Bionic Woman – “Paradise Lost”

“Paradise Lost”

October 3rd, 2007 

David Eick, executive producer on Bionic Woman, is also an exec on Battlestar Galactica (Which appeared on the television in Paradise). That show had an unfair advantage when it came to building the show’s concept: a lengthy miniseries in which the characters and plot were established. This allowed it to balance setup and action in a realistic fashion, and made for an absolutely fabulous episode to follow. ’33’ was a gritty realization of the show’s “Humanity on the Run” hook, and was a fantastic hour of television earned through an extensive pilot.

Bionic Woman, unfortunately, wasn’t quite as lucky. They had a clunky opening hour that while, containing potential, struggled with exposition and action and never really created a foundation for the future episodes to follow. As a result, “Paradise Lost” felt like yet another necessarily slow step in the future of the series. And while I don’t think I’m willing to claim the series has no potential, this particular hour did nothing to speed up the process.

After last week’s exposition and actionfest, this week proved two things: the action was non-representative and the exposition just wasn’t enough. We spend a lot of time learning about how this organization works, how their inner structure develops, and not nearly enough time on compelling drama or character development. At one point, a young girl asks Jamie “Who are you?” and I want an answer as well. This episode, very simply, didn’t offer anything to change what was already a problem with the series…but it didn’t add any problems either.

The episode offered an introduction of Isaiah Washington as Jamie’s handler, and an introduction to how this operation works in regards to how it helps potential situations (Biological Disasters of the Week). However, all of this was really something more apt for a finale: the series really needed two hours to set this all up, but taken as individual hours these two halves don’t add up as well as they could.

We spend some time with Sarah Corvus and her internal affairs relationship, but does it really get us anywhere? And the episode’s action is all small scale stuff akin to CBS’ The Unit or any old military procedural series: we didn’t see anything overly sci-fi or overly unique within the structure. After a premiere that struggled to set everything up, this just wasn’t enough of a payoff to make it worth it.

I think the series has some potential if it manages to get to dealing with characters, but its rather simplistic ending of Jamie figuring out her real place in the world just wasn’t earned by the episode. The show needs to prove it’s capable of more: Battlestar did it in a single episode, but it will take Bionic Woman a little bit longer.

Cultural Observations:

• Loved the Battlestar Galactica clip on the television for obvious reasons. Mainly, you know, my obsession with Battlestar Galactica.
• Isaiah Washington was the epitome of inoffensive in his role. It’s not as if the role was particularly demanding, so I don’t really see the need for the stuntcasting.
• Katee Sackhoff is still great as Sarah Corvus, and I’m glad they toned down her role to make it a little bit less of a tongue-in-cheek portrayal.
• The Biological Disaster of the Week was solved far too quickly: we got very few details, and the situation was never fully explained.
• The ratings held pretty well, all things considered, and the show still has a chance of succeeding. However, this second episode was a bit slow, we’ll see how things hold next week.