I'm only about 35 minutes into it (not a very high priority ), but my first impressions are mixed. It seems to not be taking itself seriously, which is great because it's a show about a talking car afterall. But there's zero chemistry with KITT, and the MTV editing is damn annoying. I'll get around to finishing it sooner or later.

das

or her bionic ass?

Wow.

My problem with Bionic Woman is that they blew their load in the pilot. They crammed in practically half of a season's worth of plot and character "development" in the very first episode. Everything happened too fast. Jamie should have spent the first half of the season slowly learning about and adjusting to her new abilities. She should have thought she was the first and only Bionic Woman. They should have held off on the Sarah Corvis reveal until later in the season. Make that a shocking twist that there is this other, failed Bionic Woman out there. Make her the Big Bad for the season. Build up to a big showdown between them in the season finale.

That would have a good show.

I agree. And this is sort of how Smallville as well as the original Bionic Woman worked to a degree. The idea of instantly making her a superbad agent was silly. I guess they expected their viewing audience to remember the original (which BTW initially aired over THIRTY YEARS AGO) and quickly slog through the exposition and onto real espionage. (Which again, Clark harnessing his abilities went a LONG way on Smallville and who DOESN'T know what Superman's powers/weaknesses/backstory are?!) Heck the original series was handled much better and only lasted 3 seasons.

Just wrong from the get go. Bad showrunners, BAD!

I blame the cancelation of Bionic Woman on the serious lack of Bigfoot and Fembots.

When Jamie awoke from surgery and already exhibited years of anguish from her torturous life as a half-human freak, I knew this show was doomed. What you've described is essentially the Buffy storytelling style, and there's a reason that show ran 7 seasons. Care to make a career change to producing, Jadzia?

das

Agreed, either of these would have been must see TV.

That's actually a really good point. They crammed in way too much story in only 40+ minutes of TV in the pilot. After watching the pre-air pilot and the final cut, I thought the pilot had many plot holes. Plus, when I read that Glen Morgan, the 1st showrunner, quit after only a few episodes and they had to bring in Jason Katims from Friday Night Lights to clean up the mess, that already signaled doom for the show.

Reminds me of Commander in Chief, great start...and fizzle out at the end.

$6M per episode!! Blowing up to $48M for only 8 episodes is really bad budgeting on the studio and networks part. The show should not have cost that much, especially since it was filmed in Canada.

I feel ready bad for Michelle Ryan. Basically it sounds like everyone is making her the scapegoat for the show's failure and it wasn't her fault. I hope she can bounce back from this and maybe get a supporting role in another American film or TV series and get her confidence back.

Guest appearances on The 60 Million Dollar Man?

It's not fair to make her the escape goat. Like many others, she just isn't a strong enough actress to make lousy writing look somewhat decent.

Definitely not her fault. I mean, sure, I didn't think she was particularly good as Jamie, but the writing was so poor that it's really unfair to criticize her performance. There were a lot of people in Bionic Woman with proven acting chops who came across very underwhelming.

$6 million per episode is insane. This new Star Wars Prequel approach to recent television is troubling. Good writing and character development will always triumph over expensive special effects. If you can have both, great, but if you can only have one, it's a hell of a lot cheaper and far more rewarding to get some solid writers and tell an interesting story. And if you miscalculate, and the show bombs, at least you haven't flushed away a shitload of money. Seriously, $6 million?!? Geez.

das

No kidding - what did the average Buffy/Angel episode cost? You don't hear anyone bitching about low-budget effects for those shows - all people remember are the great characters and stories that still hold up.