Bionic Woman

When I'm recording these fall pilots, I've gotten in the habit of starting all the recordings one minute early and ending one minute late, just to accommodate any network scheduling shenanigans. When I went to watch Bionic Woman, though, I noticed my recording started right at the end of a really pivotal scene where Starbuck, the original Bionic Woman, is getting shot.

I checked online recaps later and determined that I had started probably about a minute into the show, which means that NBC had started it a full two minutes before the scheduled start time. I could write pages on how much this bothers me, but for the sake of brevity I will limit myself to the following:

Networks: I don't care what time you start your show. If you want to start it at 8:57, that's fine. If you want to start at 9:14, that's fine too. I don't care that you don't stick right to the hour or half hour in an attempt to jump on other networks' programming. I have enough TiVos that I can keep up and still catch everything. All I want is for you to tell me what time the show starts and then stick to it. I see all sorts of things in my guide like shows starting at 9:58 and 10:02, and that looks like you're doing the right thing. However, if my guide says 10:02 and you start the show at 10:00, I can't watch it. If the guide says 10:00 and you start the show at 9:57, I can't watch it. I refuse to watch only part of a creative work that's meant to be enjoyed as a whole, especially when there's no good reason why I shouldn't be able to watch the whole thing. Remember, you're the ones who want me to watch your shows. Don't make it harder for me.

So anyway, I was confused through the whole pilot, because I had missed crucial exposition. I'll probably watch the next episode, but if I feel even slightly confused by what I missed, I won't be able to really get into it, and will drop the whole series. So, it all comes down to that first minute.

As far as the review goes, Starbuck wasn't that good in the pilot, and the girl playing Jaime Sommers was pretty wooden. It had Miguel Ferrer in it, though, and he's cool.