Bionic Woman

This is Part II of a list of Top Ten Things That Hurt Bionic Woman.  For Part I click here.

8.  The Casting.  Note that I did not say the cast.  Michelle Ryan, Katee Sackhoff, Will Yun Lee, Molly Price, and Miguel Ferrar are probably the only steady cast members on the short history of Bionic Woman, and they have all done a great job with what was written for them.  Everybody else in the cast, however, has gone through multiple versions … just like everything else on the show.  Do we even know who is on this show anymore?

Remember the three versions of Becca, which happened before the pilot even aired?  Remember when Jaime was actually supposed to have friends who would be played by people whose names we could remember?  Remember when the Anthros boys were supposed to be big players in the Bionic universe?  It’s hard to keep up with what is actually happening on Bionic Woman, much less what started to happen and then was dropped like a hot potato.  This holiday season our hearts go out to all of the cast members who were hired and fired from Bionic Woman, as that list is a big post in itself.

7.  The Boyfriend.  Speaking of casting, there was one giant casting fumble that may have single handedly hurt this show more than any other error … and that was casting Chris Bowers as Jaime’s bionic surgeon boyfriend.  Much of the success of the show centered around believing that Bowers was a surgeon with off-the-charts chemistry with Jaime, and as many bloggers have noted it was very hard to believe he was scientifically inclined (much less gifted) or interested in much more than Jaime’s boobilicious body parts.  The early premise centered around Jaime discovering that Will had been planning to implant her with bionics way before their car accident, and complicated plot lines about Will and his maniacal genius surgeon Dad (played by Mark Sheppard) and their ongoing love hate war with the Berkut Group.  Plot twists about Jae and Sarah Corvus, backstories for the Berkut Employees, and a long and loving show mythology were sure to follow. 

Unfortunately, Chris Bowers was a bad bad choice for this part and the whole thing fell apart as a result.  When they killed off Chris Bowers’ character after the premiere, much earlier than they had intended to, they also had to scrap the major storyline for the season and much of the back story on how he double crossed Jaime when he implanted her with her bionic parts.  If a different actor had been cast as Will Anthros, we would probably have been watching a much different show this season.

For Part III of this list, click here.