Bionic Woman: pilot episode recap

Part 2 of the recap

by Frank Pittarese

Continued from part 1 of the recap.

Jamie refuses to let the nurse take her to rehab because she's being kept prisoner. "You rehabilitate yourself," she says. The nurse retorts with "I'm rubber, you're glue, anything you say..." Again, I jest. Miguel Ferrer watches Jamie through a two-way mirror, like a big pervo, but she walks right up to the glass and says, "Boo." No flies on Jamie.

Jamie sits in an interrogation-type room, sketching in a pad, when Yokus enters and introduces herself as Ruth. Yokus wants to talk about Jamie's feelings. I want to talk about when this show will be interesting. Jamie is resistant to discussing her feelings. I suspect she has none. Yokus tells Jamie that Becca is staying with Jamie's landlady (?!) and thinks that Jamie is skiing in Vail. Jamie just had major fictional surgery...how long has she been "skiing"? Yokus says that's the contingency plan, should Jamie go home. There's also one in case she doesn't go home, which likely involves a steep slope and an unmovable tree. Jamie decides not to play the role of Sonny Bono.

Miguel Ferrer and Will talk about Miguel Ferrer's wife, who died after a long illness. Miguel Ferrer is like, "My wife was sick and I didn't make her bionic!" He's a noble creep. Then he wants to know when Jamie will be combat ready. Will argues that she's a civilian, then huffs off when Miguel Ferrer asks when the rest of Jamie's implants will come on line.

Yokus shows Asian Dude the picture Jamie drew. It's a sketch of Starbuck. Shocker! Yokus wants to know if Asian Dude actually saw Starbuck's dead body. He shot her in the head. Shouldn't that be enough?

All of a sudden, the security alarms go off. Miguel Ferrer finds Jamie's room empty, and we find Jamie and Will, making a hasty escape through the tunnels of Sinister Robotics. Will tells Jamie to go back to her life and he'll "work it out" on this end. Jamie actually asks, "Why should I trust you?" Because he saved you from living life as a stump! God!!

Jamie runs out of the tunnel and into the woods, at a normal pace. When a helicopter starts chasing her, Jamie takes off bionically. To you newbies, that means really freakin' fast. She's so fast, in fact, that she appears to turn into a CGI person for a few seconds. Remarkable. A little girl sees Jamie run past. Her mom doesn't care and neither do I.

At Sinister Robotics, Will gets in trouble for letting the cranky lab rat escape. He promises Miguel Ferrer that he'll set things right, and Yokus chimes in that letting Jamie go isn't a bad idea. That's not what she said five minutes ago, when she was all "Contingency Plan of Death." Yokus argues that freedom, or the illusion of it, will buy Jamie's loyalty. Free limbs didn't buy Jamie's gratitude. Freedom won't buy you lunch.

Miguel Ferrer agrees to go along with the whole freedom thing, then tells Asian Dude that Jamie's "accident" was on purpose. The truck driver's neck was snapped before the crash. Thank you, Mr. CSI. He tells Asian Dude to find out who did it, not knowing, of course, that Asian Dude already has L'il Jamie's Crayola art stuck to his refrigerator door.

Jamie returns home while the soundtrack plays some emo chick song. She won't pick up the phone when Will calls, instead opting to sit in the bathtub and cry over the fact that she can walk, see, hear, and scratch her ass with both hands. I hate Jamie Sommers.

She looks at her boobies in the mirror, as one does, then goes up on the roof. I suppose fetching her sister from the landlady is not a priority for this one. Instead she takes a flying leap off the roof, just like Tobey McGuire did in Spider-Man, but with a lot less charm. Underestimating her jump, Jamie manages to just catch the edge of the roof across the street with her bionic hand.

When Jamie returns to her apartment, Becca is there, all grumpy. Jamie apologizes for her fake skiing holiday, because an honest "I was in a car accident, lost some body parts, had them restored and enhanced overnight, if you can believe the nerve, and escaped captivity at superspeed" might result in the character of Becca not being such a hateful bitch. Jamie perpetuates the lie to keep Becca annoying, see, so it's for our benefit. Becca? Knows Jamie doesn't ski. Ha!

