being abused, please take the time to educate yourself and reach out to them … you may be the person that helps break them free of their painful prison.

Many of the bloggers around the 451 Press network are taking time to promote domestic violence awareness during this first week in October. April has some compelling posts over on Her Daily News, while Susan at Home Computer Talk has a list of online resources for victims or people wanting to learn more about the issues. Beth at Astrology Explored has written about how to recognize the signs that someone is a violent individual and the manipulative traits of an abusive personality.

KD at WatchingCSI.com was kind enough to showcase CSI’s partnership with CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates), a national organization that works with abused and neglected children in foster care.

If you are interested in helping with the issue of domestic violence in a hands on manner, becoming a CASA is an invaluable way to help children who have been removed from violent homes. CASA volunteers get extensive training before they are assigned specific cases by juvenile judges, and they work alongside the attorneys and social workers involved in the case to investigate the child’s situation and make recommendations about what is in the best interests of the child. If you are interested in learning more about CASA please go to NationalCASA.org or contact the CASA office in your area.

Domestic Violence, purple ribbon, awareness, October, CSI, CASA, astrology, Bionic Woman, implants, Jaime Sommers, Will Antros,

Dr. Eric Freedman, Director of Multi-Media Studies at Florida Atlantic University, includes a reference to www.watchingbionicwoman.com in his latest article published at FlowTV.org.  In Search of Bigfoot: The Use and Obsolescence of Bionics, Freedman explores 1970s television programs, including the original Bionic Woman, and their observance and response to the cultural landscape of the day.  He contrasts the fantastical elements these shows were not afraid to take with the faux realism Eick and his team will employ with their 2007 Bionic Woman remake.  Freedman observes that the 2007:

Bionic Woman wears its cultural relevancy on its sleeve. The series premiere is quite self-aware, littered with observations about the laws of science and nature, and the physical and psychical tolls of warfare. A slide lecture on bioethics includes images of a victim of a Baghdad car bombing, and ends with a question about the threshold of intervention. Contemporary bionics is positioned as an aspect of military research and more pointedly as a tool to benefit casualties of the Gulf War, in line with the goals of real-world research undertaken by DARPA’s Revolutionizing Prosthetics Program.[1]

Freedman references www.watchingbionicwoman.com while questioning how media is now disseminated across multiple platforms and the role bloggers play defining our popular culture narrative.  Freedman reflects:

Program blogs such as The Bionic Woman Blog and Watching Bionic Woman weave a complex intertext about fandom, stardom, and industrial discourse. As I pour over the efforts of a few bloggerati to claim the cultural relevance of a text that has not even aired, I’m struck by a gesture that simultaneously seems antithetical to the “populace” embedded in popular culture (as site authors sift through cultural detritus to construct an overly narrated and overly saturated meta-text) but also part of the very fabric of popular culture, endlessly decentering the text at hand and making it ever more porous. The problem of locating the text is part of contemporary television discourse, reflecting the fragmented nature of the broadcast landscape, scattered across multiple media platforms and viewing practices.

We here at WatchingBionicWoman.com have never thought of ourselves as bloggerati, but if a Ph.D. assigns us the title, we’ll take it!

The Bionic-Blog.com was kind enough to ask Ryan and I to participate in a series of interviews with Bionic Woman fans. Check out our hopes for the series, our evolving opinions on Isaiah Washington, and other Bionic Woman issues over there. Roco also has some great screencaps from the premiere up today for all of us detail obsessed Bionic Woman fans!

In related news, I will be talking about Bionic Woman’s big ratings blowout and other TV news on the ShaunOMac Radio Show on Sunday night. If you are not familiar with Shaun and his show, he is the mastermind behind the peanuts campaign that saved Jericho from extinction. Be sure to tune in, or call in, if you get a chance!

Bionic Woman, interview, ShaunOMac, Jericho, radio, Isaiah Washington

This site is advertiser supported and without many fine corporate sponsors it would not be possible to write about the new Bionic Woman.  Unfortunately, we have no control over the specific advertisements that grace Watching Bionic Woman.com as we belong to a large blog ad network and each individual ad is placed without our consent or approval.  From time to time it will become necessary to extend an apology to our readers when a corporation/organization purchases advertising that is then placed on Watching Bionic Woman.com that conflicts with its author’s standards. 

This week the Mitt Romney Campaign for President has purchased space on the right-hand side of this page.  At Watching Bionic Woman.com we want to make it very clear to our readers that we DO NOT endorse Mr. Romney’s bid for the White House. 

At Watching Bionic Woman.com, we stand for a progressive, open minded society where ALL are free to live their lives unencumbered by the morals of right-wing politicians.  Mr. Romney has every right to run for the presidency but at Watching Bionic Woman.com we want our readers to know we do not endorse his campaign nor his political rhetoric.

Again, our apologies if it appeared Watching Bionic Woman.com endorsed Mr. Romney’s presidential campaign by the placement of this advertisement. We do not.

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