Bionic Woman no good?

By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY
Some sow's ears just don't want to be silk purses.
You can see why David Eick, the producer of NBC's heavily promoted Bionic Woman redo, might think otherwise. Having helped turn Battlestar Galactica into a well-respected cable hit by stripping the original of its silliness, it was almost inevitable he would try a similar trick on another camp relic — in this case, ABC's short-lived Six Million Dollar Man spinoff Bionic Woman.

Lightning did not strike twice. The original Battlestar always had a potent myth at its center; the problem with the show was execution, not conception. Bionic was and is just a fun, mechanical twist on Supergirl. Loading it down with pain, regret, conspiracies and Freudian father issues may produce a more serious show, but it doesn't produce a better one. In this case, camp will out.

The Woman is still Jaime Sommers (EastEnders import Michelle Ryan), but now she's a bartender raising a teenage sister (Lucy Kate Hale) and dating a super-smart professor, Will (Chris Bowers). Good thing, too, because after a near-fatal accident, he saves her life by turning her bionic.

You'd think that once the initial shock passed, she'd be grateful. In this show, not so much. Instead, Ryan delivers almost every line with the same, steady whine, squeezing whatever energy there might have been out of an already tiresome premise.

Thrown on top of the story like a smothering blanket are a host of uninvolving characters: the coldly cynical official in charge of the project (Miguel Ferrer); the second-in-command who stakes out the middle ground (Molly Price); the trainer who hates Will (Will Yun Lee); and Will's crazy, imprisoned father (Battlestar's Mark Sheppard), who's in league with the show's shadowy bad guys.

Oh, and there's the hour's one bright spot — Katee Sackhoff, another Battlestar transfer, as a bionic woman gone bad. Alas, while it's fine to have a villain who is more colorful than your hero, it's not so fine to have a supporting actor who makes your star vanish whenever they're on screen together. It makes you think that what this remake of a spinoff really needs is a spinoff of its own.

None of this means the show won't draw a crowd, at least initially. The ads are terrific (far better than the show they're promoting), and there is a fan base that likes its fantasies somber and its heroines pouty. Which may be why Bionic plays like it was created, not so much to run on TV, but to provide panels for comic book conventions.

At least here, you can see the cast for free — though perhaps not for long.