Bionic Woman

This 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 IV.

2.  The Bionics.  If you are going to have a dark and brooding show centered around a female character struggling with the world’s most complicated body issues, then you had better be clear on what that means.  What can she do?  How do certain situations affect her body?  Is she dying?  Why can she bend a pole when she punches it but the nameless thugs she hits can get up swinging?  And how does all of this stuff work anyway?  Once again, we don’t really have to know everything right away … but we need to feel like the show knows.  And right now, the rules change every week depending on whether it is convenient to have Jaime have trouble with her bionics or not.  That may get the show through the hour, but it won’t win it any new fans or keep the attention of its steadily dwindling faithful fans.  Until the audience can trust that the people in Vancouver know how more about bionics than they do, the bionic part of the show will never be anything more than a farce.

1.  The Woman.  Who is Jaime Sommers?  What is really bothering her?  Is it Will?  Antonio?  Tom?  Her parents?  What makes this woman get up every day?  Duty, power, the thrill of the unknown?  Is she the type of girl who will randomly screw a guy in a bar bathroom ("Paradise Lost") or is she the type of girl who obsesses about the rules of dating and won’t kiss a guy first ("The List")?  Or is she both, a woman who is fine with a one night stand to ease her pain when she needs it, but gets all prim and proper when she meets a man she actually likes?  The third option sounds the most plausible, but once again this all goes back to trust.  Are those our intelligent observances of Jaime’s complicated character, or are the coincidences caused by too many chefs adding things into hastily prepared scripts?

Bottom line is, we are not sure what we are seeing when it comes to Jaime and if it should be trusted.  The show has not sold the idea that her inconsistencies are part of a larger idiosyncratic character, instead we are left with the idea that even the people who write Jaime don’t know her very well.  Where is the character study on women and power that we were promised, and where are the moments where Jaime struggles to figure out her new identity in her new world?  We get hints, but they seem more scripted for the moment than true character development. 

We want to like this bionic woman, and we really do want to get to know her … but we need to trust that someone in Vancouver has taken the time to do it first.