Meanwhile, Starbuck goes back to Stich's broke down apartment. He's not there, but took the time to leave her a note reading. "YOU FAILED ME," it says. This note is written on the wall, not on paper. This, in the industry, is what's known as "dramatic effect."

As for Stitch, he's gone to the town of Sub-Plot to meet with a guy in a bar. They have some vague Bondian exchange about forest rangers, then Stitch harrasses the guy about knowing how he worked in an underground prison in Florence. He threatens to have the guy's wife killed unless the guy, Bobby, does what Stitch says. To prove this, he puts the wife on the phone, and she's like, "Bobby do what Stitch says!"

At the Blackwell Super-Max Prison in Florence, CA, Asian Dude visits a prisoner. Asian Dude wants to know how the prisoner "did it." The prisoner, the biggest Hannibal Lecter wannabe in history, throws back some obtuse philosophy at Asian Dude. Asian Dude is all, "Shut up, bitch. Starbuck is still alive. She's a time bomb."

"Time bombs only matter to those who have time," Hannibal says. Also, why do people drive on a parkway and park in a driveway? He sends his regards to Will. "Tell him daddy says hello." Oh, so that's the deal with Will's father. He doesn't have a stuttering problem after all.

Meanwhile, Jamie is back to bartendering when Starbuck approaches. Starbuck is all "lez be friends," if you know what I mean. At least that's the vibe I'm getting, which would be great and would make this show far more interesting than it actually is. Jamie gives Starbuck a beer on the house, just like that. Hmm...it's nice of Jamie to bi that for her. Starbuck drinks from the bottle like it's a penis, as Jamie plays the "don't I know you from somewhere" game. She gets so flustered that she cuts her non-bionic finger.

Next thing you know, Jamie gets stupefied and goes into a trance. Her bionic eye goes on line, giving her Terminator-vision. Her ear starts working, too, except this actress doesn't give any indicators like Lindsay Wagner used to awesomely do by brushing back her hair. Instead, less awesomely, this Jamie runs to the bathroom and pukes.

Starbuck follows and "comforts" Jamie, stroking her hair and telling her to breathe. I feel like I'm watching Basic Instinct until Starbuck is like the "ear implants" this and "the eye implants" that. She notices that Jamie's finger has healed.

Jamie wants to know who Starbuck is. She's Starbuck! Jesus, Battlestar Galactica has been on for three fucking seasons. Starbuck wants to know who Jamie is. Uh...she's the person that you magically tracked down to this bar. Then, blinkety-blink, Starbuck vanishes. Jamie finds her out in the bar, though, by using her bionic head. "Jamie," Starbuck whispers from across the dance floor, "Tell them (Starbuck) says hello."

Jamie rushes into the alleyway to find Starbuck, but instead she finds a knife-wielding rapist. She disarms, then beats the crap out of him, which makes him cry. A 28 Days Later theme ripoff plays on the soundtrack as Jamie runs away--at normal speed, because bionic running costs money.

All put out, she shows up at Will's door, wanting to know what he put in her head. An eye and an ear, you dim-shit. Will secret-origins about how his father developed this technology for amputees in the Gulf War, and Will put microscopic chips in Jamie's cerebral cortex, which I believe is in the brain area of the skull. "You're hard-wired to be a solider," he explains, and Jamie is like "Wha?!?!?"

Will wants to protect Jamie. She asks, "How can you protect me if you're scared of me?" Okay, first, we never saw Will be afraid of Jamie, and second, she threw him across the room, so fair play to him, regardless. By the way, it can't be more than a week since the accident, and Will's arm is no longer in a cast. I'm just saying.

Jamie and Will hug. Then they go to bed. He ain't too scared to shag. Jamie seems impressed that he's willing to touch her bionic parts--which look completely normal. Gah! This girl! Meanwhile and presumably, Becca is at home, wildly logging onto and off of the internet via a phone modem while setting the apartment on fire, because Jamie as a custodial guardian? Not very attentive.

Post-screw, Jamie is like, "I can't keep leaving Becca like this." Ya think? Will dresses and explains that Sinister Robotics is just trying to keep technology out of the wrong hands. By creating bionic people? Huh?

