(1) No chemistry between ANY of the regular cast. Michelle Ryan and Chris Bowers are very wooden together — if anything, they make the Star Wars prequel pair of Anakin and Padme look like torrid lovers! None of the others rose above the level of cardboard (barring two…I’ll mention them shortly), and no one made me want to care one iota about their situation in life. Core characters need to be engaging from episode one…and Bionic Woman fails on this count.
(2) The script is terrible. The entire first act is the stiffest piece of set-up-and-exposition I’ve seen since the horrific early days of Star Trek Voyager. In the span of one hour, it tries really really really hard to convince the audience that a young woman’s transformation from bartender to government super-agent is somehow epic and captivating. In reality, it’s a mess of cliches and dull dialogue…with, once again, a single exception.
Bionic Woman only succeeds in three small ways. The first is Molly Price, who plays the government psychiatrist, Ruth. She’s sensitive, brooding, troubled, practical, willing to stick her neck out…she’s the only character in the main cast that seemed three-dimensional. She is certainly the only one with any sort of presence worth investigating.
The second is Katee Sackhoff, kicking ass as evil/gone rogue Bionic Woman 1.0 — she gets all the best dialgoue (the remark about wanting a jogging partner is hilarious), and acts everyone else off the screen! Having watched her over three astonishing seasons of Galactica, no one should be surprised by her episode-stealing performance.
Finally, the episode looked great: moody colour palate, hyper-kinetic direction, and a climactic fight between the two bionic women that looks like a mini-Hong Kong action flick.
But it’s not enough. One decent character isn’t enough…one decent villian, who only pops up occasionally, isn’t enough…and dressing up cardboard in silk stalkings doesn’t hide the fact that it’s still cardboard.
Looks like I’m heading over to YouTube for that classic bionic fix to cleanse my taste buds…
