Our sister site Filmfodder reports that while NBC hasn’t officially ended the show, “Bionic Woman” is all but scrap metal by now. In an interview with SCI FI Wire, executive producer David Eick declared the show a goner. He goes on to say that “the process was so frustrating” and that the “show never really came to fruition in such a way that I felt like we could make the show well.”

The news isn’t so surprising. As reported last month in The Guardian, once the 100-day writers strike ended, NBC released a list of shows that would return, and “Bionic Woman” was not among them. This is a complete turnaround from the direction the show was heading early last fall. Initially, the show started out of the gate with great ratings, albeit without great reviews from critics. But as the show progressed along its initial eight episode run, it lost millions of viewers. Once the writers strike hit, “Bionic Woman” ran out of episodes and was not renewed for a second season.

It’s only a matter of time before NBC pulls the plug on the cyborg heroine. --Chris Sardelli

It looks like the character from NBC’s “Bionic Woman” finally faced some enemies she couldn’t defeat with a swift, cybernetically-enhanced kick to the face- bored viewers and some striking writers. According to The Guardian, once the 100-day writers strike ended, NBC released a list of shows that would return, but unfortunately “Bionic Woman” was not among them.

The show started out of the gate with great ratings last fall, albeit without great reviews from critics. As the show progressed along its initial eight episode run, it lost millions of viewers. Once the writers strike hit, “Bionic Woman” ran out of episodes and was not renewed for a second season.

NBC has yet to make the show’s cancellation official, but this doesn’t sound like good news for our cyborg heroine. --Chris Sardelli

Later Jonas starts to get the feeling that Jaime has a little pent up aggression about Antonio’s death, as he watches her in the field. While on her latest assignment, she’s ordered to tail a motorcycle-riding bad guy with dreads like the Predator. After catching up to him with her super-speed and dodging bullets from his machine gun, she beats the pulp out of him and screams at him for making her do it. Obviously she needs some time off.

Before she goes home, Jaime calls her new CIA boyfriend Tom just to hear a friendly voice. She leaves him a message about how she can’t lie to her sister anymore. Exasperated and worried, she opens the door to her apartment hoping to sit down and relax. To her surprise, she finds Jonas washing the dishes. He’s worried about her and thinks she’s depressed. He tells Jaime to take some time off and that he’ll send her on vacation. Jaime has her pride, though, and doesn’t want a hand out. Jonas concedes and tells her to make it a working vacation. First she’ll make a drop-off for him, then head to Montana for a week off.

Soon Becca and Jaime are in the car traveling to Montana for a sisters vacation, but Becca wants to know what’s really going on. She’s a smart kid and doesn’t believe Jaime would just go on vacation on a whim. Big sis covers, though, and says she just wants the two of them to bond.

At a rest stop, Jaime promises she’ll hand her cell phone over to Becca for the remainder of the trip, if she can just make one last call. Becca agrees, and Jaime runs off instead to make the drop-off with the briefcase Jonas gave her. She gets in a car with a creepy guy, whose prearranged code word is actually the monologue from “The A-Team.” She hands the briefcase over and runs back to her car.

Once the sisters arrive at the four-star hotel, Jaime and Becca decide to skip the spa treatments and head to the room for TV and dessert. (If you look carefully, the two sisters are watching “Heroes” in their hotel room.) Unbeknownst to Jaime, the creepy guy is staying in the same hotel. He doesn’t last too long, though, as he overdoses on some drugs and dies in his hotel room. I’m sensing this won’t be a relaxing vacation for our Bionic Woman.

Since the guy obviously isn’t answering his phone, Jonas asks Jaime to check in on him. She’s shocked to find his dead body and a syringe hanging out of his arm. From a quick scan of his room, and the gun she finds in his suitcase, she figures out he was an assassin sent to kill someone at the spa. She presses Jonas for information, but all he does is order her to put the body on ice and safeguard the briefcase she had handed over to the guy the night before. Curiosity gets the better of her and she pries open the briefcase to find a picture of a man with sunglasses. She puts it all together and realizes the man in the picture is the target.

Realizing she has to get back to her sister, she hurries downstairs to the hotel restaurant where she finds Becca flirting with a boy she just met named Nick. This happy moment is short lived as Nick’s dad arrives on the scene. His name is Vincent Aldridge and, to Jaime’s surprise, it turns out he’s the guy from the photo. She slips away and calls Jonas, who tells her Vincent is a traitor pretending to be an accountant. He’s actually a nuclear engineer who’s about to hand over nuclear secrets to the North Koreans. Jonas informs Jaime that the guy is out of her league, and he will come to Montana to finish the situation himself.

In the meantime, Jaime has to pretend like nothing is wrong. She accompanies her sister, Nick and Vincent on a gondola ride but blows her cover while talking to the father. She asks him about his accounting job, but forgets that he never told her what he did. She realizes she’s probably been made and Jonas orders her to kill him as soon as she can.

So, Jaime has to pretend to go to the spa with Becca, but as soon as Becca goes in, she tells the spa lady to keep her there until she gets back. That gives her three hours without her sister to try and resolve the situation. She hides in the forest outside Vincent’s hotel room, sniper rifle in hand, but decides she can’t shoot him. Instead she charges his hotel room, kicks his bodyguard’s butts and takes Vincent hostage.

Back in her room, she ties him up and puts him on the phone with Jonas, who offers Vincent a choice: talk or die. Vincent is a smart man; he chooses option “a.” His only condition is they hide him and his son, and only then will he talk. So Jaime decides to get them as far away as possible. As she’s driving them in Vincent’s car, her bionic hearing picks up a beeping noise. She stops the car and ushers everyone out, tearing off a locked back door to free Nick. The three of them run away as the car explodes.

Jaime shocks Vincent and Nick as she selects alternate transportation and rips yet another car door off its hinges. As they’re driving, she thinks they’re being tailed and Jonas tells her to slow down to see if it passes. It does, but she gets the license plate just in case and soon she arrives back at the spa with the father and son. Just then Jonas calls and tells her the car she thought was following her is parked outside. Obviously they were following her, and she needs to get the heck outta Dodge. So she grabs the father and son, taking bad guys out as she goes. She sucker punches one of the guys twice in the gut, knocking him out for the count and makes quick work of the next guy without even making a big scene.

Once outside, the valet whose phone she used earlier starts calling her name. Jonas walks over to the guy and shoots him twice, killing him. At first it seems as if Jonas has a hair-trigger and really hates valets. Turns out the dead guy was yet another assassin and Jonas just saved Jaime’s butt. Soon, both Vincent and Nick are in protective custody.

On the ride back to the spa, Jaime tells Jonas she doesn’t want to lie to her sister anymore. That’s when Jonas reveals that he never told Jaime she couldn’t tell Becca about her situation. There is a downside to telling her, though. If she does reveal the truth about her new cyborg-ninja life, Becca could end up being a target.

The moment of truth finally comes as the two sisters drive home from Montana. Just as we think she’s about to tell Becca everything, she ends up only telling Becca about Antonio’s death. Becca tells her not to hide things from her and that she’ll always be there for her. Guess the truth will have to wait awhile.

What did everyone think of this week’s episode? Personally, I liked the race-against-the-clock vibe, and Jaime sure kicked some butt. And you know that she’ll eventually have to spill the beans about her cyborg-life to her sis. The funniest moments of the episode have to be Ruth confessing she and Antonio were lovers, and Nathan asking Jae to teach him how to fight. My only question, though, is what happened to evil cyborg Sarah Corvis? Post your comments below and I’ll see you all next time for more bionic fun. --Chris Sardelli

The NBC show, starring British actress Michelle Ryan as a bartender who wakes from a near-fatal car crash to find she has cybernetic appendages, has shut down production. According to Entertainment Weekly, the program ran out of scripts because of the writers strike and had to stop filming on November 9. The original plan was to film through December 12.

There’s no news thus far on what this means for the show, though it’s very likely it will go on hiatus once new episodes run out. NBC had yet to pick the show up for an entire season before the Writers Guild of America went on strike two weeks ago. The network will probably release more information about the show’s fate if the strike progresses. --Chris Sardelli

Back at Wolf Creek, Antonio scolds Jaime for talking to Tom while she was on a stakeout. Turns out he’s been checking up on her, including monitoring her phone calls. Can you say ‘stalker?’ There’s no time to worry about him, though, as Jonas calls them in for a briefing. Apparently, the case she stole contained several special bullets for a high-tech rifle that can fire from over two miles away. The only problem- the rifle is still out there and he has an idea what it’s about to be used for. A tyrant president is due to arrive in the US and there’s good reason to believe whoever has that special rifle is going to take him out. So Jonas assigns Jaime to protect him, because his death on American soil would create too much anti-American sentiment among his people.

