Holding Out for a Hero

Of all the interesting roles for women created by science fiction on television these days, there are still those shows which have tremendous potential and yet seem to fall short of the mark. One such example is Heroes.

It’s not as simple as saying there are no complex or interesting roles for women in Heroes lore, however there is a peculiar tendency in the lore created by the show to have the female characters, even those with their own superhuman abilities, most often relegated to either victims in need of protection, or quasi-villains in need of being stopped or set upon a different path.

The most prominent female character in the show is arguably Claire Bennet, the indestructible cheerleader. And if you followed the story of the first season, she was the subject of the show’s first and most famous tagline: Save the Cheerleader, Save the World. Partly due to her young age, and partly to her essentially passive ability, the idea of saving, sheltering or protecting Claire was one of the most universal themes of the season, with most of the characters, even those without super-human abilities, motivated to aid in the cause of saving her from the parasitic villain Sylar, out to acquire her power as he had so many others, by getting very up close and personal with her brain – which would have been slightly difficult to overcome, even for the girl who makes a habit of throwing herself off of tall structures and sticking her hand down garbage disposals.

By the end of the season, despite the infamous declaration which had made her survival key to ‘saving the world’, Claire’s part in averting a nuclear disaster had more to do with inspiring heroics in others than it did accomplishing anything in her own right. As ‘The Cheerleader’ she existed in no small way as the representative of youth and hope, undying innocence to be saved and preserved. As the iconic personification of female adolescence, the all American cheerleader, she was something of a modern day equivalent of a princess in peril, waiting for the brave knights to prove their worth on the quest to save her.

By contrast, we have the other most prominent female character in the form of Niki Sanders. Despite being one of the more compelling emotional stories, Niki’s struggle through the season was largely against the nemesis in her own mind, an alternate personality known as Jessica. The result of abuse she endured as a child, and the death of her sister Jessica, Niki’s mind had splintered into another distinct personality. Like a mutant Sybil, Niki’s ability to use her incredible strength was paralyzed by her alter ego. Jessica was created by Niki’s mind in no small way to give her an detached sense of strength in the face of abuse she faced as a child, a separate persona who could endure the torments her mind didn’t know how to bear and protect her from even the knowledge of them. However, as an adult, her duty of serving as Niki’s emotional strength meant in turn that she was also the recipient of Niki’s physical strength.

Jessica existed in part as the villain in the story of Niki, and the struggles of her family and representing Niki’s inability to accept the burden of her own strength. And yet, in the end, Jessica’s defeat was signified by her giving up control rather than Niki seizing it, and Niki’s embracing her own power came in the face of a shape-shifting villain named Candace who merely impersonated Jessica, paralyzing Niki once again until Jessica appeared to her one last time to inspire her.

Most disappointing about Niki’s story, was that after all of her struggles, the idea of embracing her strength was never shown in more than fleeting glimpses. One blow disabled Candace, and even Niki’s jumping into the final battle against Sylar amounted to a single strike which seemed to exist more to give another character, Peter, the ability to absorb her power and aid in his ability to fight against the season’s biggest villain.

The new season of Heroes has been a mixed bag in terms of it’s female roles. With Claire’s storyline dominated by a new a love interest who along with her adoptive father has already helped to save her, and Niki struggling once again with the idea of her own strength, having developed yet another personality along the way and potentially losing her strength entirely, even as she is infected with a disease which left her in need of a male characters heroics in order to save her.

A much brighter spot has been the introduction of a new character, a cousin to Niki’s son Micah, named Monica Dawson, who possesses the ability to mimic any physical action she witnesses and as such has happily not yet been in need of rescue. However, in addition we have been introduced to Elle, a lightning powered sociopath, and Maya, for whom anxiety brings about a black-eyed plague which kills anyone near her with the exception of her brother, who in true Heroes fashion has the ability to save her and those around her by absorbing the disease and neutralizing it.

During the first season we were teased with glimpses of a character named Hana Gitelman, known as Wireless, who existed mainly in the graphic novel sub-set of the Heroes story and unfortunately seemed to disappear from there as well, was perhaps the most dynamic and outright heroic of all the female characters introduced into the Heroes universe. It’s hard not to hope, in a mythology where such abilities are manifested in such a variety of characters, that by the end of the current season we’ll actually get to see a few of the these female characters not in need of being saved or controlled. And ones who are inspired by the same kind of impulse toward heroism demonstrated by their male counterparts, rather than simply serving as the inspiration.

