I think the show had GREAT potential, but was hampered by poor execution. I mean, the teaser commercials they ran for it looked amazing, but the actual show was pretty boring, and I didn't like the way a lot of interaction between characters went down.

In my mind, "Chuck" is similar, although highly annoying because of the insipid technobabble and other technology faux pas in the show. A government supercomputer that contained everything, yet was never (not once) backed up? "Bugs" that are basically little pieces of PCB with some kind of chip on them, but no power device? Yet, in spite of all that, "Chuck" works where "Bionic Woman" didn't.

Poor execution is right. They could have done so much better and the show was so overly serious that you didn't really care for these people.
They should have lightened up the tone or added a guy named Steve Austin.

Not even Stone Cold could have saved this one (someone had to say it, right?).

My wife loved the show so she is bummed but I did not find it very entertaining after the pilot episode. It will not be missed by me.

Of this vs terminator , this is the one I couldn't wait for, I had seen both early, terminator I didn't care for at all really. This I was looking forward to.. In the end I agree I couldn't care less about this show, I would've contintued to watch it, but I really just didn't care about any of the characters.

Terminator I've done a complete 180 on, I really like it now. After starting out dreading it after watching the pilot. Crazy huh.

The casting killed this show.

Yeah I kinda agree with that starseed. Jamie always looked odd to me for some reason, I can never put my finger on it. Maybe to fat in the face, I don't really know something is just off with her. And yeah I can't name a single other person in the case , even the reject from grey's escapes me now.

There were some pretty well known people on this show.

Miguel Ferrer who played Jaime's boss was on Crossing Jordan for 6 years and has been on alot of movies.

Molly Price who played the bleach blonde psychiatrist was on Third Watch as Faith Yokas. She also had a guest stint on Without a Trace as Poppy Montgomery's sister.

Isaiah Washington who played Antonio was on Grey's and a bunch of other stuff.

The only person who was unknown was Michelle Ryan. I didn't see anything wrong with her, I thought she was very pretty and pulled off the American accent quite well.

I don't think casting was the problem. Most of the haters of this show just didn't like the stories.

Not to fans of East Enders and Jekyll.

This is just my take on it, keep in mind I watched the pilot and maybe 10 minutes of 2 or 3 other episodes.

As was said before, for good or bad, it's not something I can sit down and watch, I have to invest a lot of time in it like Lost to know all the background, etc.

I also see this being a problem:

In the original series (and in many other shows original series) they setup the characters and then sent them out to accomplish their setup. That is:

- Stringfellow Hawk has a great helicopter and a funny co-pilot. Each episode is him accomplishing a "mission" and blowing stuff up with a funny laugh back at the airport with Dom getting the chopper rearmed.

- Knight Rider is great action in a small down, again on a "mission" that has some edge of your seat time, followed by everyone having a drink in the semi or listening to a musician at a local bar to end the show.

- A-team is more solid action every week in "small town america" or "small town congo" with some local big fish oppressing a small pond. They kick some ass, love it when a plan comes together, and then go watch boy george close the show at a local bar.

- Quantum Leap has a "mission" for Sam each episode to complete on a usually shortened timeline and ends by giving the viewer a clue to the large multi-year story arch.

- Bonic Woman...same thing

- Six Million Dollar man...same thing

I could go on...

The difference in all of these is that it took years before they started to "jump the shark" (Hey! There is another example...Happy Days!!) and introduce:

- Stringfellow's dad
- Garthe and Golliath
- Stockwell
- The evil leaper
- Bonic Ever After



In the new Bionic Woman series it was like two episodes and Blammo!! Here is the "evil boinic woman"

They need to stick with at least a little of the formula and once a series is a success and has people hooked, then get weird.

It's the current trend. Every new drama needs a ton of "mysterious" characters with crazy back-stories and muddied alliances introduced on Day One. The more brooding, distant stares you can get from the primary characters, the better!

I've been lamenting this on the forum for years. Television isn't "fun" anymore. We're lucky to get an Invisible Man or Thieves or Chuck every few years, but it's rare. The action-adventure genre has been overtaken by obnoxious brooding shows that are convinced the fate of civilization rests with the fragile emotional states of their vacuous characters. It's maddening. Bionic Woman was a textbook example, and it was obvious from the pilot that it wasn't going anywhere interesting. Chronicles isn't much better.