Jaime and Antonio head over to the leader’s hotel room, where his advance bodyguards are preparing his suite for him. The head bodyguard (who turns out to be the actor that played Curtis on “24”!!!) and Antonio get into an argument. Antonio clearly doesn’t like the president (his exact words are “he’s a genocidal dictator”), but the bodyguard defends his leader. It gets so heated that Jaime has to break up the fight. But does he thank her for her help? Nope. Instead, he starts yelling at her again about her relationship with Tom. Side note: When did Antonio turn into the Grinch? Do you think his heart is two sizes too small?

Later that day, Becca is busy preparing the perfect dinner for Jaime and her new boyfriend. Once Tom shows up, they all sit down to eat and seem to be having a good time, despite the fact that neither Jaime nor Tom seem to remember their cover stories and can’t answer even one of Becca’s questions the same. I’m not sure what part is more disturbing- the fact that they are supposed to be super-secret spies, or the disappointing realization that these two would be horrible at the Newlywed Game. Fortunately for them, Jaime’s phone rings. It’s Antonio and he tells her the President is coming ahead of schedule, on a small plane that could leave him exposed. Making up an excuse that she has to go sell some time-shares late at night (who does that?!), she bails on dinner, leaving Becca and Tom alone. Before that can get too uncomfortable, the CIA recalls Tom and he has to leave too.

While she’s in the car racing to the airstrip, Jonas calls and tells her the exact same information Antonio just told her. Jonas is surprised to hear that Antonio already knew, since he himself just found out only minutes before. What does this mean? Is Mr. Grey’s Anatomy a double-agent?

Jaime gets to the air strip, locates the sniper with her bionic eye and runs ahead of the sniper’s two bullets, pushing the president out of the way and saving his life just in time. Once they are all safe, Jaime tries desperately to convince the president to leave the country, but he won’t. He says he isn’t afraid to die for his cause. Gee, that’s great.

Suddenly Tom rushes in and is panicked to find out that Jaime just put her life in harm’s away. He’s furious that she isn’t wearing a bullet-proof vest or carrying a gun, and then yells at Antonio for letting one of his agents enter the field unprotected. Antonio yells back, which makes this his fourth fight in this episode so far. Geez, what a bully!

Outside, as Jaime plays CSI, she detects some mysterious-looking burnt rubber and bags it for examination. She then decides to play investigator and asks Antonio how he knew the president was coming before Jonas did. He quickly tells her he has a friend who filled him in. Sounds like a perfectly good excuse to me! No holes in that explanation! Then he tells her a sad story about a woman he lost on a mission, which explains why he’s so down on dating people at work. Then he cracks a smile and admits he was just joking. That’s a real good way to solidify trust with someone who already thinks you are a double-agent.

She goes back to Wolf Creek to have the evidence analyzed, and once she’s gone, Antonio lifts his foot to reveal a sniper bullet he was hiding from her. He goes off in secret to pick the bullet apart, emptying its contents for reasons that still aren’t clear. Maybe he’s going to sell the information to the highest bidder? Or maybe he’s in league with the sniper?

Just as Jaime slips into bed after a hard day of protecting presidents and ticking off her sister, she gets a call from Nathan, the tech guy. The evidence Jaime brought in reveals that the sniper wears a certain brand of sneaker and is staying at a particular hotel, based on the chlorinated water he found on the sample. It turns out, though, Nathan already told Antonio, who wanted to investigate on his own, without Jaime. She gets really suspicious and decides to head over to the apartment building anyway.

As she’s leaving her house, though, she sees a man and woman kissing outside her home. Her bionic ear, however, hears that they are actually tailing her. So she doubles back on them and takes them out, slamming the man to the ground and standing on him, while picking the woman up by her neck. To her surprise, they turn out to be CIA agents sent by Tom! Wow, is he in trouble.

Adding to her suspicion of Antonio, when she gets to the apartment building, she tunes into his phone conversation with someone who may just be the sniper. Convinced he’s a traitor, she fills Jonas in. He trusts her instincts and decides to feed Antonio fake information about where the President will be sitting, just to see if he’s playing them.

In the midst of all this chaos, Tom drops by Jaime’s apartment to explain about the two CIA agents following her. She believes he’s having her followed because she can’t handle herself. The real reason, he says, is that the CIA has to do recon on any person involved with any of their agents. She’s relieved to hear it, but she still can’t quite commit to him.

Later at the racetrack, Jaime and Antonio search for the sniper. But instead of splitting up, Jaime decides to follow Antonio to see what he’s really up to. He figures out she is following him, though, and surprises her with a gun in the face. He’s genuinely shocked that she didn’t trust him and decides to tell her what’s really going on. Turns out the sniper is a woman he once loved. She was his partner on a mission, and he had to leave her behind. He had no idea she was still alive, but apparently she’s now obsessed with killing the president. Feeling that he owes her, he was trying to stop her before she ruined her life.

Realizing that they are both on the same side, and that now no one is protecting the president, they scramble back to save him. With her bionic ear, she hears the sniper rifle and zooms in on where the president is. She leaps up onto the building and crashes through a window, jumping on the president just in time.

Jaime then goes after the sniper. She locates the warehouse where the shooter was aiming from, but as she runs up the stairs she’s suddenly caught between Antonio and the elusive sniper. Before Jaime can do anything, both Antonio and the sniper shoot each other. The sniper drops dead and Antonio is shot in the gut. The paramedics try to help him, but he’s too far gone and dies in Jaime’s arms. Jaime doesn’t know how to handle it and shows up at Tom’s apartment crying. As the episode ends, she tells him she isn’t cut out for this whole super spy thing.

So, let’s recap this week’s episode, shall we: Tom meets Becca, Tom has Jaime followed, Antonio argues with everyone and then he dies, Jaime reconsiders her new job and, oh yeah, Ruth gets a plant. I’m a little worried that the only plot thread they can give to one of their MAIN characters is the acquisition of a bonsai tree. Like I said last week, once the show ditches pretty much everyone but Jaime, Tom and Becca, we’ll be good to go. Other than that, I think the humor has gotten better and the espionage part is more interesting. What did you think? Is the show getting stronger? Do you like the current crop of characters? Post your comments below. There’s no new episode next week, so I’ll see you all in two weeks for more bionic fun. --Chris Sardelli

The story opens in the middle of an exchange between two shadowy groups. One side wants some kind of list, while the mysterious man on the other side is demanding $250,000 in cash and $5 million in bonds. Turns out one of the men asking for the list is an undercover operative from the Berkut Group. They ask for the list, but the man instead shoots them and runs. Jae and Jonas, who have been watching in the wings, rush in to try and catch the escaping criminal, who unfortunately gets away.

Meanwhile, at Jaime’s apartment, Becca is busy scheduling a movie night with her friends, but is more interested in getting the boy of her dreams to stop by. Jaime tries to bond with her little sis by telling her the rules for dealing with boys, and insists that Becca let the boy do the pursuing. Deep down she’s just mad that CIA Agent Tom hasn’t called her back since their first date over a week ago.

Back at Wolf Creek, Jonas briefs Jaime on her newest mission. The man who got away at the beginning of the episode is an arms dealer named Victor Booth. He’s responsible for killing several Berkut Group agents and has a stolen list in his possession that reveals the identities of several CIA and Berkut members. So he orders Jaime and the team to track Victor down in Paris. The first catch- he’s had so much plastic surgery, no one knows exactly what he looks like. The second catch- the CIA wants in on the mission, so Jaime will be saddled with a CIA partner. Jaime decides to turn the situation in her favor and asks if she can team up with Tom. Jonas agrees and soon the whole team, made up of Jae, Ruth, Tom, Jaime and Nathan, is on a plane to Paris and busy working on their strategy.

Nathan, the tech guy, has been hard at work developing a special facial recognition program that works in tandem with Jaime’s bionic eye. All she has to do is get inside the embassy in Paris and focus on the eyes of every man in the place. Apparently, that’s the one part of Victor’s body that hasn’t changed and if they match his eyes to someone at the party, they can follow him to the stolen list. Sounds very Mission: Impossible of them, doesn’t it?