Sixes and Seven

Lately, I’ve found myself braving the wilds of Spike TV, and their corny commercials about Manswers, for the chance to re-watch episodes of Star Trek: Voyager. It’s interesting to watch how the show came alive with the introduction of Seven of Nine in the latter seasons, her distinctive personality adding a new perspective on the franchise’s well established canon of characters designed to explore the nature of humanity, though unlike those which came before, with Mr. Spock, Data and even Odo, Seven represented among the first female characters to occupy the complexity of such a role.

Interesting also, is the comparison which comes to mind to another numerically designated statuesque blonde making her mark on sci fi television these days.

As Seven did during her time as part of the Borg Collective, the idea of a shared consciousness and unity of purpose lends a certain sense of commonality among each unique humanoid Cylon models on Battlestar Galactica. And if Seven’s choice of attire lent itself to the perception that her introduction was meant to include a certain titillation factor, Cylon model number Six’s almost predatory sexuality makes no excuses for her revealing attire. Rather than being a meta-textual element designed to appeal to certain elements of the audience, Six’s appeal to the baser human instincts is a fundamental aspect of her characterization. As such, it serves to enhance the sense of menace she is able to invoke, like a Venus Flytrap seducing it’s prey with an intoxicating aroma and luring it to it’s doom.

Making her an even more indefinable threat is the genuine fascination with humanity, and the idea of love. By contrast, Seven of Nine’s introduction carried with it a basic disdain for the notion of humanity and its perceived weaknesses. Despite being born human, Seven’s assimilation by the technologically predatory race known as the Borg, where individuality is purged in the name of harmonious thought and the purpose of a unified whole, helped define her own beliefs and sense of self-worth. When encouraged to rediscover her humanity, Seven is contemptuous, describing humans as “hypocritical and manipulative”, adding “we do not want to be what you are!”

During her years on Voyager, Seven’s journey took her from this sense of derision, to an uneasy curiosity and finally a genuine, if tentative, exploration of her own nascent humanity. Equally transitory was her opinion of the Borg themselves, as she came to have a greater understanding of their destructiveness through the eyes of cultures and individuals they had victimized. And though she initially scoffed at the notion of guilt as irrelevant, Seven came to feel great remorse for atrocities she had been apart of, even without her individual consciousness or consent. More than once, she proved willing to sacrifice her own life in the name of doing penance for what she perceived as her crimes.

One of the Sixes, known as Caprica Six for her pivotal role in the dominating victory of her people over the human colonies, underwent a similar change of heart with regard to the beliefs and actions of her own race. Having fallen in love with Gaius Baltar, Caprica’s disagreement with the destruction of all humans caused her to stand up, along side another Cylon with emotional ties to humanity, as lone voices of dissention against the unified will of the Cylons, their experiences setting them apart from even other identical models much like Borg liberated from the Collective by being disconnected from the hive mind.

And while the most often seen version of Six is a literal fantasy, existing only in the mind of Baltar as a constant, if often meddlesome, companion, unwilling to let him forget his own isolation from humanity, the real Caprica Six, downloaded into a new body after using her old one to shield Baltar from a nuclear blast, carries a similar illusion of Baltar, reminding her in turn of her own detachment from the other Cylons and her ultimate conscience and guilt for her instrumental part in the destruction of the human societies. The implied connection between Baltar’s troubled psyche and Six’s equally troubled consciousness strengthens the notion of the connection between them, not only as characters, but as representatives of their respective races, further blurring the lines between what defines someone as being alive. Seen as initially dangerous by the rest of the Cylons for being “celebrities in a culture based on unity” whose voices might carry over the collective whole, the idea of such a threat was also shared by the singular consciousness in command of the Borg Collective, their Queen, upon discovering an anomalous unconscious connection between many of her own drones, allowing them the freedom of independent thought and action, if only during unconsciousness.

For both the Sixes and Seven, their characters came as a result of putting a face and identity on previously established faceless technological villains, yet villains which had some tenuous connection to humanity. In this new version of Cylons, they were created by humans, their ideological children while the Borg absorbed a connection to humanity by assimilating individual humans and gaining an interest in them in the process.

The idea of the link between artificial intelligence, artificial life and our own humanity is a staple of science fiction storytelling, seeking to push the boundaries of what can be called life and the idea of when increasingly complex and lifelike beings cross over into sentience and truly independent identity.

Using Freud’s model for understanding the human minds, perhaps the most interesting comparison of Six and Seven come in their contrasting journeys, with Six’s introduction being pure Id, approaching humanity through the realm of the sensual and sexual and only slowly finding a path to conscience and responsibility. While Seven carried the Borg beliefs and understandings with her as if it were the personification of a super-ego imposed over her consciousness. Her hesitant journey had to discover her own sense of identity before she could gain an understanding of, or appreciation for the idea pleasure, comfort and other primal instincts regarded as useless or irrelevant by the singular consciousness dominating the Borg.

