I thought that the episode began brilliantly with Sarah Corvus and Jae Lee setting the pace and the angst of the episode. Seriously, those are the words I would use to describe this episode because ALOT happens and there is plenty of gritty realism (moulded with science!). Speaking of which I found Michelle Ryan’s performance believable – she portrays an ordinary woman thrown into an extraordinary situation with great skill and integrity. I found myself willing Jaime to succeed as she first stumbles and then leaps her way through the various obstacles that she faces in this episode. I think it’s crucial that the viewing public are sympathetic to this character and boy does she have me invested.

So what about the other characters? I couldn’t really find a weak link. All of the main characters add value to the show – Sarah Corvus is the obvious standout character. I think that she could possibly be one of the best TV Characters we will see over the next 12 months..that’s how awesome she is. I didn’t know much about Katee Sackhoff before Bionic, but I can see why she is so highly regarded – she has bucket-loads of charisma, style, guile and she is beautiful..absolutely beautiful to look at – so much so that her rather ‘manic’ grin adds to her aesthetics rather than detracting from them. Sarah has an interesting back story, as I mentioned in my Episode Notes, she was hired to kill Will Anthros by the guy who breaks Anthony Anthros out of jail – so there’s a whole interesting storyline going on there.

I thought that the characters of Jonas Bledsoe, Ruth Truewell and Jae Lee were well acted – I found myself wanting to find out more about all three characters and it will be interesting to see how Isaiah Washington’s character fits into their hierarchy. I can already see how he could act as an awesome counter-balance to Jae Lee.

I have to give props to Mark Sheppard- he only had about 2 minutes of screen-time, but man did he do a great job with Anthony Anthros! The guy is just awesome – I totally know what Producer Smilovic meant now!

As for the now re-casted Mae Whitman, well watching it a second time I found her not too bad. She wasn’t brilliant but until I see Lucy Hale’s performance it will be hard to tell whether the right decision has been made. But I don’t think it’s a ‘travesty’ she has gone.

Overall this original Pilot was good and the best thing about it is that is has me wanting more. I thought the mixture of science, ethics, love and humanity used throughout was just about right. On the downside the visuals need touching up a bit, things seemed a bit bleak and grey. I don’t mind dark setting’s but dark with a bit of gloss would be nice (ala ‘Heroes’). As I mentioned earlier, alot happens..perhaps too much? I think they needed to pad out certain parts and offer more context. I also wasn’t best pleased that they skirted over the issue of Jaime’s baby dyeing – a 2 minute montage of ‘surgically changed’ Jaime and Will making love was a bit, shall we say, off-key. Oh and why did Jaime leave Will to die after being shot by Corvus? ..where’s her priorities!?..and after her rooftop dance with Corvus she STILL didn’t seem too worried - even after seeing him being strapped into an ambulance? Could her ‘machine side’ (if you will) be de-humanising her already? I’d rather that than a plot-hole to be honest.

———

‘OH YES..THAT ROCKED!’ MOMENTS:

1.Rooftop Battle – This is such a great scene, I challenge anyone to not love this! What can I say?..the whole thing was great, from the way Sarah initially turns her back on Jaime to her soon to be iconic “tadah!” to the way she lays the smack down on Jaime to Jaime’s second-wind as she begins to harness her abilities and fights back. It was simply O..M..G! Great visuals in ‘that’ scene also..and i’m not just talking about the hotness of Michelle and Katee :)

2. The remainder of Jaime’s Bionics going online whilst she’s working. I thought this was a great way to show her experiencing the ‘machine within’, as she suddenly develops all these new abilities that she didn’t have before. It was also great the way Sarah, wearing bright red lipstick(!), toys with Jaime but then shows alot of empathy as she helps her. It was just a nice moment which emphasised the light and shade of her character.

3. Jaime being imprisoned by the Burket Group whilst they figure out what to do with her – Jaime walks up to the ‘non-see through’ glass and says “BOO!” to Jonas who is watching her from the other-side. This was great, as she seemed so de-humanised yet appeared to be realising that they couldn’t keep her for long. Jonas’ smile was also great.

‘THAT STINKS!’ MOMENTS:

1. The little girl who notices Jaime using her Bionic speed says to her mom “I just think it’s cool that girls could do that”. I mean COME ON..hello!??..lines like this will take us back to the 1960′s, never-mind the 1970′s! I get the point they wanted to make, but surely there was a better – less ridiculous – way to do it? I don’t like having my intelligence insulted thank you very much! I hope that doesn’t show up in the final version of the Pilot.

2. Padding – this episode lacked a bit of padding and with so much happening it really did need a 2nd viewing for me to get the most out of the episode. I hope they address this.

3. Jaime and Jonas in their final scene – what was up with the dialogue!? Very clumsy in parts:

“If we do this, whatever this is, then we do it on my terms”

Ok Jaime, but what if your terms, whatever your terms are, conflict with my terms, whatever my terms are?.. LOL!

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Performance ratings:

I rate all performances ‘relative’ to what they had to do and the impact they made upon me as a viewer. I have also taken into consideration that this was a ‘pre-air’ Pilot:

• Michelle Ryan -    7.5/10 – Good start
• Katee Sackhoff -   9/10 – Awesome!
• Miguel Ferrer -    7.5/10 – The bad-good guy..I like
• Molly Price -         7.5/10 – Suprisingly good
• Will Yun Lee -       7/10 – Will do better, but OK
• Mark Sheppard -  8/10 – WOW.
• Mae Whitman -    7/10 – Did OK

OVERALL EPISODE RATING 7./10

Ryan over at wathcingbionicwoman.com has also given his review of the Pilot (final cut). It’s well worth checking out. Also I will be posting my Episode Notes and Review of the ‘Final Cut’ Pilot soon, so check back!