Pretty soon Jaime and Tom are all dressed up and ready to rock the embassy party. When they arrive, Jaime uses her nifty bionic eye to locate several hidden cameras, and then focuses her attention on the men in the room. Which one is Victor? After checking out several guys, she finally focuses on a shady-looking guy sporting a white tuxedo, who Nathan instantly nicknames Colonel Sanders.

The two agents, who are posing as a married American couple, saunter up to the Colonel and introduce themselves. Jaime says her husband is a Picasso expert, which was not part of Tom’s cover. Somehow this man realizes the cover may be a sham and starts quizzing Tom about Picasso paintings. Soon he invites Tom to identify a painting he saw in the basement, to see if it’s a genuine Picasso. Since the man won’t look either of them in the eye, she instantly believes he’s their man and forces Tom to go along with it. They follow him into a wine cellar, which he conveniently locks them into. Now, I know Jaime’s pretty new at this, but shouldn’t a seasoned CIA guy like Tom know better than to let the bad guy shove him in a locked room?

While trapped, you’d think both Jaime and Tom would take advantage of the time to find a way out. Nope, instead they decide to argue with each other like an actual married couple. As they bicker, Tom tries to break the door down to no avail. Jaime finally decides to use her bionic powers and helps Tom bust the door down, but lets him think he did it, since Tom still doesn’t know she’s a Power Ranger.

With the door down, they catch a glimpse of Victor on a security monitor at a guard’s desk. They try to fool the guard by kissing each other and pretending to be a dumb American couple, and then Jaime just knocks the guy out. Do they use the little time they have to search for the bad guy? Nope. They just kiss a little more. Way to go, super agents!

Over in America, at Casa de Bionic, Becca’s friends have all started to arrive, ready to watch movies and party the night away. To her dismay, though, the boy she really likes shows up with another girl! The cad! So Becca decides to do what any angry teenage girl who has just been scorned would do- sulk in the corner. She tires of watching the guy traipse around her apartment with some other girl on his arm, so she leaves, against her friend’s better judgment. She hops in Jaime’s car and starts to speed away, but only gets as far as the curb, which she bumps into. Just her luck though, a police officer sees her and pulls her over. Looks like drinking and driving without a license might not have been the best answer to her boy problem.

Once Jaime and Tom find the bad guy’s room, the two start bickering again. Tom tries to explain why he hasn’t called Jaime. He wants to keep her safe and is worried she could get hurt just by knowing him. She doesn’t want to be treated like she’s weak and tells him she can handle herself. She decided the prove it by bursting through the door and pummeling the first bad guy she can find. Jaime uses her bionic strength to pound her guy, while Tom gets thrown around the room like a rag doll. She can’t concentrate on her new boyfriend, though, because she spots Victor across the room and slams into him, sending the two of them out the window and onto the ground below. The Berkut team rushes to the scene and grabs the two of them. Unlucky for them, the bad guy is just a look-alike that Victor hired to throw them off the trail.

Jaime decides to call Tom’s cell phone to see what happened to him, but Victor answers instead. With a gun to Tom’s head, he tells her it will cost $8 million to get him back. He’ll give her the list for $6 million and Tom for an additional $2 million. One more problem- she only has one hour to get the money.

Jaime calls Jonas and asks for the money. Strangely, he says yes and that he’ll wire it to an account for her. As he hangs up the phone, we suddenly realize he’s at a police station. Turns out, Jaime told Becca to call Jonas if she ever needed something. Nobody knew that “something” would mean bailing her out jail for charges of driving without a license and driving while intoxicated. Wow, I wouldn’t want to be around Jaime when she finds out and starts smashing stuff with her cyber limbs. Yikes.

As Becca and Jonas drive home from the police station, Becca grills him about her sister’s job. She doesn’t believe Jaime really sells timeshares and quizzes Jonas about it. He covers it up pretty well, but Becca still has plenty of questions about her sister. First and foremost, she wants to know why her sister won’t talk about her fiancé that just died. Jonas just plays dumb.

After the hour Victor gave her is up, Jaime walks into the café where they are to make the trade and sees Tom sitting at a table. She sits down and after some awkward conversation, they apologize to each other. He then shows her that he’s wired with a bomb around his waist. Soon Victor sidles up to the table, disguised as a waiter. He hands Jaime a menu, with the list conveniently displayed inside as proof of his end of the trade, but instead of making the hand-off, she smacks him with the money bag. She then sends the money flying into a fan overhead where it drops millions of dollars down onto the patrons of the café, who immediately scramble for the cash.

Nathan then directs her on how to diffuse the bomb. With her boyfriend safe, she takes off after Victor. Jaime leaps ahead, catches up with the bad guy and knocks him unconscious. The Bionic Woman saves the day again.

Jonas soon arrives in Paris and reports that the group has recovered $4 million of the money and has turned Victor over to the CIA. She’s more interested, though, in speaking with Tom and tells him she’s still interested in him. But she puts the ball in his court and says that if he wants to make it work, he needs to call her. And soon.

After her long flight, she finally gets home to find Becca startled that she’s home so early. She immediately suspects the worst, but finds that her little sis was only busy preparing a hot bath for Jaime, complete with candles and a warm towel. The two sisters hug, and everything seems to be right with the world. The only problem- good little Becca was just arrested. Now how is she going to keep that one from her bionic big sis?

What did everyone think of this week’s episode? Personally, I think it was pretty good. The show seems to work a lot better when they drop all the dead weight, i.e. all the supporting characters like quiz-master Ruth, one-note Jae and Mr. YawnFest Isaiah Washington. The plot made sense and had a somewhat logical conclusion. The tone felt a lot like old Mission: Impossible episodes, which works for the format. The writers should definitely amp up the espionage portion of the show, and maybe team Jaime up only with new boyfriend Tom. Post your comments below and I’ll see you all next week for more mechanical mayhem. --Chris Sardelli

Her assignment, if she chooses to accept it, is to figure out why kidnapped American soldiers are suddenly turning violent once they’re released from captivity. In the beginning of the episode we see one of these altered soldiers go all “Manchurian Candidate” on his fellow troops, picking them off with a machine gun. The cause, according to Bledsoe, is a neural device implanted in their brains by an Al Qaeda terror cell. Once implanted, the soldier’s entire body becomes a terrorist weapon, accessed via remote.

So what does all of this have to do with Jaime going back to college, you may ask? Well, as it turns out, the inventor of the neural doohickeys is a guy named Professor Samuels and Jaime is going to follow him around to see if he’s selling the devices to terrorists. Much to her dismay, though, she actually has to take his neural science classes.

For about three minutes college life is going pretty well for Jaime, even if she doesn’t have a clue what the professor is talking about. Then her cell phone rings during class, which isn’t good for several reasons: a) Samuels is a mean guy who likes to yell at people and b) he puts her on the spot and asks her a question about the brain. Good thing the Teacher’s Assistant likes her, then, because he slips her a piece of paper with the answer on it. And with that, Jaime has her first college crush.

Later on, Jaime and her new roommate go partying and just happen to run into that nice TA from her class, whose name is Tom. Turns out he agrees with Jaime and thinks the professor is a “mean, mean old man,” but that he’s brilliant and will be able to fix conditions like Parkinsons disease.

Now the whole time the two are chatting, Nathan the Lab Tech Guy is watching the transmission from Jaime’s bionic eye on his computer back at Wolf Creek. Nathan, as we’ve seen over the last few episodes, has a huge crush on the Bionic Woman and is none too happy that she’s talking to Tom. So in a fit of jealousy, he switches her bionic ear off so she’ll get the hint to leave and go stake out the professor’s lab.

After a nifty leap onto the roof of the lab, Nathan tells Jaime how to break into the building without setting off the alarms. She jumps inside, finds the lab and locates the contact information she’s been sent to retrieve. But as she sticks around to take a look at Tom’s file, the Professor and his assistant Sean catch her red-handed!

As Samuels escorts her out of the building, he demands to know which pharmaceutical company she is working for and what she was trying to steal. Without missing a beat Jaime tells him she was trying to help by cleaning out the monkey cages, just as someone told her to do. (An obvious lie, which it seems the Professor doesn’t entirely believe.) Meanwhile Tom sees what’s going on and bails her out, saying it was his fault that he left the door open and that Jaime is innocent. The Professor gives her one last warning and stomps away.