In both cases, it would be easy on the surface to discount either of these characters based on the assumption that overt sexuality, in appearance or by design, exists in this context to mask shortcomings, or to serve as window dressing to the distract from the story being told rather than adding to it. But instead, both characters were embarking on a journey taking them, literally and figuratively from being just a number, important only in relation to the greater whole, to an identity born of that number, and defined by their distinctiveness from what other such numbers represent.

Openings Made by The Closer

With such an increase lately in programs featuring female leads, it’s interesting to note that the model for many of these shows share some basic similarities.

One could argue the trend began with Kyra Sedgwick playing Brenda Johnson in The Closer. Deputy Chief over a division handling priority homicides in Los Angeles, Brenda begins the series as a southern transplant, resented by many in the department for coming in to such a position as an outsider. Further complicating matters is the fact that she had once been involved in an affair with her new boss, Will Pope, as well as her no nonsense methods of investigations. Known as The Closer, for her ability to get airtight confessions out of her suspects, Brenda’s talents are most on display as she by turns charms, cajoles, intimidates and manipulates her quarry. Within the interrogation room, Brenda often leads her suspects down a labyrinth of words and emotions, twisting and turning until they wind up exactly where she intended them to be, when her sugary sweet demeanor can fall away to reveal the razor sharp wit beneath it like a trap snapping shut around them.

Her trademark is a using her soft southern twang, saying “Thank you, thank you very much”, when what it translates to is more like ‘you can’t deny that I’m right, so just do what I say and we can just get this over with’.

Contrasting with her uncanny ability to manipulate people as part of her work, is the issue of her personal life, where without her skills at emotional manipulation and ability to have tight control over the process, Brenda often seems as lost and off balance as she strives to make her suspects when going in for the kill. The ease of reading people, and morphing herself into whatever persona will achieve the desired result translates into difficulty in relating to real, honest emotions and offering the same in return. Her relationship with FBI agent Fritz Howard is most often characterized by that struggle, as she tries to allow the carefully constructed persona to fall away in the face of genuine emotion.

The idea of competence in the workplace contrasting with being hopeless in her personal life is the most common thread of similarity between characters such as Holly Hunter’s Grace Hanadarko from Saving Grace, Angie Harmon as Lindsay Boxer on Women’s Murder Club, all of which portray the characters as being as incompetent in their personal lives as they are talented at be police officers. To a lesser degree, perhaps even Mariska Hargitay’s detective Olivia Benson on Law & Order: SVU and similar characters fit the bill.

The malady is not confined to law enforcement, however. In Damages, for Glenn Close and Rose Byrne, the idea of workplace competence coming at the expense of a personal life was integral to the plot of the first season, as Rose’s Ellen Parsons began her legal career trying to balance her life between her ambition and her fiancé. The impossibility is accepted as a cynical reality by one of her more experienced colleagues, Ellen is even told that when her life falls completely apart, that “means it’s time for a promotion.”

Interestingly, many of these women are also childless, either by circumstance or design and having to consider whether they will ever choose to become mothers. Close’s Patty Hewes is an exception, her troubled relationship with her son mirroring in no small way Brenda Johnson’s difficulty in relationships. For Patty, who as a lawyer makes her living by manipulation and control, the prospect of letting go of that control is a constant, often maddening struggle with a son who has come to resent and rebel against such treatment.

It’s not surprising, nor is it exclusive to women, to portray an inherent imbalance in terrific ability in the workplace with severe limitations in a character’s personal life. Indeed, the two aspects of a character are often portrayed as inversely proportional. The better you are at one element of your life, the more another will suffer.

It’s certainly not a new conceit. The struggle between the divergent aspects of work and life was one of the central themes of Cagney and Lacey, with Sharon Gless’ Christine Cagney as the workaholic alcoholic contrasting with Tyne Daly’s Mary Beth Lacey, a wife and mother caught between her partner’s drive and her family’s needs, often conceding that one must come at the expense of the other.

Replacing the alcoholism with a more mundane sugar addiction, Brenda Johnson brings in the new breed of workaholic female with perhaps a less accusatory sensibility. Not that Cagney was necessarily vilified for her devotion to work, but that the inherent struggle for balance between the personal and professional, while it might be difficult, is now shown as more of a constant struggle rather than an abject impossibility. As though such characters are now allowed to exist somewhere in between the two extremes, having a genuine interest in each even if the more natural ability might exist in the workplace. While the personal struggles are now able to be characterized with fumbling charm as easily as they might be with darker obsessions.

