Bionic Woman

This is Part III of a list of Top Ten Things That Hurt Bionic Woman.  Click here for Part I and Part II.

6.  The Studio.  When you have a high profile project like Bionic Woman, everybody is going to want to put their stamp on it so they can claim responsibility if it becomes a hit.  Unfortunately, that type of ego-centered feeding frenzy often leads to inconsistency which then hurts a show’s chances of success, as happened with Bionic Woman.  It was the studio who demanded that Isaiah Washington be written into the cast, and it was the studio who changed Jaime’s sister from being a gifted computer hacker (a story line with a lot of potential given Jaime’s bionic parts) to just another jeans-and-boys obsessed teenager.  As a result the show lost much of the gay audience that had idolized the original version in the 1970s, and more faith from the audience as a whole.  If Becca is supposed to be the person who grounds Jaime in reality, then the viewers need to understand who she is and why she is so important to her big sister … but they can’t if Becca is a different person every time she comes on the screen.

5.  The Back Story.  We still don’t know what it is, which would be fine … except at this point we are not sure if anybody else does either.  As noted repeated on this list, Bionic Woman has been through so many changes we don’t know what direction the show is going in anymore.  The show changes so much from week to week it is hard to tell where we are going, much less where we have been.  

Did Will Anthros target Jaime years before he met her, and then date her in a predatory fashion designed to get his hands on her body … which was uniquely perfect for bionic implants, thanks to some genetic marker she inherited from her grandmother?  Maybe, but maybe not. 

The folks who are making the show don’t have to give us the back story right now to keep the viewers interested, because this is the age of Lost and we understand the need for some mystery here.  But we need to trust that the folks who are running the show have a plan, and right now it is not clear that anybody up in Vancouver is certain about the characters of the show, much less the mythology.  Let’s just say the audience and the producers have some "Trust Issues."

For Part IV of this list, click here.