Outside Tom asks Jaime what she was really doing in there. She lies, in her perfect British accent might I add, and tells him she needed a copy of the lecture because her notes are unreadable. Somehow he believes this lame excuse and decides to ask her out for dinner. As soon as she says yes, he leans over and kisses her on the cheek. Am I wrong in thinking this relationship has grown a little too close over the last two hours they’ve known each other?

The next day, the two lovebirds share some coffee while they discuss the importance of the professor’s work. Pretty soon, though, they are making out, which is understandable because nothing gets people in the mood to kiss more than a riveting discussion on neuroscience. But the kissing is short-lived, as Antonio strolls up and interrupts them. He introduces himself to Tom as Clarissa’s uncle. When Tom leaves, Antonio tell her he’s really there because they don’t suspect Samuels anymore. Now they suspect Tom.

On her way to meet Tom for dinner, she’s ambushed by a man with a gun. Her super instincts kick in and she beats the guy down, only to find out he’s one of Professor Samuels test subjects. He can’t stop himself and he doesn’t know why. They take him back to the lab, perform a little brain surgery and find the neural device that’s been controlling him. It turns out the chip in his head matches the ones from the soldiers exactly.

So, Jaime goes back to have dinner with Tom, wondering if he was the one who sent the man after her, but she just can’t be sure. That feeling really doesn’t last long, though, as the two of them decide to skip out on dinner and go make out at his place instead. She stops herself, though, and asks him to go buy some champagne. With him gone, she scours his apartment looking for any evidence that he’s the bad guy. Naturally, she looks in his spice drawer and figures the tarragon looks a little out of place. (I mean, what normal person would keep tarragon in a drawer? He must be a terrorist!) So she opens the canister to find a small case full of neural chips. Whoops, looks like Jaime fell for a bad guy!

Meanwhile, Ruth and Antonio have been narrowing down terror suspects that could be involved. They stumble across one who used to take the professor’s class. Hmmm, he plot thickens. Antonio has his doubts that the guy is actually a terrorist, until he listens in to a phone conversation where the guy negotiates to hand over 5,000 neural chips. Antonio follows the guy and finds out he is directly involved in stealing the chips.

After the chips are matched to the ones from Samuels and from the soldiers, Bledsoe orders Jaime to follow Tom. Soon she finds him passing a mysterious document to a student. She grabs the folder expecting to find stolen, classified documents, but instead she finds….a final exam. Tom sees her and rushes back, demanding to know why she’s following him, who she really is and who she works for. Turns out he’s from the CIA and his name is not Tom. To his dismay, he finds out who she really works for and that she’s not really British. Bummer dude.

As the two come to grips with these revelations, Jaime’s super-ear hears the Professor’s assistant Sean selling off the chips! Tom runs off to catch them in the act, while Jaime takes the easy way down- she leaps off a ledge and lands in the middle of the fight. (I’m starting to get the feeling that Jaime loves to leap on things.)

After some butt-kicking, Jaime and Tom take down the terrorists who were about to acquire the stolen neural chips. Sean is about to get away until Jaime launches a cantaloupe at him and hits him square in the head. Mission accomplished!

At the end, Jaime and Tom spend their last night at college together. Why do I get the feeling we haven’t seen the last of CIA Tom? Oh yeah, that’s right, he’s in the preview for the next episode.

So, what did everyone think of this week’s adventure? Did producers cop out by having Michelle Ryan drop her fake American accent for an entire episode? Or do you think the actress just got tired of pretending to be a Yank? Also, did you miss Sarah Corvis? The show’s on a break next week, but remember to be back here in two weeks for more bionic action. --Chris Sardelli

Has Jonas finally sent her on a real mission? Is she after terrorists? Or could Sarah Corvis somehow be in the car? Wrong on all counts. As she flings open the door, Jaime discovers Becca making out with some 18-year-old guy. Wow, are they in trouble. Jaime yanks her out of the car and screams at her as she drags her home.

Later, back at Wolf Creek, Jaime is having her toe examined. The technician explains to her that even though she’s partly indestructible, thanks to those anthrocite-things swimming around in her blood stream, there are bound to be defects. He finally returns her toe to normal and off she goes, though the whole incident begs the question, just how indestructible is she?

Meanwhile, Sarah Corvis is doing what any cybernetically-enhanced woman would do if she could leap tall buildings in a single bounce. She’s hustling guys at poker. Yup, that’s a good use of her talent. As she goes all in, Jae shows up with his Ninja Stormtroopers and places her under arrest. She goes willingly, which makes you wonder if she has a plan in mind or if the writers just completely underestimated how quickly she could have taken the whole lot of them down. My theory, she either wants back in at Wolf Creek so someone can heal her or she’s doing recon for Will’s dad.

Soon, Jaime is stuck discussing her toe with Bledsoe who, even though Jaime didn’t tell him about the episode, found out anyway. He reminds her she’s a sophisticated piece of equipment designed to help the human race, not to spy on her sister. As she rolls her eyes, Antonio stops by to watch an important video with Jonas and Jaime.

The terrorist film shows a captive doctor, named Mark Stevens, who is being held against his will in Paraguay by a group of nutjobs named the Sons of the Red Sand. They want the CIA to admit he’s one of theirs, or they’ll behead him in 48 hours. Bledsoe wants Jaime and Antonio to pose as an American couple to rescue him and retrieve the classified information he has in his possession. Jaime is left to create a cover story so Becca won’t know where she’s going and tells her little sis she’s off to Napa to visit her friend Carly, who just got into law school.

Antonio quickly briefs Jaime that they’ll be flying on a small jet, landing on a dirt strip and meeting up with a local cop who will brief them on Stevens location. Jaime looks a little uneasy, though, and reveals she’s got a pesky fear of flying. So, just to recap- she’s OK with climbing tall buildings and leaping really high into the air, but she’s not so cool with flying on planes.
She doesn’t have much time to worry about it, though, as her cyborg nemesis Sarah Corvis is wheeled in Hannibal Lecter-style. Sarah tells Jaime she “looks great” and asks how Becca’s doing. Jaime looks understandably ticked. After all, Sarah did try to kill Becca last episode. Antonio grabs her arm and says they have no time for her to settle the score- they have to leave now.

We soon find Sarah strapped to a table and being examined by the Wolf Creek doctors. She’s up to her old tricks as she grabs one of the doctor’s hands and crushes it. That is, until Jonas strolls in and tells her to stop. He has a deal for her. If she gives up Anthony Anthros’s location, he’ll upgrade her body to Windows Vista and fix all that hand-shaking nonsense. In typical fashion, she turns him down, claiming she can’t trust him, which may be true.

On the plane to Paraguay, Jaime and Antonio have a little chat about trust. She’s worried about lying to her sis, but he says she’s doing the right thing by protecting her. He also says she can trust him and that he’ll always have her back. Once they land, they meet up with an optimistic local cop who warns them that if they get caught, he will deny knowing them.

That trust they just talked about gets put to the test as soon as the two get inside the building. First, Jaime figures out how to get past a giant moving fan, by calculating the speed and velocity with her cool new eye and thrusting her new arm into the works. Once inside, though, they realize there’s a security system they hadn’t planned on. Before Jaime knows it, Antonio crosses the beams and sets the darn thing off. Stunned by this turn of events, Jaime has no choice but to follow his lead and let themselves be captured.

Soon enough, the pair is surrounded by terrorist gunmen and hauled off to the chief bad guy with black bags over their heads. They’re dropped off in a small office, where it seems the good Dr. Stevens is being held as well. Putting a machete to Jaime’s throat, the bad guys try to convince the doctor to decrypt the classified info a little faster. The bay guys get a lesson in Butt-Kicking 101, though, when they try to kill her, as she lunges at the nearest terrorist, giving Antonio a shot to do exactly the same thing. Are we sure this guy isn’t a little bionic too?

After the two of them dispatch all the bad guys, while their hands are tied behind their backs might I add, Antonio gives our bionic hero a new order- leave the doctor here. Apparently, the classified info contains detailed blueprints on her and Stevens knows it all! Antonio says the only way to keep her safe is to kill the doctor before he can leak her secrets. Jaime disagrees and lays the smack down on Antonio, stealing his gun and running away with the doc.