Perhaps this is a reflection of a society which has grown somewhat more comfortable with the idea of a woman in a position of power or authority, and yet still not entirely at ease. As she began her new position, Brenda was greeted with unease and suspicion, having to at one point tell an officer that, “If I liked being called a bitch to my face, I’d still be married”, yet, as they had the opportunity to see her work, she slowly was able to gain the loyalty and respect of a team once ready to transfer en mass away from the division rather than work with her. And in the process perhaps helped pave the way for others to be given the same sort of opportunities.

Brenda: Low-functioning autistics have no language skills; they cannot survive independently by themselves. Keith is not like that. According to his school records, he's very intelligent but he does have issues - he's unemotional, frequently says inappropriate things. He's literal-minded. He gets fixated on minor details. He gets agitated when his routine is altered, and he's extremely uncooperative when anything or anyone gets in the way of him doing what he wants.
Detective: Does he have a Georgia accent?

New Lease on Life

As we approach the mid-point of the television season, the networks, even in a season unquestionably affected by the writer’s strike, have begun making the calls about which freshman shows will receive full season pick ups. Happily, among those shows green-lighted for the back nine is Life.

In the face of more media friendly programs such as Chuck and Bionic Woman, Life found a way to persevere, embracing quality over hype and slowly but steadily finding a loyal audience, of which I happily count myself as one.

Though it is unquestionably Damian Lewis’ show, Life also features Sarah Shahi as his partner Dani Reese, Robin Weigart as Lt. Karen Davis, and Brooke Langton as Charlie’s former lawyer turned DA Constance Griffith.

Rather than just being ancillary to Charlie’s story, each of these characters have developed into integral parts of the story, including the deeper conspiracy plot which serves as the shows biggest hook. In addition, the show has managed to blur the lines with each, making the question of on which side of the issue their loyalties might fall genuine for each in a different way.

Early on in the series, Lt. Shaw seemed a lock to be a part of the larger conspiracy which sent Charlie Crews to jail for over a decade for murders he didn’t commit. An image of her being the first new addition we see Charlie make to his closet-sized outline of his evidence and information about the series of people and events which lead to his imprisonment. Lt. Shaw pushed Charlie’s new partner to produce information which would allow them a loophole in the settlement which gave him a place as Detective in the police department, practically threatening Dani’s own position if she didn’t comply.

As the story has progressed, however, the lieutenant has been portrayed as a good cop, interested in justice above all else, and her interest in forcing Charlie out of the department possibly explained by the justifiable fear that he was there with ulterior motives which could be harmful to the department as a whole. It would have been easy within the story to paint Lt. Shaw with a darker brush, making her an unquestioned villain for the show’s hero to overcome. Instead, she is an example of how the show rarely goes for easy or simplistic choices or the easiest answer.

By contrast, the character of Constance Griffith has gone from Charlie’s unquestioned ally, the champion who obtained his release from prison, complete with huge monetary settlement and ensuring his desired reinstatement as a police officer, to a newly hired member of the DA’s staff, despite knowing of the DA’s desire to put Charlie back into prison. Hired for her new position only a week before a the murder of the investigating officer, Griffith’s potential shift of alliance effectively speaks to the overwhelming scope of the conspirators working against Charlie. And, as with Lt. Shaw, our initial impression of the character changes by subtle degrees as the story moves on, calling any basic assumptions into question and turning away from any simplistic understandings of them. The added dimensions lend to depth of the overall story, heightening the sense that Charlie is wading into untested waters, and leaving us uncertain as to what his secretive investigations are going to uncover.

Foremost among the murky loyalties surrounding him is Dani, herself. The partnership between the two has grown and developed into an effective, if at times uneasy alliance, given its charm by their wit and banter as well as the demons which seem to lurk under the surface of each of them. Through their investigations, Dani and Charlie have come to effectively work in tandem. And despite being ordered to help boot Charlie from the department, Dani has instead shown increasing trust and trustworthiness.

Complicating the matter, however, was an ambiguous warning to Charlie hinting at Dani’s connection to several million dollars which had gone missing from a bank heist when she was a girl, eventually connecting to her father, Jack Reese, Lt. Shaw’s former partner and a figure who has emerged to have a prominent place on Charlie’s wall documenting the conspiracy.

As with the other featured female players, this kind of twist adds to the richness and complexity of the character, giving her own backstory and the undercurrents of her personality a sense of weight and gravitas to potentially rival even Charlie’s own complicated psyche. And the growing sense of balance and equality between them only heightens the potential weight of Dani's being caught in between her history, her family, her partner and her sense of duty.

This type of storytelling, letting characters deepen slowly, hinting at secrets rather than wallowing in them and defining characters in no small part by what we don’t know about them is a refreshing change from programs such as Lost which constantly use flashbacks or flash-forwards to create and heighten the sense of mystery and ambiguity, rather than letting it develop organically. At times such shows seem more in love with their narrative devices and the conceit of their secrets and the revealing of them than they are with the characters themselves, and the journey they must undertake.

