By Brandon Nolta

So, I’m sitting there watching the second episode of BIONIC WOMAN, and less than five minutes into the show, I’ve already seen the funeral of Will Anthros (Chris Bowers), a grieving Jamie Sommers (Michelle Ryan) discover a huge file on her in Will’s apartment, and Jaime start to engage in rough anonymous sex in a public restroom. The first thing I thought of when Jaime and Steve (yeah, that’s his name) started going at it was Larry Niven’s famous essay on Kryptonian-human sexual issues, “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex,” and sure enough, Steve gets a rib broken in less than a minute. I bet Niven’s still laughing.

Anyway, the private group behind the bionic project, personified by Jonas Bledsoe (Miguel Ferrer), is pushing Jamie to sign up for deep blue hero stuff, but Jamie’s not having any of it. Seeing your boyfriend fatally shot in front of you might make one less than amenable to such projects, especially when the shooter was the first bionic woman (Katee Sackhoff). But, after saving a woman from suicide, Jamie reconsiders and decides to put her awesomeness to good use. To that end, she gets introduced to her new supervisor Antonio (Isaiah Washington), a guy she already met in a bookstore. This ongoing surveillance and deep checking into her life doesn’t tickle her fancy in the slightest, but come on. Here’s a hypothetical: Beat people up with your bionic appendages or tend bar? Please, like that’s even a choice.


While all this is going on, there’s a situation developing in Idaho; some little (fictional) town has been cordoned off by the government in response to what appears to be a biological attack. After a training montage, Jamie convinces Jonas and the team a field test would be a good idea, so she and Jonas’ pet psychologist Ruth (Molly Price) head to the Gem State to investigate.  When they arrive, they find the whole town dead (and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA playing on the tube, FYI). Meanwhile, combat trainer Jae (Will Yun Lee) gets a mysterious summons to meet up with his former love, the loony bionic prototype Sarah. What to do, what to do?

This episode doesn’t feel quite as rushed as last week’s premiere, but there’s still a sense of hurtling through the narrative. We get a little more sense of who Jamie is, and Ms. Ryan does a good job of outlining who Jamie is in those moments where she’s not beating people up of using her super-hearing. Still, it would probably help if the writers weren’t bound and determined to give her a back story beyond her work, which ends up splitting the flow of the episode. Sure, she should have a life outside work, but develop it instead of whipping it at us and seeing if it’ll stick.


Washington and Ferrer are the designated good cop/bad cop pair, and they switch back and forth without missing a beat. And, in a nice touch, Ms. Corvus is given a couple of scenes that suggest she’s not just Jamie’s evil doppelganger, although how that will play out is anyone’s guess. At the speed things are moving, though, it should only take another three or four episodes to find out. Note to Dave Eick et al: Put down the Mountain Dew and just let the episodes breathe. This episode was a step in the right direction; now slow down and tell a story. Let’s see if they take the hint.