"What about (Starbuck)?" Jamie asks. Will is taken aback by the question. Then he's taken aback further by a bullet that flies through the window and slams into his shoulder. Jamie bionic-eyes Starbuck playing sniper, many rooftops away. Starbuck takes another shot, but Jamie gets herself and Will, who isn't dead but is apologizing, out of the way.

Asian Dude has been watching all this from his car, outside of Will's building, and gets out to investigate the hullaballoo. By the time he gets to Will's apartment, Jamie is gone. I hope she called an ambulance first because Will is still on the floor. Meanwhile, Starbuck spots Asian Dude through her sniper-scope and opts not to kill him. Aw, love.

In the pouring rain, Jamie bionically runs to Sniper Tower and catches up to Starbuck after bionically leaping across a rooftop and landing on her ass. Starbuck throws a pipe at Jamie, which she deflects, and then takes the time to light a cigarette. Starbuck explains that the anthrocytes filter the impurities from her lungs, then answers crazy when Jamie wants to know what the hell Starbuck wants from her. "Jogging partner?" Starbuck ponders.

Then in the only worthwhile acting moment of the whole episode, which is enough to make me wonder why Katee Sackhoff wasn't cast as Jamie for starters, she deadpans, "I'm (Starbuck). The first bionic woman. Ta-da."

Starbuck tells Jamie that she got both arms, both legs, and one eye. They weren't sure about "the optical interface," so Starbuck did the other eye herself. That's pretty hardcore. She also did part of her chest. And possibly her vagina. "I'm cutting away all the parts of me that are weak," she explains. And then she attacks Jamie.

Bionic fight. Starbuck hits Jamie. Jamie hits Starbuck. Kick, punch, fast, fast, slap, punch. Starbuck strangles Jamie, and realizes that she only has one bionic arm. (And no bionic personality.) More punching. Starbuck almost breaks Jamie's back, then throws her far and wide. Jamie screams like a girl. Jamie hangs over the edge of the building by clinging to a piece of chain link fence. You know, those chain link fences that you always see on city rooftops. 28 Days Later music. Kick, swing, punch, punch, punch. Jamie decks Starbuck, then throws her into a skylight.

When a helicopter shows up, shining a spotlight down on these two delicate flowers, Starbuck bionically heads for the hills. Jamie no can find.

It's near dawn when Miguel Ferrer pulls up to Will's building. Will is being put into an ambulance, miraculously having not bled out since being shot forever ago. Yokus and Asian Dude are chilling out by the ambulance. Will was only shot, it's not like there's any urgency here.

Jamie comes striding up just as the ambulance pulls away. Does she give chase? Does she ask about Will? No. She asks Miguel Ferrer who he is. I think Jamie is slightly retarded. Or she's just a self-involved clod.

Miguel Ferrer explains that since there's fifty million dollars of his property in Jamie's body, "I guess you can say I'm your landlord."

"What do you want from me?" she asks.

"I don't know, maybe you died three days ago and you just haven't realized it yet." The accident was three days ago? Three days?!?

He welcomes Jamie "to the game," and Jamie says that whatever that means, she'll do it on her terms. It's the same ending as the first episode of Chuck. NBC is having a theme week. Jamie says that if it's not okay with Miguel Ferrer, he can send whoever after her. "I'll bury one guy after the next." She strides off. Will who? Shot when? Whatever.

Back home, Becca is asleep and nothing is on fire. Apparently, she's not the holy terror Jamie makes her out to be. Hopefully, though, there were some scraps in the refrigerator, because if Becca waits for jamie to feed her, she'll starve.

Meanwhile, in the snowy mountains of Sonora Pass, CA, we catch up with Will's Dad and Stitch. Will's Dad looks up at the moon, which he hasn't seen in one thousand and twenty-three days. It's just the moon. Seen it once... Stitch actually says, "It's just the moon. It hasn't changed." Good for Stitch. They walk ominously in some vague direction.

And we close on a random close-up of Jamie in bed, eyes open and no doubt lusting for those bygone days when she was burnt up and limbless. Damn that stupid Will and his charitable bionics!