Bionic Woman

Here’s an interesting video interview with Will Yun Lee.  Will plays Jae Kim on BW and has been assigned to teach Jaime Sommers what it means to be a bionic woman and how to integrate her biological traits with her newly programmed bionics.

I like his character Kim, however, learning that he is friends with Washington makes me like him just a little less.

Episode 1.04 “Face Off” was not quite as good as last week’s episode, “Sisterhood,” but there was one scene that was campy fun- Katee Sackhoff being wheeled through the Wolfe Creek underground facility. 

The setup: Katee Sackhoff as Sarah Corvus has just been captured by Jae Kim and he is taking her back to the Wolfe Creek facility for interrogation and repair.

Watch this clip and tell me the writers weren’t deliberately paying tribute to Rober Harris’ Silence of the Lambs villain Hannibal Lecter.

Liz at Glowybox raised an interesting proposition in her review of the Bionic Woman pilot - is there going to be enough “eye candy” on BW?  Sure, Michelle Ryan and Katee Sackhoff are beautiful women, but what about the men? 

After watching the pilot, the only visual “taste” of possible eye candy is Chris Bowers  shirtless for about 60 seconds.  He’s got a nice body and looks decently in shape, but he’s not gonna cut for the whole series.  Since we didn’t see Jae Kim shirtless, the verdict is still out on him.

I’ve said before that BW has a natural built in audience with the gay and lesbian community and one of the ways to cultivate gay men is to add more men with sex appeal.  Bowers and Kim didn’t show any potential in this department from the pilot.

And Isaiah Washington will never cut it visually or mentally with the gay community.

What do you think? Does a shirtless Will offer enough sex appeal to carry the series, or is he a little limp in the sex appeal department?

Jae was born into a family of Korean migrant workers who resided in the Phnom Penh Providence of Cambodia. His father was a woodworker and his mother labored in the rice fields. He lived there until 1980 when his parents were murdered by the Khmer Rouge Guerrillas and he was sent by his uncle to live in a Taoist monastery in the Hubei region of China. Overcome by vengeance and anger, Jae’s uncle believed that his nephew needed the spiritual guidance that only a Taoist temple could offer.

His formidable years were spent at the Yeon Kim School of Taoist meditation in the Wudang Mountains. It was here that he learned the works of Taoist Monk, Chen Tuan, and strived to live his life by the philosophies of the Taoist faith: oneness, dynamic balance, cyclical growth and harmonious action. As Jae became older, he slowly dissociated himself with the monastery and formal Taoist education as he became more interested in Wudang martial Arts. Having completed his own personal growth at the Yeon Kim School, Jae eventually left the Wudang region in search of a secular education.

He enrolled in the Gibeau International Boarding School in Berne, Switzerland. Labeled an outcast and often harassed, Jae isolated himself, becoming a mediocre student. It was not until he reached Russell University that Jae displayed his potential, excelling in Philosophy and Physics. He chose to specialize in biophysics, writing his thesis on the Mind-Body interface; studying how consciousness is related to matter. Avant-garde research and field study he conducted created a name for Mr. Huang as a renowned, and universally respected, authority in the fields of mind control and meditation, frequently speaking at symposiums and contributing to various scholarly publications.

For an undisclosed amount of time the Berkut Group tracked Jae’s career and eventually asked him to join the organization. Though Mr. Huang was reluctant to join what he described as a “questionable organization,” he later acquiesced to their offer when he acknowledged the virtue his involvement could bring to the Berkut Group. After a thorough training process and an integration period, Jae assumed the role as the chair of the Endophysics Department, developing the wing of the Berkut Group that oversees all aspects of mental control and spirituality.

While working for the Berkut Group with their best Bionic test subject, Sarah Corvus, Jae fell in love with her, and they became romantically involved. Eventually this romance lent a personal aspect to his greatest professional failure, as Sarah proved unable to mentally control the killing machine within her, and rebelled against the Berkut Group, going on a killing rampage.

Jae however managed to exercise control over his own impulses, by not allowing his romantic feelings for Sarah to get in the way of doing what was called for: He fired the shots that ended Sarah’s killing spree, terminating her life (this is the opening scene of the pilot).

The resulting psychological trauma caused him to take a hiatus from his work with the Berkut Group, retiring to a life of seclusion in the woods of the Pacific Northwest, though he did agree to return if and when they resumed human experimentation.

Bionic Woman, NBC, BW, Jae Kim, Will Yun Lee