This series has gotten a bit of hype in SFX in the last months, so I’d thought I’d give it a go. And the pilot looked good. Here’s what I thought of it.

Jaime Sommers is a college drop-out, who’s working in a bar and dating Will Anthros, a surgeon-professor-guy-thing. One night after a date, the car they’re driving gets rammed by a truck. Will survives without any major injuries, but Jaime loses both her legs and an arm. However, because Will is mixed up with some government agency, he is able to rebuild her as a Bionic Woman.

The government agency wants to recruit her to do their dirty business, as their previous attempts have all ended in failures. But Jaime is reluctant, and manages to escape. The agency head honco allows her to roam free for a while, believing that the illusion of freedom might create some kind of loyalty to them in her. The rest of the pilot was predominantly concerned with laying out the setting, and portraying Jaime’s reaction to her change, as well as the changes themselves.

The Bionic Woman pilot was kinda like the Journeyman one, although I thought the BW one was slightly better. They both dealt with the radical changes in the main characters’ lives, and in relation to this defined the premise, and they both did it kinda well. My tastes lead me to have greater expectations to BW, though, as it reminded me a bit of Nikita, a show I loved when I was a kid, and because its premise had so much more promise than Journeyman’s. BW promised action and thrills, Journeyman promised personal conflicts and involuntary filanthropy. There were hints at more in both shows, of course, but this was basically what they promised.

I’ve already mentioned that BW reminded me a bit of Nikita; another show it made me think of, is Heroes. It kinda had that same dirty, realistic (bordering on naturalistic) look, and they both portray ordinary people who suddenly find themselves in extraordinary situations. Granted, me thinking the former, might be a consequence of the relatively bad picture quality of the pilot version I watched, but still. There was something to it.

Anyway, as with my “impression report” on Journeyman, it’s way too early to say anything more specific on the shows, but both these pilots made me want to see more. So I suppose they’ve served their purpose, at least as far as I’m concerned.