A show like Life works because its mystery develops slowly, using something of a narrative chiaroscuro. What we see and understand is defined, in large part, by the shadowy secrets surrounding everyone. The conspiracy looms over and around the story, helping to define it without dominating. And the drama is then developed from the ground up rather than falling from the sky or the need to constantly create new, larger then life devices for creating mystery and suspense to hook the viewers into the next phase of the story. This sense of drama over device is why Life seemed such an underdog at the beginning of the season, and the news that we’ll get to see more of this story is such a welcome gift.

Razor's Edge

Cain: When you can be this, for as long as you need to be, then you’re a Razor.

In Battlestar Galactica’s new in-series movie, Razor, we go back in time to the command of Admiral Helena Cain and the path which lead her Battlestar, the Pegasus, on it’s controversial path in the wake of the Cylon invasion of the Twelve Colonies. To guide us on this journey, we have the introduction of Kendra Shaw, an officer who found her first day aboard the Pegasus the same as the Cylon attack, marking her as the witness, and eventually the embodiment of Cain’s actions and decisions in the days and weeks to follow.

We also see Shaw closer to the present, chosen as Lee Adama’s XO as he is given command of the Pegasus after the deaths of the previous three commanders, beginning with Cain’s own death at the hands of her former prisoner and Cylon spy, Gina Inviere. Shifting back and forth between the two important timelines of her service on the Pegasus, Kendra is chosen by Lee because of her close association with the philosophical standards enforced by Admiral Cain. In her own words, she is “Cain’s legacy”.

So, to understand Shaw, and what she represents, we must see the journey of the Pegasus through her eyes and her experiences. And we must gain insight into the choices made by Helena Cain, her beliefs and the notorious actions she took in the name of the survival of her ship and struggle against the Cylons.

Taken out of context, many of those actions appeared questionable to outright horrific. We learned through the drunken confidence of the Admiral’s XO her original second in command had been killed by Cain herself, shot in the head when he refused to carry out her order in the midst of a battle. We also saw the condition of Gina, her Cylon prisoner who had been subjected to intense physical abuse, and even sexual abuse which was made something of a sport among her crew. And finally, we learned that Cain had stripped a civilian fleet of their valuable components and personnel, taking both by threat of the deaths of the families of those who refused to comply. Threats which were carried out against the first few who refused the orders.

In Razor, we see these same actions through the eyes of Kendra Shaw, who not only witnessed many of the actions but was the first to carry out Cain’s order to shoot the families of the civilian fleet. The story of how she grew from a new officer, lost on her way to reporting to her Admiral, to a soldier ready to carry out orders, regardless of consequences or conscience, is the key to understanding those decisions themselves.

It is a journey taken by degrees, first with the initial attack which left their ship crippled and about to be destroyed, sending the Pegasus on a blind FTL (Faster Than Light) jump which could have taken them anywhere in the galaxy, including the inside of a sun. Having no time to calculate their destination, Cain ordered the jump in the face of repeated nuclear strikes against her ship, with two more missiles inbound to complete the ship’s destruction. Kendra is the officer who is ordered to make the jump, at first questioning the decision, but in the end carrying it out just before the ships destruction.

Thrown clear of the immediate threat of war, the Admiral has to make the choice of what their next course of action will be, what to do in the face of the destruction of their society. The Galactica, left in a similar position at the end of the original mini-series, finds a disheartened and demoralized crew and civilian fleet given a rousing speech by, then Commander, William Adama, where he blatantly lies to his crew, telling them he knows the location of a lost colony known as Earth and inspiring them with the promise of finding a new home far away from the Cylon forces. In the end, his crew is left chanting “So say we all!”, having been given something to focus on and hope for in the face of their tragedy.

Admiral Cain’s speech defines a much different path for her own crew. She tells them:

Cain: When faced with untenable choices, you should consider your imperative.

Looking around her Battlestar, she sees a ship designed for war, and a crew more than inspired to fight. She defines their purpose as continuing the war, extracting revenge on the Cylon forces in any way they can, and that so long as their ship survives, the war will never be over. Unlike Adama, who had to coax and cheerlead hope and the chants of “So say we all!” from his own crew, the Pegasus takes up the chant slowly Cain having appealed to their hatred instead, the chants coming from deep in the hearts of her crew until the entire ship is united in voice and purpose.

