Tuesday, August 21, 2007





TV WATCH 2007 (4)
Odds & Ends

There were a couple of other new Pilots I also got to see aside from the three I’ve already reviewed (Chuck, Reaper, and Pushing Daisies: see TV Watch 2007 1-3 in Archive: August 2007) that I thought I should at least mention and give some of my reactions to.

Bionic Woman
Coming from Battlestar Galactica producer David Eick, I was hoping this would kick my a$$ something fierce. Sadly though, it doesn’t really get moving in any exciting and significant way.
And though it is nice to see Katee Sackhoff as some other character besides Starbuck (and there’s also a cameo from another BSG alum), there isn’t anything here that we haven’t seen before.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles (SPOILERS)
This Terminator spin-off is marginally better than Bionic Woman, though not by much.
Picking up after the events in T2, this one also doesn’t get very exciting. One of the few commendable things about this Pilot though, is Thomas Dekker, who used to play Zach on Heroes. Even back then, he showed he was an excellent young actor, and that is no different here.
Sadly, Lena Headey’s Sarah Connor just doesn’t register the way Linda Hamilton did in T2. I’m not sure if it’s because Headey’s performance isn’t as powerful as the one she gave in 300, or if Hamilton just really nailed the character’s transformation into shotgun-toting, kicka$$ momma in T2. Maybe it’s a little of both.
And Summer Glau’s teen Terminatrix is passably interesting, but if there isn’t some future romantic subplot between her and John Connor (it’s the ultimate Romeo and Juliet scenario!), the whole emotionless killing machine thing could get old really, really quickly. (And isn’t this just a variation of what she already did on Serenity?)
At the moment, Dekker is far too good for this show, so it better shape up as the season unfolds.

(Bionic Woman images courtesy of nbc, nymag.com, and scifiblog.net; Sarah Connor Chronicles images courtesy of fox, seattlepi.com, starburst, and myweb.tiscali.co.uk.)

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