Pushing Daisies Using Bionic Abilities

Did we watch Bionic Woman last night? After what I thought to be a middling first episode, I think the second episode kind of picked things up. In fact, I wish that the two had been aired back-to-back, because last night was really just a continuation of last week, wasn't it? Jaime joined up with the covert espionage group that funded her bionic implants, and became part of the system, which she had rebelled against at the end of the pilot.

I thought the explanation Jae Kim (Will Yun Lee) gave last night for Jaime's battle with Sarah Corvis (the original bionic woman) was really interesting – that Sarah was calibrating Jaime's battle systems and her own. Fascinating. I think it's a really interesting addition to the show, this notion that the bionics aren't just maker her stronger and faster, but that they themselves control some of what she does involuntarily. That's really the jump between the old show's technology and the new show's technology, isn't it? I guess the fact that Jaime's implants cost $50 million instead of less than $6 million is another difference, but I'm putting most of that cash as going to the computer chips and controlling systems behind it.

I think the show last night also hit a really good mix between action, comedy, and drama. Little moments like the geek's whacking Jaime on the back of her head in order to stop the buzzing in her ear were great.

And, yes, I watched Pushing Daisies, the critical darling of the new fall season. I thought it was cute and clever and I have some questions. But first, for those who didn't watch, a mini-recap. Our hero, Ned (Lee Pace), discovered when he was about nine years old that he can touch things and people and bring them back from the dead. If he touches them again they die permanently, but if he leaves them alive for more than a minute something else must die in order to balance out the universe. He uses his ability to figure out who killed people and collect rewards based on that information. Helping him out are Emerson Cod (the fantastic Chi McBride) and his now living, but momentarily dead until he brought her back (that would be the plot of the first episode), childhood sweetheart Charlotte 'Chuck' Charles (Anna Friel).

Now, my questions. We know that Ned, who is a pie maker, takes old fruit and brings them back to life for his pies. Well, what dies when he does that? Is it an entity of equal or lesser value? If he brings back a fruit does a person die or another fruit? I have to assume another fruit, but how did he test that one out? Did our hero, at one time, have a Dexter-esque past? I think the show does not intend any such implication, but I wonder anyway. Seeing as he did not get a manual about the effects of touching things he must have experimented in order to figure out the rules. Was he willing to touch a fruit to bring it back to life and risk the death of a human being? He must have been. What does that tell us about Ned? Is the show suddenly going to get all evil?

Okay, enough perversity and ruining of a perfectly fun little show. I thought the narrator (Jim Dale) was great, there was a preciseness to what he said and a certain whimsy to how he said it. The voiceover was present throughout the episode and added to the enjoyment of the show. I wonder if that is going to quickly get tiring though — there's only so much ironic, syrupy sweetness that one can I take, I should imagine. I guess we'll all find out together.

Speaking of tiring, the last show I will talk about today, Kitchen Nightmares, seemed very tired last night. There was nothing really horrifically wrong with the restaurant, just an incompetent manager and the wretched, horrible, horrendous, horrific wife of the owner. Sadly, the show chose to spend more time on the incompetent manager, which would be okay if every episode this season hadn't featured an incompetent manager as the root cause of the problems at the restaurants. The wife though — my goodness, this woman wanted her husband to shutter his dream. She made it quite clear that she wants the restaurant closed. When the owner decided to keep it open she literally gave out a hugely depressed sigh and slid down in her chair. My God woman, I would hope that your husband gives you more support with your dreams than you give him. I'm not suggesting you completely subvert your desire to your husband's, but a modicum of support might be nice to see. Do you tell him he looks like a fool every time he comes home from getting his hair cut, too?

If I were Gordon Ramsay I know who I would've suggested take a hike, and it wouldn't have been the manager.