The entire ship save one, of course. Because aboard the Pegasus is a Cylon, a model number Six, known as Gina Inviere. Under the guise of a civilian system’s analyst, tasked with updating the Pegasus with the software designed to cripple them in the face of the upcoming Cylon attack, Gina has become romantically involved with Helena Cain in the process. The reason for this involvement probably parallels that of Caprica Six, who became involved with Gaius Baltar in order to gain access to the defense mainframe. And as with the very first number Six, who makes her entrance in the teaser for the original miniseries, this model appears to explore the idea of life and humanity through her sexuality, asking a Colonial representative if he is alive, and then asking him to “prove it” with a kiss even as his station and is being destroyed.

She has no reason to fear death after her mission is completed and the ship destroyed, because the Cylons simply download their consciousness in a new body and are reborn. In fact, we are told that Gina’s last name, Inviere, means ‘resurrection’, a constant reminder of her essential immortality and sense of invulnerability.

We learn of Gina and Helena’s involvement, also through the eyes of Kendra Shaw, who sees them together at a meal and gleans their relationship from the subtle touches and glances between them. Later, as she discusses their relationship with Shaw, Gina uses the implied trust to get Shaw’s access codes, allowing her to leave the ship vulnerable to the Cylons in an upcoming attack.

Gina speaks of her relationship with Cain to Shaw, saying in part that even though they had tried to hide their involvement:

Gina: Guess that’s hard when you truly care for someone.

One of the dichotomies of the Sixs is that it’s possible for both sides of her nature to be genuine. It’s possible that in her own way she did truly care, or perhaps even love, Helena even as she facilitated her death and the destruction of her ship. It’s questionable, for example, why she wouldn’t have had the ships systems up and running, corrupted software in place before the attack happened, given that she’d been working with Cain for weeks, to complete her task of crippling the ship in anticipation of it’s destruction.

Certainly it seems she pushed Cain and the Pegasus into a trap as they were to begin their guerilla campaign against the Cylon fleet. The Cylons mistake however, is sending another Six in among the attack forces. Killed by Kendra, the identical model is their means of identifying Gina as a spy, taking her into custody rather than the death she had counted on, and leaving her to answer for the hundreds more lives lost in the thwarted attack. But even as she grabs a gun to fight off her captors, Gina has the opportunity to kill Cain herself, but hesitates just long enough to allow for her capture, once more calling into question how much of her feelings for the Admiral were genuine.

It is the revelation of her lover’s betrayal which causes the most dramatic turn in Helena Cain’s character. She describes to Kendra how Gina was able to mimic human feelings in order to manipulate her and gain her trust, guessing Gina’s software might be vulnerable to human weaknesses as well. As such, she orders the torture and torment of her former lover in order to find her weaknesses and limits, and to gain whatever knowledge of their enemy she could give them.

But most importantly, Cain now has a new understanding of the Cylons and their tactics. Gina had signified the one sense of humanity and vulnerability Cain allowed herself to feel, a subject discussed by Gina and Kendra earlier. Her imprisonment represents a constant reminder of the Admiral’s need to excise that vulnerability. Feeling this weakness in her was responsible for the newest destruction and loss of life on her ship, it is in this mindset that Cain finds herself with access to a civilian fleet, and orders it to be used to replenish what she has lost.

She stands outside Gina’s cell, seeing her beaten and bloody, a sight which should engender sympathy, or even pity to one who had loved her, but now sees those emotions as nothing more than weaknesses her enemy would use as a means of her destruction. So she makes the decision to turn her back on those aspects of her humanity, to become more of a machine in order to fight these machines who would mimic human feelings in order to prey on them. In this mindset, she orders the families of the unwilling recruits killed, determined as she would later describe to Kendra, “to show the enemy our will”.

And Kendra, herself, is the means to this demonstration. She is the one to pull the first trigger, take the first innocent life in the name of continuing the fight. The action earns her a promotion and praise from Cain, who appreciates that she was able to overcome her revulsion and natural inhibitions in order to do what needed to be done. Cain toys with her razor, as the symbol of her philosophy, using it as the personification of what the crew would need to become.

Cain: If we don’t, we don’t survive. And then we don’t have the luxury of becoming simply human again.

In the present, we see the price Kendra has had to pay for letting go of that humanity. She has become Cain’s Razor, a sharpened weapon in this war whom Starbuck discovers in the kitchen late at night, each of them looking for a means of “taking the edge off”. Kendra seeks in a drug some small measure of humanity to indulge in, something to make her feel in a place where circumstance has forced her to become unfeeling. Kara likes the idea that Shaw has some means of releasing tension, taking it as a sign that "The XO's human after all." But being caught keeps Kendra from indulging in her vice and the pressure valve it offered instead can only continue to build.

