Thursday, October 04, 2007

How Michelle Ryan approaches her craft

About 20 minutes into last night's Bionic Woman, it became obvious. Everyone in this show has an intriguing back story except the title character. Jaime's life is unusual but not unpredictable -- part My Sister Sam, part Cosmo magazine article -- and even though she seems OK with drug use by minors on school premises, she's presented as the moral compass of the show. Did that bother you? I had to chart it all out using Grant McCracken's TV Table. The results were mixed.

One more observation: Michelle Ryan has evidently decided that any dialogue-heavy walking scene can be punched up with jiggling. I'm not saying that doesn't make her a genius.

ADDED: According to TVWeek, this latest episode was "a creative disaster—cliché-packed dialogue, a nonsensical villain, one-note characters" and the show lost 30% of its first-week audience. Bright side? Zap2it wants to like it. But their Ryan McGee is wrong; "a feminist tract" is exactly what the show should avoid.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So basically, every episode will be a bionic chick fightfest? Whatever happened to simply using one’s bionic powers to rescue puppies from burning buildings.

Just checking.

Irene Done said...

Cute doggies -- that's about the only thing that would get me to watch this show again. Lindsay Wagner's mattress commercials are more entertaining.

Jason Fox said...

Wow, a My Sister Sam reference? Well played, Irene. Well played.