Stevens gets away in time, but Jaime isn’t as lucky. She’s suddenly surrounded by a Henchman Convention and must find a new way out of the complex. She decides to leap over a series of dead-drops to the floor below, using her super-jumping abilities. She miraculously avoids enemy fire, that is until she takes a bullet to the shoulder and crashes to the ground. Stevens picks her up and leads her back to the ventilation shaft, where the two of them get away.

Bleeding on the streets of Paraguay is a dead give away, so the two take refuge in a bodega to find some supplies. After using her bionic eye and computer brain to turn off the store’s alarm system, Stevens gets to work on removing the bullet. He knows a lot about her and warns her that if left in, the anthrocites will move the bullet and possibly injure her further. She’s going into shock and she has no choice but to let him help.

Back at Jaime’s apartment, Becca is busy making herself a sundae when there’s someone at the door. She’s shocked to find Carly standing there, whom Jaime said she’d be with all weekend. Now where the heck could her sis be?

Meanwhile, Stevens is trying desperately to get the bullet out, but the darn thing keeps moving. As he works, he gives Jaime a little background on himself. After decrypting info for the CIA and watching that info used to kill people, he decided to only handle information he can live with. She in turn asks him if he has any info on why her hand keeps shaking. He tells her that it’s her cybernetic systems failing and resetting, a basic design flaw in her programming. The anthrocites fix the problem, but eventually they will stop working. What no one decided to tell her is that her bionic systems have a five year limited warranty before falling apart and killing her. Hmmm, I don’t think that was in the extended service plan, was it?

Over in that top-secret bionic lab back in America, the bionic team is studying Sarah. She asks Jae to bring her proof of the advancements Jonas promised her, and only then will she give up Will’s dad. When Jae can’t find any of that data on Will’s computer, Bledsoe tells him it does exist, but it’s not in the lab. It’s on the flash drive that Stevens is protecting over in Paraguay. What a bummer Jae. Once you tell Sarah, this is really going to put a crimp in your dating life, isn’t it?

And what do you know, she finds out and breaks her restraints, picking Jae up by the neck. After using him as a human shield and snapping a commando’s neck, she escapes from the facility. Looks like she was just playing along until she found out whether they could fix her.

Antonio finally discovers where Jaime and the doc are hiding, so Jaime stows the doctor in an elevator until its safe to come out. Jaime wants to protect him, but Antonio wants to kill him. What’s a bionic girl to do? Why, beat the snot out of him, that’s what! With some crazy kicks she sends Antonio flying into a bookcase, where he’s knocked unconscious. Unfortunately, when she goes back to find Stevens, he’s gone, and so is the flash drive.

As the show ends, we see Sarah trying to bring a snowboarder home with her, Bledsoe promising to fix Jaime before she dies and Becca confronting Jaime about her lie. Ultimately, Jaime can’t tell her the truth, but asks her to trust her.

So, what’s the consensus on this week’s episode? Was Antonio right about Stevens? Is he going to sell her info to the highest bidder and put her in danger? Also, does Ruth do anything in any episode besides making people answer her strange psychological surveys? And don’t you think it would’ve been easier for Jaime to just tell Becca she was going on a business trip? Post your comments below and stroll back here next week for more cyborg craziness. --Chris Sardelli

That’s how this week’s episode of “Bionic Woman” began, with Jamie trying to cool off from yet another sparring practice with Jae, by having lunch with her little sis Becca. Still reeling from all the information she’s learned over the past few weeks, Jae dropped another bomb on her- if she doesn’t like the programming in her head, she can actually hack herself and change it. Interesting, this may prove useful later on….

So, back to that lunch with Becca. It seems the two sisters have done a little bonding recently and, for once, they are actually enjoying each other’s company. (It doesn’t hurt that Big Sis is trying to buy Becca’s love with some ice cream and a movie.) Unfortunately, Bledsoe calls our bionic protagonist with a mission- there’s a bad guy down the street and Jaime needs to make sure he doesn’t leave the area. The strange part, Jaime wonders, is how her new boss knows where she is. Turns out he forgot to tell her they installed a GPS in her head. Whoops! Guess that pretty much rules out privacy for the rest of her life.

So, she does what any good Bionic Woman would do- finds the guy and asks him politely (using the cute girl routine) to help her with some directions. When Mr. Bad Guy doesn’t take the bait, she lets him have it with a one-two punch while he’s sitting inside his car. Problem solved. Back to lunch.

Meanwhile, back at the super secret Wolf Creek facility (a.k.a. Home of the Berkut Group which created Super Jaime), Bledsoe is busy professing his love to Ruth. Just kidding, it’s only the super serious boss testing his abilities against a lie-detector machine. Turns out this guy is good! Ruth asks him how he pulls it off. His answer: “I’ve been married.” Ah, and what a lucky woman she must have been.

In another corner of Bionic Universe, we finally meet up with Anthony Anthros again (Will’s evil dad, who was broken out of a super-max prison back in the premiere). He’s clutching a Blackberry-type device with the words “Sarah Corvis Diagnostic” on the display. Unfortunately, the device also reads: Life Expectancy Erosion 80%. I guess Sarah has some big problems, as the camera pans over to her shaking arm. Anthony tells her that if she wants help fixing whatever is killing her, he needs her to bring Jaime in for an examination. In the meantime, he’ll dull her pain with some medication only he can provide. Anyone else think he’s just getting her hooked, so she’ll be indebted to him?

At that moment in Wolf Creek, Jaime is hopping mad about the tracking device in her head. Bledsoe tells her the bionic brain implants also include a video camera, one which automatically streams video from her eye. In essence, they turned Jaime into a walking handi-cam and she is not happy about. Too bad, he tells her, but the sucker is grafted onto her brain and to remove it means she has to die. In one of the funnier moments of the night, she calls the whole thing “pervy.”

Before she can resolve the whole issue, Bledsoe gives Jaime another mission. He wants her to play Bionic Babysitter for a Canadian defense contractor’s daughter. The contractor is worried some bad guys may harm her while she’s in the country (which both Bledsoe and Jaime agree has about as much of a chance at happening as Isaiah Washington has of getting back on that medical show). She argues that it’s a waste of her time, but Bledsoe wins.

Soon, she’s off to meet the little angel, Heaven Van Fleet. Jaime gets some advance warning, though, from the girl’s father who says she’s not to get any new tattoos, piercings, alcohol or drugs. Seems she hates her dad and any “goon” that’s hired to protect her (this includes Jaime).

Later that night, Jaime and Becca are having some fun, dancing and singing along to music in their apartment. But they’re not alone; Sarah is watching them and leaps onto their building for a closer look. As the two sisters discuss their family tree and flip through photos on Becca’s computer, Sarah super-listens from outside.

Once Jaime is asleep, she dreams Sarah is telling her to keep her eyes open. She suddenly wakes up to find Sarah looming over her bed. She runs towards the door, but Sarah is fast too and she cuts her off. Jaime scans the room for something to attack with, but as she does, Sarah lists each item as Jaime looks at it. She explains they have the same programming, so nothing Jaime does will work against her.

Jaime realizes she can’t fight her way out, so she decides to talk instead. She angrily tells her that the Bionic Pyscho Lady killed the only man she ever loved, as well as her unborn child. Sarah is taken aback (it seems there’s still a little emotion left in that bionic brain after all). She explains she’s not there to hurt Jaime or Becca, but just wants to talk. She asks Jaime to trust her and to meet her alone the next day to discuss things further.

Bledsoe is none to happy about the meeting, having seen it all through Jaime’s Handy-Cam Eye. He wants Sarah brought in, dead if necessary. Before he can launch the Deathstar and his own personal legion of cyber-ninjas, Jaime suggests she meet with Sarah first. He agrees, but back-up won’t be too far behind. He also lets Jaime know that Sarah is totally unstable, made worse by the fact that she got her little sister killed in a car accident years earlier. (This makes sense judging by the flashbacks we’ve seen whenever Sarah is around).

Meanwhile, Psycho Sarah is busy doing push-ups on her fists and punching holes in the walls of her hotel room. She also looks like she needs another fix of that medicine Anthony gave her. She just needs to hold out until her meeting with Jaime.