Perhaps one of the tragedies of the story of Helena Cain is that she never allowed herself the luxury of taking the edge off. In her first scene in Razor, we see Cain on a treadmill, looking at the schematics she had been working on with Gina, with her razor perched next to it like the two divergent sides of her nature. Her XO tries to get her to relax, telling her, “Every once in a while, it’s okay to get off the treadmill”, her unspoken response is to start running harder the moment he leaves. The idea of letting up is a luxury she wasn’t inclined to allow herself before the attacks, Gina representing perhaps the one exception to that rule. Afterwards, especially in light of her betrayal, Cain wouldn’t allow herself to let go of her edge, her anger, or her will. The endless axe she ground with Gina would eventually come back to destroy her.

Likewise, we see Shaw’s own inevitable destruction. After she is wounded on a mission, Shaw forcibly takes Starbuck’s place, intent on carrying out an order to sacrifice herself in order to destroy a Cylon vessel containing the product of the original Cylon experiments with humanity, a hybrid being who served as an interesting thematic counterpoint to Shaw’s own dual nature. She approaches death almost with a sense of release, in much the same way that Gina eventually would as well, the two of them so caught up in the pain of their experiences they can seem to find no other escape

After her death, the actions of Kendra Shaw and Helena Cain are discussed by William and Lee Adama, where the Admiral asks his son to consider a commendation for Shaw in the wake of her sacrifice, even as they share a stiff drink to take the edge off their own experiences.

Lee is uncertain a commendation would be appropriate, questioning the violent acts which called into question both Admiral Cain’s nature and Kendra’s, as the one who carried the empirical torch to Cain’s legacy. Admiral Adama, unlike when he first learned of Cain’s actions, has had the chance to review her logs, to gain insight into the reasons for her decisions. In light of his new understanding, he can find no real fault in the things Cain did, saying he, himself, might have made the same choices if put into her place. But having Roslin as champion of the civilian fleet and Lee, himself, as an ever present reminder of his conscience and responsibility, Adama found himself on a different path. He encourages Lee to give his implicit approval of the legacy Cain and Shaw represented, by writing the first version of the history which will remember them favorably in his logs.

In one of the final scenes, we see Starbuck toying with the Razor and considering Shaw’s sacrifice, which saved her own life. She comments it’s “Not a lot to show for a life, huh?” The self-deprecating irony that she, herself, is what is left to show of Shaw’s life, making her the uneasy bearer of the last remnants of Cain’s legacy.

When giving her rallying speech, Cain told her crew that as long as their ship survived the war would never be over. The promise became something of a curse, defining the ship and her crew’s purpose even as it trapped them in a never-ending cycle of pain and destruction.

The question we are left is if that cycle will continue on with the Galactica, having learned from the Cylon’s hybrid being of a prophecy that Kara Thrace is the harbinger of the apocalypse, the one who would lead humanity to its destruction. Even as she holds Cain’s razor and the legacy it signifies, Starbuck teases Lee about her destiny, giving the now ominous promising that she will be around until the end, and leaving us to wonder if that end was somehow hinted at or foretold by the ill-fated story of the Pegasus.

The Parable of Cain

In anticipation of the upcoming Battlestar Galactica movie, Razor, I thought I'd spend a little time getting to know Admiral Helena Cain a little bit better. Her introduction in the episode Pegasus, where Galactica’s fleet of human refugees found themselves in the company of another Battlestar, this one named Pegasus, who managed to survive the Cylon attack on the twelve colonies as well.

In command of the Pegasus was Admiral Cain, described by Commander Adama as a promising, up and coming officer who had found herself on the fast track to her rank. A rank which so happened to be above Adama’s own, making Cain his immediate superior and de facto commanding officer of the entire military, including the Galactica and her crew.

As Cain’s story unfolded, it became clear her quest for survival had taken a much different path than Adama had taken. It was learned she commanded with fear and intimidation, shooting her XO when he refused to follow an order, stripping a civilian fleet not only of parts, but of personnel taken by force from families who were lined up and shot if they failed to cooperate.

The power struggle which inevitably developed between the two highly divergent philosophies for survival lead each of the leaders to go so far as to plan the assassination of the other in a bid to gain unquestioned command. Despite their divergent and seemingly irreconcilable philosophies, the juxtaposed assassination plotting served to highlight the similarities between the two military commanders, each of them coming up with a nearly identical scenario for disposing of the other at the conclusion of a mutually planned and executed battle to deal a crippling blow to the Cylon fleet. Even more fascinating is the fact that each of them also chose not to go through with their plots, though they had the means of succeeding in their goal, with Cain’s end instead coming at the hands of a former Cylon prisoner whom she had exposed to horrific conditions and treatment (more on that to come in the analysis of Razor).

