An Open Letter to the Producers of the new Bionic Woman

Dear Producers,

I really want to like Bionic Woman. Really, I do. Michelle Ryan is a dish, Miguel Ferrer is a great actor, and I'm a fan of Battlestar Galactica. But like Katee Sackhoff says in your pilot episode, "You're going to have to do better than that." Because as it is now, your show kind of sucks.

You're combining the worst of Alias with the worst of Heroes: clunky storylines, bad dialog and character development, and villains who are more interesting than the good guys. Not to mention logical inconsistencies that make even well-wishing viewers wince. I picked your show as my much-watch for this season. Please don't be like my 2006-7 pick.

You didn't ask for it, but here's my advice:

• Get the sister involved. Having her not know about Jamie's secret life is amazingly implausible, since she is a high school student who lives with her. By themselves. She should be like Xander and Willow on Buffy: non-super friends who help out.
• Get real supervillians. You shouldn't be an undercover show foiling nameless terrorists. BW is a superhero show and you've already got an awesome supervillain in the Sackhoff character. You need more. May I suggest Sackhoff is putting together other messed-up bionic people? Building them herself, perhaps? Someone is doing her additional bionics.
• Make the organization Jamie works for much more ambiguous. It will make the show much richer as their values clash with Jamie's. I shouldn't have to tell the people who wrote BSG this.
• Speaking of which, Jamie needs some character. Any character. She is painfully bland right now, for a bartender who was supposed to go to Harvard (huh?). She should be more interesting than just the fact she has bionic parts in her.
• Make the super powers, well, super. This early in the show, plots should be exploring the limits of Jamie's bionic powers, what she can and cannot do. Can she be upgraded?
• And speaking of that, there are a crazy amount of cyborg themes that are not being explored here. Incorporate more cyberpunk elements. What does it mean to be a woman who is half machine? Can she be hacked? Can she jack into a network? You've turned a woman into a device, a weapon. You can't not explore this.
• Make the bionic parts vulnerable. They are machine parts. They break, need repairs, etc. She's not super woman.

And those are just off the top of my head. Please turn this bionic ship around. There's some real promise in this premise, if you'll only realize it.

Thanks for listening,

Dan

Originally posted at Wednesday, October 10, 2007 | Comments (3) | Trackback (0)