Bionic Woman, episodes 2-4

Dude, I'm tired of hearing about how much my body is costing you

After four episodes, I'm still liking The Bionic Woman.

I posted separately about the first episode, which they creatively named "Pilot". Their Web site has some good stuff, not least of which is that complete episodes are available for viewing. NBC is catching up with Web 2.0. Slowly.

One thing I don't understand is their numbering system. Episode 1 is officially called "Episode 101: Season 1". I guess it's like university class numbering. Anyway, so episodes 2-4 are technically Episodes 103-105: Season 1. What happened to Episodes 102? Beats the heck out of me.

And I really don't understand their choice of photos. One of the most attractive things about the show is that the camera shots are very interesting. Lots of close-ups, moody settings, reminds me a lot of Alias, which I'm sure was part of the inspiration for this series. But you get no sense of that from the stills they have at the Web site. Boggles my mind.

Okay, here goes, my own episode summaries. The Web site has more detailed text summaries, though the inferior photo shots with them make them kind of painful to read.

Episode 2 (aka, 103): Paradise Lost

Jamie decides to join up with the Secret Scientists Cult headed by Jonas Bledsoe (Miguel Ferrer) to try what she calls "this whole save the world thing". She gets a supervisor, Antonio, and starts a bantering relationship with her tech-support guy, Nathan. Geeky tech guys were also supporting characters in Alias and La Femme Nikita. Only Jaime's tech guy has to tinker with her bionics. (The cult's official name, by the way, is the Berkut Group.)

Jamie does some philosophical reading: this is the only still I've seen at the official Web site (Fair Use, etc.) that's not completely stiff; I don't get it, the show has great shots and they use these stiffly posed photos at the Web site (photo: NBC)

The main plot here is Jaime's first mission, which involves going with Ruth from the cult to a town where everybody has been killed, except for one woman with some kind of freak immune system, by a biological weapons attack, apparently engineered by some rogue military unit. Which the scientists' cult breaks up.

In the longer plot line, Dr. Will is now dead and buried. Or so we're supposed to think. I'm pretty dubious; that bullet wound that migrated from Dr. Will's right shoulder to the left in Episode 1 has me pretty suspicious about that. Then Jaime discovers that Dr. Will had been keeping a file on her for at least two years before they met. Another mystery thread.

Jae hooks up with Bionic Sarah and after a little foreplay with Jae's pistol, they make whoopee on the floor. Jae and Bionic Sarah are in love. Or at least he's in love with her.

In character development, there's a great scene near the first, where Jaime has just discovered Dr. Will's file on her, and she goes to a bar to drink away her sorrows. She tells the bartender, "Here's the thing, you never really know anybody. You think you know them. You think you want to marry 'em and spend the rest of your life with them. And then they turn out to be a creep with a weird dossier on you." Then she picks up a stranger and, perhaps inspired by Sen. Larry Craig's adventures, takes him in the bathroom to do some heavy making out. Unfortunately, she cracks his rib with her bionic arm before they can start disrobing. Then Jonas shows up to scold her.

Another good line comes when Ruth calls Jonas to say they need more help in the bio-attacked town. Jonas says he'll send in a team. Ruth: "I thought we didn't have anybody." Jonas: "I'll rent some guys. I'll call Halliburton."

Another nice touch is that Jamie drops by a bookstore and busy a copy of What Color Is Your Parachute? 2008. Reading this helps her decide to take her career-change job with the Scientists Cult. The author of that book is Richard Nelson Bolles who is an Episcopal minister in his late 70s. The 2008 edition has an essay by him on finding one's Mission. It includes ideas which go a bit outside the conventional Christian box, such as souls signing up for a mission before they get sent into the world. He writes, "Our searching for our Mission now is therefore a searching to recover the memory of something we ourselves had a part in designing." Memory and discovering secrets from the past and defining the Mission are big themes in The Bionic Woman.

Little sister Becca may have more secrets than just the 18-year-old boyfriends

The dynamic with Jaime and her sister Becca is also central to the characterizations. Jaime is a single mother (for her sister) and this gives us not only a way to engage with her personality, but it also grounds the character (who can leap tall walls with a single bound, etc.). Lucy Hale is quite good as the bratty but needy 15-year-old sister.

Episode 3/104: Sisterhood

This episode is really about developing the complicated, contradictory relationship between Jaime and Bionic Sarah. There's a heavy parallel between Jaime's relationship to Becca and the Bionic Sisterhood with Jaime and Bionic Sarah. It turns out that Sarah is tormented because she was driving the car the night her sister was killed, in an accident that in Bionic Sarah's flashbacks looks an awful lot like the one Bionic Sarah caused for Jaime and Dr. Will.

Jaime's assignment from the Cult is to guard another "little sister", Heaven Von Fleet, the nasty, spoiled daughter of a Canadian war profiteer. When Jonas gives her the assignment, Jaime says, "Canada, do they even have an army?" Jonas: "Of course they do, they're a country."

We learn that there is apparently a telepathic connection (or bionic Bluetooth or something) between Jaime and Bionic Sarah. Bionic Sarah also shows her how to turn her internal GPS and video on and off. "Focus and visualize," Bionic Sarah instructs her. "That's sounds awfully New Agey," a skeptical Jaime replies. But it works.

Bionic Sarah is working in this episode with Old Man Anthos. She thinks she going to die within a year unless she gets some upgrades. Old Man Anthros says that if he can examine Jaime, he can save Bionic Sarah. Old Man Anthros is presumably still working with Eurothug, but he hasn't reappeared since arranging for Old Man Anthros to be sprung from the dungeon in episode 1.

The climax comes when Bionic Sarah shows up in Jaime's apartment, drugs Becca and threatens to kill her. Old Man Anthros put the idea in her head, something about if Jaime felt the pain that she had felt on losing her sister she might cooperate. (All those years in the dungeon 1,000 ft. below ground may have left Old Man Anthros a little rusty on his psychology.)

Jaime talks her down. But this episode establishes that Jaime has a love-hate, trust/distrust relationship with Bionic Sarah.

In a brief scene that turns out to be a hint of a revelation in the next episode, Becca shows Jaime a picture of their great-grandmother, who was told at 25 (a year older than Jaime, Becca reminds us), that she was dying from some genetic condition. But she actually lived until 92.

Episode 4/105: Faceoff

Speaking of trust, that's the underlying theme of this episode. How much can Jaime trust Antonio? How much can she trust Becca? Jaime starts off the episode by surprising Becca making out in the back seat of a car with an 18-year-old guy. how much can Becca trust Jaime? Becca finds out that Jaime lied to her about one of her absences.

Señor Terrorist, do you have any idea what happens to guys who try to chop the Bionic Woman's head off?

Jaime would have liked to tell Becca that she had been down in Paraguay going bionic on some Islamic terrorists who had kidnapped an American who was working with the CIA and also deciphering a flash drive Dr. Will had given him having a bunch of bionic secrets on it. Also that she would up beating her supervisor Antonio unconscious because they had a disagreement about murdering the hostage they just rescued, whose name is Mark Stevens. Also that Mark Stevens told her she only had five years to live, but that the information on the flash drive could help save her, only she gave the flash drive to Stevens while she was bashing Antonio around and Stevens skeedaddled with it. Bummer.

But I guess she wants to get Becca to be a bit more savvy about her boyfriends before she breaks the news that big sister is a cyborg.

Quote of the evening, Jaime to Jonas as he grumbles for the upteenth time about how much of his hardware is in her body, "You know, I find your whole proprietary attitude about my body to be deeply inappropriate."

Web site: The Bionic Woman NBC

Tags: bionic woman, richard nelson bolles