Bionic Woman

A remake of the popular 1970s fantasy/adventure series of the same name, NBC's Bionic Woman starred Michelle Ryan as Jaime Sommers, the character originally played by Lindsay Wagner. In the earlier series, Jaime was a professional athlete; in the new version, she was a bartender and soon-to-be unwed mother. No matter: In both instances, Jaime was involved in a terrible accident which required emergency surgery--and a complete electronic overhaul. At the behest of her boyfriend Dr. Anthros (Chris Bowers), the first of several characters created for the remake, Jaime was rushed to a secret research lab, where she was outfitted with a pair of bionic legs and a bionic right arm, both of which provided super-strength and the ability to run in slow motion (representing extraordinary speed). She also was endowed with super-hearing skills--and, in an improvement over the original series, a new bionic eye (needless to say, the bill for all this retooling was considerably higher than the six-million-dollar price tag in the earlier show). Whereas the 1970s edition of Bionic Woman was, for all its gimmickry, a fairly straightforward action-adventure offering, the remake bore the heavy influence of 24 and Lost, accommodating a plethora of mysterious conspiracies and sinister secrets which weaved their way through the proceedings, with bits and pieces of vital information revealed on a "need-to-know" basis. There was also a soupcon of the Spiderman movie formula, with a dash of Smallville folded in, as Jamie slowly, awkwardly and sometimes painfully adjusted to her new and awesome powers, and to the responsiblities and consequences attached to them. The cast of characters in the new Bionic Woman included Jonas Bledsoe (Miguel Ferrer), the enigmatic (and slightly satanic) head of the Bionics research program; Ruth Truewell (Molly Price), Bledsoe's slightly more scrupulous assistant; maverick "program advisor" Antonio Pope (Isaiah Washington), the resident "I know more than I'm letting on" guy; and Jaime's computer-hacker sister Becca (Lucy Hale), who was always in trouble with the cops. This Bionic Woman joined NBC's Wednesday-night lineup on September 26, 2007.