"I HAVE to be liked. But it's not this compulsive need to be liked, like my need to be praised."
Bionic Woman 1.01 - "Pilot"
This show has problems that, if not ironed out right away, are going to be fatal.
Let's start with the casting. It's a really bad thing when your lead has zero presence, and Michelle Ryan is just a blank spot of nothing in the middle of the screen. The boyfriend is also a drip, and I really don't think the writers meant for him to be so creepy, but on top of the fairly hair-raising issues of what he did to Jamie, without her consent or understanding, to save her life, is it really supposed to be romantic that he's dating her because she wasn't in his parents' plans for him? REALLY? On the other hand, Miguel Ferrer was delightfully morally ambiguous, and Will Yun Lee had some good moments (and held his own with Katee Sackhoff, which is more than you can say for Michelle Ryan), and Mark Sheppard soldiered through some really awful dialogue.
And, seriously, there was some really awful dialogue. People on this show did not speak like people really speak. Parts of the episode were also astonishingly boring; I was surfing the Internet with half an eye during the final fight, which is probably not a good sign.
Still, although they beat the point home with a sledgehammer, the questions of identity and what it means to be human that the show seems to be setting itself up to explore are pretty interesting, and I'm willing to give it a couple more episodes to see if things improve. But Katee Sackhoff owns this show; Sarah Corvis came across as a vastly more fascinating and complicated character than Jamie Sommers did. We're probably not supposed to come out of this pilot rooting for the show to ditch the lead and focus on the evil nemesis, and yet here I am. I find it fascinating that Sarah basically went about methodically creating another person like her, so that she wouldn't be the only one.
The Office 4.01 - "Fun Run"
Oh Michael. So self-absorbed. Meredith may be the one laid up in the hospital with a broken pelvis, but Michael is devastated, because he's undone all the hard work he's put in to making people like him in one moment. His neediness has its own gravitational force, sucking in everyone around him; he's so genuinely distressed (without actually ever being distressed for Meredith), and so willing to go to ridiculous lengths to erase the damage, that people have to forgive him, because otherwise he will continue to carry on. Dwight steps up manfully to take the blame for exposing Meredith to rabies, and Michael gets to feel like he's actually done her a favor by getting her treatment, and only then can Michael finally stop panicking and put his plan for redemption into motion. His sincerity is matched only by his complete ineptitude: the carbo-loading with fettucine alfredo before a 5k run, because he's going to run for rabies, dammit; the "nurse" stripper from "Ben Franklin," and his clueless delight that she'd gone to school; the giant check made out to "Science"; the incredibly costly fund-raiser for a disease that has a cure. And in the end, Michael cares about public TV as well as rabies, for which I sort of love him.
Dwight and Angela are just sublime, Dwight with his survival-of-the-fittest approach to pet ownership and Angela convinced that euthanized cats don't go to cat heaven. They're so well-matched in so many ways, but Dwight is very literal about some things (I loved that when Michael asked him to pay his respects to Meredith at the hospital, Dwight's response was, "I do not respect her, but I will go"), while Angela has some deeply strange ideas about spirituality. I would have been hard-pressed to find an issue that could come between them, but the death of Sprinkles is a natural conflict, and I knew right away that Dwight had offed the cat, even before Angela discovered the clawed-up bags of french fries in the freezer where the supposed body was stored. I don't think for a moment that Angela is going to let this go--the woman has posters of babies playing jazz saxophone--and while part of me is distressed by that, because I love the two of them so much, I also think Dwight is going to have to let go of some of his certainty and make some accommodations in his worldview, and that could be an interesting process.
Speaking of troubled relationships, it looks like Jan has gone completely off the deep end. I am genuinely afraid for her.
Jim and Pam, on the other hand, were utterly adorable. Trying to hide their relationship from both the cameras and their co-workers was a wise, if futile, thing to do; Kevin is waaaaaaaay over-invested in what's going on between them.
And Ryan seems to be growing some nice pretension to go with his facial hair. It's strange to hear his voice coming through that speaker phone, and hilarious that in his new position, he has the same reactions to Michael that anyone on the other end of that speaker phone has had over the course of the show. I'm really looking forward to seeing how Michael and Ryan interact going forward, because Ryan, while book smart, really doesn't know what he's doing, and is an asshole to boot, and I don't think he's going to do as well as he thinks he will.
And Darryl! Feeding the squirrel a peanut! At a fun run to fight rabies! I love Darryl; he always finds the best way to make Michael look ridiculous.
I actually thought they were kind of stretching the material to make a full hour; it would have been a tighter half-hour episode. But still, I am delighted with the start of the new season.
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- I am pretty sure it's going to rain. For one thing, it looks like it's going to rain. For another, last night I took my umbrella out of my bag, thinking I wouldn't need it. So, yes.
- This National Geographic feature on regional dishes is pretty interesting. (Via Serious Eats, which also has a nice pointer to this page on Greek food in Birmingham. Mmm, the Fish Market.)
- They're making The Road into a movie? Really?!?
- Happy Friday, everybody! And happy return of Stargate: Atlantis to those of you who celebrate.