What creative differences? That’s what I want to know. Should we, the fans, be concerned by his departure?

In a statement, NBC said:

“Glen Morgan has helped create a great template for ‘Bionic Woman’ but has decided to pursue other endeavors now,”

This isn’t exactly much to go on, it’s just the usual stuff people say when they part projects. The thing which worries me is that Glen Morgan gave the show alot of credibility due to his connections with ‘X-Files’ – his presence also gave me piece of mind that the project is in more than safe hands. Whilst it’s good that Eick and Smilovic are still in the hot-seat, i’m left wondering what the conflict was? What aspect of the show did they not see eye to eye on? Afterall, it must be a pretty big disagreement for Morgan to completely leave the show..especially at this stage.

Whilst I trust David Eick’s vision and undoubted enthusiasm for the show, I really do hope it is as ‘Bionic’ as the title suggests, otherwise we could run into problems. This is the sort of thing the show didn’t need..it hasn’t even been fitted with Bionic parts yet!

There is some irony in his departure, as it comes just days after an IGN Interview with Jason Smilovic, in which he commented on the teamwork between the 3 producers..which in retrospect perhaps hinted at Morgan’s departure. See what you think:

IGN TV: How is this division of labor between producers working?Smilovic: David Eick, Glen Morgan and myself are the three executive producers and we’re going to juggle LA and Vancouver and figure it out.IGN TV: Now that’s quite a team. It seems any one of you could run a show, and yet here you have the three of you.Smilovic: We’ve just been figuring it out as the work load develops and things come our way and we see who’s naturally good at handling each various element and we each go from there.

IGN TV: And Glen Morgan came on later?

Smilovic: After the pilot, yes.

IGN TV: Will he be directing a number of episodes?

Smilovic: Glen is not directing right now. We have to break stories and figure it out. We’ve just broken the first twelve and now we have to work on getting all of the scripts executed and work on the outlines. There’s breaking, re-breaking, finding tentpoles and arcs and things of that nature.

Anyway, I guess we have to look to the future, the show is still going on as planned and they’re currently shooting the 5th episode!

Bionic Woman Premieres on September 26, 9/8c on NBC. You can also view the Pilot earlier through Amazon Unbox and Bright House.

In other news, I have just updated the spoilers section with news of TWO more episode titles! Check it out (if you want to know). Credit to Alan P for the tip.

Mark Sheppard

IGN TV: When you cast Mark Sheppard, what was the idea to go with an actor his age and then age him through makeup? Why not cast someone older?

Smilovic: He’s a brilliant actor. You know with Mark that you’re going to get a great performance every time, and with that it’s worth it to go through the process of doing the prosthetics and aging the actor because you know you’re going to get a kickass performance.

IGN TV: Will he be on for the full season?

Smilovic: Yes. You know, it’s funny because I was on set. And they were shooting a scene and somebody brought Mark over and he was in the makeup. I said, “You look great.” And he said, “Well this is what I look like now, but when I start doing it…” And he started to sink into the character, and there was just this eerie feeling pervaded the room – immediately. And I said, “You did it. You’re going to be great.” I knew it right then and there. It was awesome he was able, just by lowering his voice, to change the barometric pressure of the room. It was awesome.

Smilovic obviously isn’t giving much away, but I get the feeling that we could see Bionic’s play a slightly different role in Anthony’s storyline. Afterall in the ‘real world’ we have ‘Bionic skin serum’, which is argued to produce an age reducing appearance..perhaps the Burket Group have not only developed a way to make a person ‘better, faster, stronger’..but also younger/older..?

I’m willing to throw that theory into the hat..i’ll build on it once the show actually starts and I have more to go on.

Joe from I Am A TV Junkie, comments on the ‘dark’ themes of BW:

I have no problem with the dark storyline, it draws me to the thing, in fact. What I have a problem with is how dark the show is; Jaime works in a dance club (dark), the underground lab where they reconstruct her is underground (dark), Jaime and Sarah have their knock-down, drag-out on a roof in the rain at night (also dark), A little contrast would be nice and would serve to punch up the drama of the dark.

I agree with that – the pre-air Pilot episode that I saw was extremely one-tone. Infact the only time I really noticed any daylight was during what seemed to be a continuity error after Jaime strolled back from her face-off with Corvis. I do hope they mix it up a little. I’d actually love them to use ‘Heroes’ style colour/contrast to their scenes, it would make it alot more vivid.

Meanwhile, Daniel, from tvaddict.com did a nice write-up of the Bionic Woman Panel, which included some info on the structure of the episodes:

Smilovic explains that every episode will be self-contained, but naturally there will be a continuous mythology woven throughout the season. Pretty much an on-the-fence answer to ensure everybody tunes in all the time.

A clever answer by Smilovc, though I do hope this is the case because it should make the series more accessible, both to the hardcore fans and casual viewers – and we’ll need those casual viewers if this show is to get a second season.

That’s about it for now – please do visit those links for more Bionic/Comic Con info and let’s hope that Bionic Woman is at next years event.