Before that can happen, though, Jaime is still stuck babysitting teenage nightmare Heaven. The girl gives her the slip at a clothing store and it takes Jaime a few minutes, and one embarrassing phone call from Jonas, to find her at a tattoo parlor. She drags her off to Wolf Creek for a visit with Ruth. My question, though, is if this is a super-secret facility where a shadowy group conducts cybernetic experiments on human beings, how the heck is Jaime bringing a teenage civilian with a bad attitude through the door? I mean, the girl doesn’t even have a guest badge or anything? And Ruth doesn’t even flinch. She just takes the girl off for some “testing.” Geez, let’s hope the Canadians don’t find out about this. This lapse in security does shed some light on how Sarah delivered that rose to Jae last week without anyone seeing her. Maybe Jonas should shell out a little money for some guards. Or maybe a gate.

Anyways, back to the story. Jaime drops by Antonio’s (Isaiah Washington) office to get some background info on Sarah. He tells her that Sarah is working with Will’s dad and that the two probably want to get their hands on Jaime.

When the two bionic women finally meet, Sarah pleads with Jaime to help save her life. Seems those little anthrocites that are swimming in her blood may be the key to fixing the problems with Sarah’s implants. She also plants some seeds of doubt about Will, saying he may have been scoping Jaime out as a prospective soldier long before Jaime was injured in the accident. Before they can finish, a group of soldiers appears and scares her away.

Back at Bionic Headquarters, Antonio cuts Jaime’s sparring practice short. He wants to find the “animal” in her. So he starts swinging a crow bar at her, asking for her to pummel him, which she does in short order. Afterwards, she and Jae have a heart-to-heart about what to do with Sarah. Jae says she’s been known to hold a grudge, so she better watch her back. Gee thanks Jae. Couldn’t you put in a good word for Jaime when you’re meeting up with Sarah at the Yellow Rose Hotel?

As soon as she finished sparring, she rescues Heaven from Ruth, who’s building a psychological profile of the girl. Heaven apologizes for ditching and asks if they can get the heck out of there. So Jaime takes her for a manicure. But like most of Jaime’s relaxing moments, its cut short by a surprise visit from Crazy Sarah. She still wants Jaime’s help, but Jaime says she doesn’t need Sarah’s. Sarah relents and tells Jaime to handle the four Serbian gangsters coming for Heaven all by herself.

The burly bad guys immediately bust through the door and start tossing manicurists around the salon. While Sarah sits and reads a magazine, Jaime is busy throwing the hitmen around the room. Only after asking politely does Sarah join the fight, asking if they should play “rock, paper, scissors” on who gets the last bad guy. With the Serbians dispatched, the bionic women take the Canadian Terror to safety.

In the night’s funniest exchange, Sarah and Jaime have a conversation in a parking garage. First Sarah tells Jaime to watch out that the Berkut Group isn’t watching her in the shower. Then she says they need to stick together, “maybe form a union.” Then Sarah gives Jaime advice on how to hack her own brain and turn her camera off, which Jaime successfully does. Ultimately, though, Jaime says no to helping Sarah, forcing the cybernetic crazy to storm off.

This does not make Will’s dad very happy. He berates Sarah for not getting the job done and tells her she needs to get Jaime to relate to her. Maybe if Jaime felt the same loss that Sarah feels about her dead sister, the two could bond. Uh-oh.

As Jaime comes home with some Chinese food she opens the door to find Sarah having tea with Becca. It seems Sarah charmed her way in, convincing Becca she was a new neighbor. In a flash Becca passes out, courtesy of some drugged tea. The stone-cold Sarah picks Becca up by her neck and threatens Jaime one more time- work with her or her sister dies. Jaime talks her down, though, by appealing to her humanity. It was all a ruse, though, so Jaime could turn her camera back on, which sends Sarah fleeing again.

So, how did everyone like this week’s episode? Personally, I think the dialogue has gotten a lot better (though the producers still need to work on the show’s pacing; things happen a little too fast). How about that Sarah Corvis- anyone else think she could be the poster child for bipolar disorder? First, she’s willing to talk with Jaime, and then she hates her! Then it’s back to discussing stuff; then she’s drugging her sister. Seems a tad unbalanced. Also, did anyone else notice that Jaime’s former boyfriend’s last name was Anthros and the things swimming in her blood are called Anthrocites? Anyway, post your comments below and make sure to come back next week for some more bionic fun. --Chris Sardelli

As Jaime leaves the service, clutching her sister Becca, Jonas Bledsoe appears, trying to recruit her once again. She tells him off, explaining she’d rather go back to her life and forget any of this ever happened. I guess we’ll just have to change the name of the show to Bionic Bartender, unless she somehow changes her mind…..

Later on, as she walks through Will’s apartment trying to face the reality that he isn’t coming back, she steps on a creaking floorboard. As she pulls the board away, she discovers a thick file labeled ‘Classified Material.’ To her surprise, the folder is all about her: old IQ tests, pictures of her, information from years before she even met Will. Seems like the dearly departed may have been a super stalker.

Clearly unable to handle the fact that Will was, for some reason, keeping tabs on her, Jaime pulls up a stool at the local bar and seeks solace at the bottom of a shot glass. In the background, a news report mentions the quarantine of a little town called Paradise, Idaho (an event that becomes much more important later on). As she drunkenly declares that she’s done with wasting time on long-term relationships and looking for “Mr. Right Now,” she eyes a guy who just walked up to the bar. Before you know it, she and Mr. Right Now are making out in the bathroom. Unfortunately, not realizing her own strength, she pushes the guy so hard he breaks a rib. Surprisingly, this doesn’t faze Boozing Bionic Woman.

In a flash, the bathroom door opens and Bledsoe walks in, wanting to know what she thinks she’s doing, and who this guy is. Mr. Right Now, as we soon learn, is named Steve and he is very grateful for the interruption, because he just wants to go to the hospital. As Steve scampers away grabbing his side, Bledsoe and Jaime start arguing…again. He wants her to work for him, not only because he technically owns most of her limbs and parts of her head, but because she could be doing so much more than working in a bar. Jaime wants to know who the heck they are. Jonas responds: “We are a private, clandestine group dedicated to stopping rogue organizations from ending civilization as we know it.” His next question: are you in or out? Jaime smirks and says she’s most definitely out. But hey, you gotta give the man credit, at least he’s honest.

The next day, Jaime wakes to a call from Becca’s school. The principal wants to chat with her about Becca’s extracurricular activities, namely little sis’s pot-smoking session in the girls bathroom. The principal wants to either expel her or bar her from the talent show, but Bionic Sis saves the day and spares Becca from both punishments. The touching moment is short lived as the two sisters start fighting again, ending with both angrily agreeing that baby sis should go live with their dad.

Back at Wolf Creek, Ruth and Bledsoe are staring intently at security camera footage from Paradise, Idaho. The images show several dead bodies on the ground. They all seem to have dropped right where they were. Ruth is absolutely sure it’s a biological attack and wants permission to enter the town. Bledsoe is a little more hesitant, worried about stepping on the Army’s toes. If only he commanded a shadowy group of ultra-secret cybernetic ninja soldiers…wait a minute, he does!

In the meantime, Jaime is busy reevaluating her life. Her self-esteem has nose-dived ever since she quit college to care for her sister. She’s also more than a little jealous and distracted when she learns one of her close friends just got into Columbia Law. So she travels to the local bookstore to read ‘What Color Is Your Parachute?’ Amazingly, this is the same bookstore where Dr. Burke from “Grey’s Anatomy” likes to shop and walk his dog Scraps. Actually the guy’s name is Antonio, played by former “Anatomy” star Isaiah Washington, and he gives her a little pep talk. Thank goodness for the kindness of strangers.

With a shot of self-esteem in one hand and her Parachute book in the other, Jaime leaves the store to discover her true path. It’s not long, though, before her bionic ear tunes in to a woman sobbing. With her telescopic eye, she spots a suicidal woman about to jump from a nearby ledge. In a flash, Jaime grabs the woman with her bionic arm and pulls her to safety. When the woman asks her how she did it, she answers: “Pilates.”

Like all good heroes, Jaime quickly learns that with great power comes great responsibility. She makes a social call to Wolf Creek (which I’m sure is very easy to locate on Google Maps) and tells Head Honcho Bledsoe she’s in. But she has a few ground rules: 1) She has to be home every night by 7 to have dinner with sis, 2) she doesn’t work weekends and 3) she wants him to hook Becca up with their Blue Cross/Cyber-Ninja Assassin Health Care program. Bledsoe agrees and tells her to meet her new associate. She turns around and, surprise, it’s Isaiah Washington!

