Top Ten Things That Hurt Bionic Woman, Part I
It’s been a topsy turvy television season so far, but few shows have surprised viewers more than Bionic Woman. The show came into the summer blazing with potential, hot off a buzz-filled debut at the NBC Upfronts last Spring and blessed with a Battlestar Galactica pedigree. It’s first episode was highly rated … and then it sank like a stone in the ratings, and now has reached the point where it has people cheering on its cancellation.
So what happened?
It was not one thing that pulled Bionic Woman off its pedestal. Here’s my top ten list of things that hurt the show, written with the optimism that it will be "re-launched" after the writer’s strike with renewed commitment and potential.
10. The Sets. Even the casual fans noticed that everything that happened in the first few episodes of Bionic Woman happened in a warehouse. Even when Jaime and Antontio Pope head to South America in "Face Off" they end up in … a warehouse. The show was consistently inconsistent about many things, but the sets never seemed to change. By the time Jaime ventured out to better sets in Paris in "The List" or to the race track in "Trust Issues" not enough people were watching to notice.
9. The Showrunners. Ch-ch-ch-changes was the motto on the Bionic Woman set, as the show went through at least three different showrunners in its first three months on the air. Each of these folks seemed to have a different idea of what would work, different ideas of what the characters were, and worse … different ideas about Jaime, her bionics, and her role in the world. As a result the show had trouble finding its footing and building credibility with its audience. Episode two, "Paradise Lost" is probably the best example of this. It looks like a bunch of different scenes edited together from different things, and perhaps it is … the version that aired was rumored to be a combination of what was originally supposed to be the first two episodes, "Paradise Lost" and "Birds."
Click here for Part Two of this list.
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:52 pm
[...] This is Part II of a list of Top Ten Things That Hurt Bionic Woman. For Part I click here. [...]
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:02 pm
[...] is Part III of a list of Top Ten Things That Hurt Bionic Woman. Click here for Part I and Part [...]
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:11 pm
[...] is Part IV of a list of Top Ten Things That Hurt Bionic Woman. Click here for Part I, Part II, and Part [...]
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:25 pm
[...] is Part V of a list of Top Ten Things That Hurt Bionic Woman. Click here for Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part [...]
March 24th, 2008 at 9:34 am
[...] I will post my thoughts on the cancellation news soon, but in the interim be sure to check out the Top Ten Things That Hurt Bionic Woman list and check out the news as it [...]
March 25th, 2008 at 7:51 am
[...] President Ben Silverman to fans of the original series, from actual bionic scientists to television bloggers … pretty much every person who saw the show had the same thought as Bionic Woman scholar [...]