All these new shows take themselves too fucking seriously. No one loves television more than I do, but truly great epic shows are incredibly rare. The rest of television can best be described by the Evil Kirk from Episode #37: "It's just a TV show, dammit. It's just a TV show!" Lighten up, Francis. I get more enjoyment watching crappy reruns of Matlock than most of the full-of-itself junk in primetime nowadays. Unless you've written the next Babylon 5, stick to basics, stop trying to generate a legion cult with these boring mythologies, and just entertain us (here we are now). Stop turning me into a cranky old man with all these crappy shows!

das

Yea, I agree. I will say though that I am really enjoying the terminator series and think it is setup pretty good. It does link up with the long term story arc a bit more than others, but for the most part they are sticking to the formula. For example:

Ep 1- Escape new terminator, establish new "base" in future, get in school, life, etc
Ep 2- Find new skynet creator, destroy machine
Ep 3- Fine new new skynet, see if it works
Ep 4- Save Reese's brother from cops/terminator
Ep 5- Save Reese's life, destroy terminator body


It's close...closer than the rest I think.


Even with all the backstories that Lost has and the long epic "film" that it is, they still give you the formula. Things like

- Shut down a computer
- Shut down a signal
- Find water/food/transport/people
- Rescue, whomever
- Get supplies/medical supplies/ammo/guns/etc


Each episode adds to the whole arc, but you feel like they have accomplished something rather than everyone just sitting in a circle staring at each other with tons of dialogue and double backs.

I think it's funny that pretty much noone on this forum liked the show and hardly anyone commented on the show threads, but when the show gets canned, people are more than happy to throw their 2 cents and bash the show like crazy.

I'd be more than willing to post my honest opinion of every episode I watch, but in the interest of avoiding arguments, I try not to drop in on weekly threads and point out all the reasons the latest episode of some going-nowhere show sucked. It just annoys the people who are enjoying the show, and invariably someone starts liberally painting with the "hater" term while crying, "If you don't like it, don't watch/post about it!" Those conversations go nowhere, so I don't bother anymore.

das

I thought it had an interesting premise. I wasn't a fan of the original, so it wouldn't have mattered that much to me to have a few more nods to the old series, but I had other problems with it.

I like my shows to either have an overarching, consistent continuity about them, or, if there are going to be mostly standalone episodes, to have a fun cast of characters. This had neither. They sort of had this setup for a big bad guy in the first episode or so, but then they either hit the reset button a few times or just didn't follow up on the stories very well. The parent organization didn't really feel like some kick-butt secret government operation, they seemed mostly ineffective and/or incompetent. It seemed like anyone could walk into their base at any time of the day, that they didn't have a ton of manpower or agents, and they were stuck with jobs like babysitting.

I couldn't help but compare this to Alias, and it fell very short of that.

After watching the pilot, I was done with it. No more bad (IMO) rehash of good old TV shows.

I didn't mean they didn't have known actors, I meant they parts on the show aren't known to me, as in I can't name a single damn persons character on the show, cept Jamie , cept that's cheating who doesn't know Jamie summers is the bionic woman. But I can't even name her sister, her boss, the grey's dude, no one. I didn't care at all about these people and I've seen every single episode of the show.

I agree about the formula for the show too, they were way to all over the damn place story wise. And for damn sure like pointed out, this is no Alias , that show I loved(first 3 years anyway).

So terminator time I guess, which is the only real reason I even posted, what a shock it was I cared more about that show than this, when after pilots for both it was the other way around.

The show probably would have lasted longer if they had focused more on her bionic boobs.

You bring up a very good point that I wish would permeate into all the threads in the TV forum (especially Heroes!).

It is fine if you're a fan of the show but have criticism with the direction it is taking. Post away. But if all you're going to say is "This show sucks" then the posting is nothing more than a thread crap. It doesn't spawn discussion nor constructively criticize how the show is going astray from what made someone a fan in the first place.

A good example of criticism of shows appears -of all places- in the Smallville threads. People are eager to see certain things happen and bemoan when certain relationships continue. Since I caught up with that show and can post into the weakly threads, I have yet to see a "This show sucks" post. Maybe the fans have just simply dwindled so much that only us die-hards are posting anymore.

Sweet fancy Moses!

It's taken a lot of discipline to keep out of those threads this season. I didn't think too highly of it the first season, so you can imagine what I think now.

That seems very likely.

das

I watched a few episodes but it just didn't grab me. Jamie was a boring character, Sarah was an interesting character but there wasn't enough of her. If I was doing the series I'd have made Jamie the main character but use Katee Sackhoff and the Sarah characters messed up backstory, then have Sarah Corvis be the second Bionic woman and be the way they wrote the Jamie character but make her a secondary character.

I want das' honest opinion on the new Knight Rider! The love-fest for that show in it's thread here has really thrown me for a loop.

I always thought she could have used a sports bra when doing the bionic run.