Turns out Antonio was just testing Jaime, trying to figure out if she had been compromised. Even though she has a lot of questions, he tells her there will be time for that later. Soon enough, Jae begins her training, first by reenacting her recent brawl with Sarah Corvis. His first lesson, though, is that she is not invincible and will need to become more than just the machine if she intends to survive.

In a scene that just begged for that “Eye of the Tiger” song, Jaime and Jae are soon hard at work. She’s busy doing bionic pull-ups and cheetah runs, while Jae tests her agility and stamina. We soon learn some cool facts about Jaime’s new abilities: she can run 60 mph, she can shatter bricks, she can bend steel with her grip, she has 2,000/20 vision and can hear up to 2 miles away. But what Jaime really wants to know from Jae is whether he was in love with Sarah Corvis. He expertly dodges the question. Do I sense some future problems for Jae when he finally meets up with his former cyber-girlfriend?

With the scene rapidly deteriorating in Paradise, Idaho, Ruth is pleading with Bledsoe to let her investigate. She’s worried the attack was merely a test-run and needs to check it out. Jaime bionically eavesdrops and volunteers to go with her. And even though Ruth disapproves, Jonas thinks this could be a great test-run of Jaime’s abilities.

So, the dynamic duo of Ruth and Jaime are off to Paradise to find out what went wrong. Posing as a member of the Department of Agriculture, Ruth gets them inside the town barriers and soon they’re staring at a dead body. Ruth immediately recognizes the biohazard; it’s an airborne toxin called DMC-30 that dissipates within 12 hours. How does she know all that you ask? Oh, because her group developed it.

Over at the Bat Cave, um, I mean Wolf Creek, Jae strolls into his office to find a yellow rose and a note on his desk. The note reads: “Couples Counseling? You Know Where to Find Me.” Could this be a note from his long lost love? Turns out, he knows exactly where to go and suddenly he’s at the Yellow Rose Hotel. Inside he’s shocked to find his former love staring at him. “You’re not going to kill me twice, are you?” she asks. Not surprisingly, he lowers his gun. Pretty soon the two are naked on the floor reminiscing about old times: he asks why she killed all those people, she thinks her body was hacked. If this is what they talk about while naked in front of a roaring fireplace, who knows what they used to talk about during staff meetings.

At that moment, Ruth and Jaime discover someone is still alive in Paradise. She’s a teenager named Vivian, and apparently she’s immune to the virus. She remembers something odd about last night- a gas truck driving in circles around town. But before they can figure out what happened, Jaime and Vivian are on the run from a group of men dressed as Army soldiers. Diving from a barrage of bullets, the two take refuge in a store until one of the bad guys finds them and starts brawling with Jaime. After taking a few hard punches, Jaime busts out her cyber-limbs and beats the guy unconscious.

Ruth soon shows up and lays a booby trap, which blows up a platoon of bad guys. And, like a knight in shining armor who just got kicked off his top-rated medical show, Antonio swoops in and saves the day, picking off all but one man in the commando unit.

Antonio decides to question the lone surviving bad guy to find out if this was indeed a test run and finds out Paradise was only a prelude to tonight, when 20 trucks are scheduled to release the gas across the country. He unleashes yet another strike team of ninjas who find the operation and shut it down.

Jaime has a little heart-to-heart with Jonas and seems both excited and scared, but is dedicated to staying with his little covert group. And with that, the day is saved and Jaime makes it to Becca’s talent show performance just in time. All in a day’s work for our Bionic Bartender.

What did everyone think of the episode? Do you really think Will is dead? (I don’t. He’s so coming back during sweeps week.) Do you think Jae is going to play both sides, or is he going to turn Sarah in? Post your comments below and I’ll see you all back here next week for some more cybernetically enhanced entertainment. –Chris Sardelli

The show, which featured Michelle Ryan as title character Jaime Sommers squaring off against evil cyborg Sarah Corvis, became one of the most watched freshman debuts so far and broke a few records over at NBC. According to Entertainment Weekly, not only did it become NBC’s highest-rated Wednesday series premiere (in the 18-49 demographic) since “The West Wing” in 1999, but it was the network’s highest-rated regularly scheduled program on Wednesday at 9 p.m. since an episode of “Wing” back in 2003.

Here are some other interesting facts about the premiere, according to Variety: it edged out the “Grey’s Anatomy” spin-off “Private Practice” which aired during the same hour on ABC; it actually increased the amount of viewers from its lead-in “Deal or No Deal;” and it attracted a similar amount of men and women. –Chris Sardelli

That’s exactly how the premiere of “Bionic Woman” began last night. With a clattering of footsteps, an elite group of commandos clad in black riot gear and armed to the teeth rushed down a creepy hallway at the Wolf Creek Biotech Research Facility. As they look around, it’s evident something bad has gone down. The hallway looks like a scene out of “Dawn of the Dead.” Bloody bodies are everywhere. But really, could anything good have happened in a place called Wolf Creek? I think not.

When the commandos burst through the door at the end of the hallway, they’re treated to the sight of a blond woman in a hospital gown, kneeling over yet another bloody body. As the camera focuses in on her, she whispers “I didn’t want to. I’m out of control.” The head of the commandos, an Asian man with slicked back hair, agrees with her. As she turns around, she asks him to tell her he loves her. All he gives her is a blank stare. Crazy, bloody lady obviously didn’t appreciate that, as she suddenly leapt like a frog on steroids through the air at him. Without hesitating, he drew his gun and shot her. The bullet drops her like a sack of potatoes and as she lifts her head to look at him he says: “I love you too.” Then he shoots her again. I sense a troubled relationship.

Flash forward three years to a crowded club in San Francisco. The place is jumping and the bartender is working hard to keep the drinks coming. Her name is Jaime Sommers and she’s our future Bionic Woman. After work, Jaime comes home to find her sister asleep on the couch, the TV still on. She heads for bed, probably looking forward to the sleep…alas, baby sis likes to rock out in the morning. According to Jaime’s alarm clock, it’s only 8:42 a.m. and loud music is pouring through Jaime’s door. She bolts out of bed to discover sis Becca blasting rock tunes. After a few knocks on the door, Jaime bursts into Becca’s room and starts what feels like their hundredth argument this week. As the fight moves from her room to the car to Becca’s school, we learn some fun facts: Becca can’t be near computers because of a court order (she’s probably a hacker), Becca does indeed have a computer (she hangs it outside her window so Jaime can’t find it) and Papa Sommers dropped baby sis on Jaime’s doorstep. Ah, another happy TV family.

Then it’s back to school. In a university classroom a professor scrolls through a lesson on bioethics, describing how different people have altered themselves. We soon learn the dashing professor is Will, Jaime’s boyfriend. Oh and he’s a surgeon as well (a plot point that becomes important pretty quickly).

The two have a heart-to-heart after class and Jaime asks the prof what he sees in her. His loving answer: she’s “unexpected,” the one thing his father didn’t plan for him. Would anybody’s girlfriend in real life actually think that’s a compliment? Well Jaime does, mainly because she thinks that being a college dropout and a bartender makes her unworthy to be his girlfriend. She obviously has some self-esteem issues to deal with. If only there was something to boost her confidence…hmmm, if only….

Later, over dinner, Will is obviously excited about the prospect of going to Paris for his job. That’s when she drops a bomb- she’s pregnant! She knows it’s sudden, but Will interrupts with a little soliloquy he somehow came up with between finishing his mashed potatoes and hearing the big news. They’ve been dating for five months and fourteen days, and he knows he wants to marry her.

With love in the air and a bun in the oven, Will and Jaime are riding in the car and talking about their future. The professor clearly moves fast though; he’s already got some baby names picked out. (My response would have been- hold on there bucko; her response- more disbelief. Get this woman some bionic implants stat!) Unfortunately their family plans are going to have to wait, because out of nowhere a big rig plows into the passenger side of the car!! The car tumbles several times before slamming into a pole. With Jaime unconscious and Will yelling her name, upside down might I add, a mysterious blond woman tosses the dead truck driver aside and exits the truck. As she strolls away, we learn it’s the crazy, bloody frog lady from the beginning!!

Not that it matters, though, because Jaime’s in trouble. We catch glimpses of a trauma team taking care of her in a helicopter. We hear she’s sustained extensive crush injuries to her right arm and both legs and somehow Will is OK, telling her to hold on. Now back to that creepy Wolf Creek place where a team of doctors discusses her condition. Her arm and her legs are goners, the fetal heartbeat has stopped and she’s close to death. Will isn’t ready to count her out, though, and approves some radical reconstruction.

