“Bionic Woman”
Bionic Woman has been remade. I actually found out about this because I have a TiVo wishlist for “Bionic Woman”, hoping to catch reruns of the 1976 Lindsay Wagner version. It’s filled the Alias void in my life.
I called Alias a “guilty pleasure”, but that was rhetoric. The new Bionic Woman is profoundly a guilty pleasure. Isaiah Washington, whom I used to have unlimited respect for following his performance on H:LOTS is in the cast, after being fired for confrontational bigotry (which I do not sanction) from Jenn’s favorite show. I told myself I wouldn’t watch his next show. But here I am. Guilty.
And Michelle Ryan, the title character? She is no Lindsay Wagner, who is smoldering even now, thirty years later. She’s not even Jennifer Garner. And they apparently can’t afford a good makeup artist. In one episode, one sees a “file photo” of her, which appears for all the world to be her casting headshot. So she can obviously be pretty, even strikingly so, especially windblown, but they just have not figured out how to do it on the show yet. She is pasty. And, she can’t really act. You can’t really jump from EastEnders to being an action lead, I guess. Her American accent is good, and not offensive, but her Middlesex accent (which they let her use on the show once) is hot.
That said, it must truly suck to be upstaged by your “fifteen-year-old sister”, who can act and is ravishing (and is, bless me, 18 in real life.) The supporting cast are great, too: Miguel Ferrer is always a fave, and the “the award goes to” Katee Sackhoff is really what makes the show watchable. That, and the choreography.
Am I recommending the show? Not really. It pretty much sucks. But I like it, and it’s one of two shows I’m watching right now. I don’t know how long it will last, and what will happen when Sackhoff’s other filming obligations kick in. But in the meantime: Girl Power!
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October 30th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Isaiah Washington was in one episode of Homicide. I’ll admit, it was a fantastic episode (first episode I ever saw, as a matter of fact, and it got me hooked), arguably as good as Three Men and Adena Watson, but it was more Andre’s vehicle than it was his, so it’s hard to say exactly how good he might or might not be based on that single performance.
Am I the only one who gets an automatic mental disconnect every time they mention the name of his character on Homicide. Lane Staley sounds an awful lot like “Layne Staley. Every time they talk about him, I expect an eighty-pound white guy with sunglasses and track-marked arms to pop up.
October 30th, 2007 at 11:51 am
There was a whole run of characters on Season 1 that were named after grunge stars. There was a Chris Novaselic, and, um, I forget the others.
October 30th, 2007 at 11:55 am
That was also the first episode I ever saw…
Josh, were you showing that to your friends to get them to watch Homicide? Or did the three of us watch it together? Or was it FATE?
October 30th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
No, the first time I saw it, I was at home. I spent most of those days grounded, as you might recall.
November 7th, 2007 at 12:26 am
A Jerry Cantrell?
November 11th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
This week’s episode, predictably, sucked. I can’t wait for next week.