It’s off to the Green Room, as Will and his team set to fixing his broken girlfriend. Above, from an observation deck, a blond woman (not the frog woman) and Dr. Macy from “Crossing Jordan” (played by Miguel Ferrer) are discussing Will’s rash decision. Ferrer’s character, actually named Jonas Bledsoe, tells the woman that even though her surgery is unexpected, they can claim deniability at any time and terminate the subject. Lovely people, these shadowy government conspiratorial types, aren’t they? Bledsoe apparently heads up this research team and he’s going to see what Will’s gotten them into.

In another part of the city, in what probably is the weirdest scene of the night, Crazy Frog Lady meets up with some guy who sounds French and is stitching up his own arm. He asks her if she killed the doctor and she says yes. Then they proceed to make out, while she asks him if she reminds him of “her.” Creepy? Most definitely. Making much sense yet? Nope.

Back to Jaime in her hospital bed. She opens her eyes and looks over to see Will. He breaks the bad news to her: she lost some limbs and unfortunately lost the baby as well. He then tells Jaime that her limbs have been replaced, and some additions called “anthrocites” have been added to her blood. They’ve helped her heal incredibly quickly. Needless to say, things get bad pretty fast when she sees her weird-looking new appendages, starts screaming and accidentally sends Will hurtling into a glass door. Nurses run and sedate her. When she wakes again, she thinks it was all a dream. That is, until Will shows up again sporting a cast on his arm. Jaime learns she’s part bionic, and that she’s not in Kansas anymore.

It’s not long before the shadowy group is discussing Jaime’s future with them. The Blond Woman has done some homework: She found out Jaime is 24, was born in Iowa, her mom’s dead, she’s very loyal and has a high IQ. Bledsoe turns to that Asian guy from the beginning, who we learn is named Jae, and asks if Jaime is trainable. Jae’s not so sure.

Meanwhile Jaime is extremely unhappy. In a small room, she and Blond Woman, who introduces herself as Ruth, start discussing the situation. Ruth tells her a cover story has already been fabricated, one in which Jaime and Will went skiing in Vale. We also learn Jaime likes to draw. At the same time, Bledsoe makes it very clear to Will that no one gets a free ride at Wolf Creek, and that Jaime is going to have to deliver. When Ruth and Jae finally meet up, she has something interesting to show him- Jaime’s drawings. It looks suspiciously like Crazy Frog Lady who Jae thought he killed three years earlier.

Before either of them can consider the harsh reality that Frog Lady is out there jumping on people to death, a security breach alarm activates. Jaime has escaped! Turns out Will wants her to be free and tells her to run. And run she does! In the first real test of her cybernetic abilities, Jaime runs at super-speed away from her pursuers. Back at the lab, Will convinces the team that she’s more likely to join them if she feels she has some freedom. Thus, they let her run home.

Back at home, Jaime cries and avoids Will’s calls, unable to grasp what’s happened to her. But suddenly she suits up and decides to leap off a building. (A little too soon for my tastes. I mean, even Spiderman was in disbelief for at least a day before he jumped off a building.) She successfully makes the jump and starts building some of that self-confidence she so desperately needs.

That’s when we find Crazy Frog Lady back where she met the Frenchman, only to discover he’s left her. All that’s left on the wall are the words: You Failed Me. Guess she didn’t kill Will after all.

Next we zoom to a café where two strangers meet, one a bearded man, the other is the Frenchman. Turns out the Frenchman has this man’s wife, and he’s going to kill her if this guy doesn’t do what he says. It has something to do with the fact that this guy works at a Super-Max prison.

What a coincidence! At that moment, at the Blackwell Super-Max Prison in Florence, CA, Jae is questioning Will’s father! Jae wants to know how the bad dad faked Sarah Corvis’ death. Now who could this Sarah person be?

Over in San Francisco, Jaime is back at work, pouring drinks at the bar, when a woman starts chatting her up. She wants to know what someone so innocent is doing behind a bar. Suddenly Jaime’s eye and ear implants come on-line and overwhelm her with information, overwhelming her with sights and sounds. She runs to the bathroom to throw up and is soon joined by the lady from the bar. Surprisingly she says she can relate- those crazy implants are hard to get used to! Whoa, who is this, Jaime wonders. When she turns around and finds the woman gone, she runs out into the club to find her. From across the room she spots her and hears her say “Tell everyone, Sarah Corvis says hello.” With that, she disappears and we all connect the dots- our Crazy Frog Woman is none other than Sarah Corvis, a.k.a. the woman who made Jaime who she is today.

For some reason, Jaime decides to wander outside. In an alley. By herself. At night. The only reason being the producers wanted to show us how much Jaime can kick butt. She’s approached by a mugger, who she quickly tackles to the ground.

Now Jaime wants to know what’s going on. She runs to Will’s place where he lays it all down: she’s basically a cybernetic soldier with implants in her brain. After a brief argument, and a love scene, Jaime asks him the million dollar question: How does Sarah Corvis figure into all of this? Will’s stunned she even knows her name, but doesn’t have time to think about it. He’s soon blasted to the ground by a sniper shot to the shoulder. Jaime uses her super-sight to see it’s Sarah on a building far, far away. And in a flash, Jaime’s off.

She races down the street bounces over to an adjacent rooftop where she confronts Sarah. In the episode’s coolest scene, Sarah gives our protagonist an orientation into the world of Bionic People. Sarah tells her what she’s had replaced- both arms and both legs. The Wolf Creek people replaced one of her eyes too, but she decided to replace the other one herself. Turns out Sarah isn’t too stable. The two tussle, involving everything from Sarah breaking Jaime’s arms to tossing her off the building, but Jaime survives. They reach a stalemate and Sarah runs away, leaving Jaime alone in the rain.

At the end, Jaime confronts Bledsoe and the two offer ultimatums: he welcomes her to “the game” and she tells him she’ll participate but on her terms. She also lets him know that Sarah Corvis says hi. Elsewhere, in California, Will’s dad is free and on the loose.

So, what did you think of last night’s episode? I thought overall it was a pretty solid debut. The show obviously had a lot to set-up, so it seemed a little jam-packed. I’d say aside from some pacing problems (would she really accept her predicament that quickly? And go back to bartending the next day?) and some campy dialogue (some of Sarah’s roof-top chat with Jaime was downright corny), the show is off to a good start. Post your comments below and I’ll see you all back here next week, same bionic-time, same bionic-channel. –Chris Sardelli

4. What’s out: cheesy slow-motion effects, the disco era and pretty much everything from the original series. What’s in: A sleek, new update that ditches the old “My parachute malfunctioned while I was sky-diving” premise from Lindsay Wagner’s old show and replaces it with a more realistic approach. Brand new Bionic Woman Jaime Sommers gains her new abilities after suffering catastrophic injuries in a car wreck. Lucky for Jaime, her scientist boyfriend just happens to work for an ultra-secret military project that upgrades soldiers with robotic body parts. The result: Jaime reluctantly becomes a government super agent. Don’t you just hate when that happens?

3. “Woman” Executive Producer David Eick has extensive experience updating old shows from the ‘70s- he also helms the futuristic cult-fave “Battlestar Galactica.” And judging by fans and critics who applaud that show’s dense storylines and appealing characters, “Bionic” could be this year’s surprise hit.

2. Lead actress Michelle Ryan, 23, plays a student/bartender who’s already up to her neck in responsibility, trying to balance work, school, her boyfriend and her teenage sister (played by Lucy Hale). Wondering where you’ve seen Ryan before? Well, unless you’re British, you probably haven’t. Ryan made her mark on the BBC soap opera “East Enders.”

1. Got villains? “Bionic” sure does. Unlike its predecessor, this show will feature plenty of bad guys, ranging from shadowy government agents to all-out cybernetic crazies. Miguel Ferrer, previously of NBC’s “Crossing Jordan,” plays an intimidating government agent who leads the group that altered Jaime. Also around to cause trouble is another bionic woman, played by “Battlestar” actress Katee Sackhoff, who will tussle with Jaime on a regular basis.

So, how excited are you for tonight’s premiere? Leave your comments below, and also make sure to check out the recap of the premiere tomorrow on the Bionic Woman Fodder blog. –Chris Sardelli