Admiral Cain’s character, in the end, can be seen as the embodiment of the redemptive violence of a fascist military dictator. Her quest is for revenge, to continue the war the Galactica and her fleet have long ago given up as lost, and that vengeance necessitates any actions which strengthen their chances at fighting the Cylon forces. It is that same single mindedness which not only leads her to plan Adama’s death, but also gives her the clarity to see through the battle against the Cylons they wage together, that Adama’s presence offers her a unique strength of it’s own. And that together, they are stronger than either could be on their own.

Perhaps the most intriguing element of Cain’s character is in the mirror she represents, to other characters such as President Laura (speak softly but carry a big airlock) Roslin, Starbuck and of course Adama himself.

She can be seen as a pure distillation of strengths of each of these characters. She possessed Roslin’s ruthless pragmatism gone unchecked by her sense of responsibility, Adama’s myopic decisiveness left unhindered by his compassion, and Starbuck’s arrogance and nerve without her sense of honor to serve as a balance. Cain existed with all these divergent elements merged into a single voice with a single purpose, unwilling to tolerate any dissention or questioning of her authority.

As such she commanded her forces by calling on their basest elements, ruling them through fear and intimidation, encouraging their anger and lust for revenge to fuel the fight against their more powerful enemies. And yet, the strength she represented was genuine. The passion she inspired in her troops was powerful and effective.

After her death, Starbuck – who had once been tasked with carrying out the murder herself – gave a memorable eulogy, declaring the simple truth that for all her faults, they had been stronger with Helena Cain’s presence than they were without it.

Stripped of the idea of glamour and heroics, war is ugly and primal. It’s about defeating one’s enemy by any means necessary. In the miniseries which kicked off the re-imagined voyage of the Battlestar Galactica, newly appointed President Roslin insisted that the war was over, convincing Commander Adama they had lost and the only hope was taking whatever survivors they could and trying to ensure the survival of humanity. Helena Cain and the Pegasus were unwilling to concede defeat so easily. The war for her was not over so long as she had the means to fight it, and it’s hard to argue her cause itself wasn’t just and righteous even if her methods were unacceptable within the structure of polite society.

This struggle is a classic one in modern storytelling, personified by the infamous “You can’t handle the truth!” from A Few Good Men, where Jack Nicholson’s Nathan Jessup gives his famous monologue, saying in part:

Jessup: …And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives...You don't want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty...we use these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something.

What BSG does, perhaps better than any other series which has come before it, is blur the lines of gender mores and expectations. That Admiral Cain was a female is almost inconsequential to her story. No part of her actions or decisions were shown to be predicated by her gender, and indeed, the parallel drawn between her decisions and those made of Adama serve to highlight the many ways there were alike almost as deeply as it highlights the differences between them.

Perhaps Helena Cain’s greatest weakness was that she was so focused on defending and avenging the society which had existed before, she did not consider the need to defend what was left of humanity, and the new society which had evolved after the Cylons had decimated their worlds. Her inability to concede the battle which had been lost left her blind to the necessity of saving what had been left behind. And yet the question of what part she might have played in the stories which followed her death is an intriguing one. Her decision not to have Adama and his senior staff killed represented perhaps the kernel of change within her, a glimmer of understanding that the strength he represented and the fleet he protected were the same things she had been fighting for.

It would have been easier, perhaps, especially in a time where questions of the morality of war loom so large over our own society, to portray such a character as purely a villain, to have her death be a triumph. Instead, the questions she represented are allowed to linger, and her shadow looms large enough to bring Razor to our screens for a more in depth analysis of her actions and the legacy she left behind among not only her own crew but the fleet as a whole. It speaks to the complexity of her character and the allegory she represented, the question of how much of one’s own humanity can be sacrificed in the name of saving humanity itself, and how easy it can be to focus so completely on fighting you lose sight of what you’re fighting for.

Possible Bionic News

Today I have an addendum to the Bionic Woman rant which is going to include some possible spoilage/rumor, so for those allergic to that type of thing, be so warned.

Here’s a pretty picture to peruse in the meantime.

According to a report from a BSG convention (I’m so looking forward to seeing Razor, I can’t wait to blog about it, ahem back on topic), Katee Sackhoff gave some con-goers the impression she won’t be returning to Bionic Woman. Other reports would seem to give her comments more ambiguity, implying an uncertainty about her future with the series.

Even as the show is in the midst of being retooled, yet again, the idea that the strongest, most intriguing part of the mix is completely gone would be a hard pill for a wannabe viewer, and reviewer, to take. In no small way because it would make me question the creative direction of a show which excised it’s most creative parts, and replaced them with parts which are significantly less interesting (Tom, I’m looking your way).

I can understand needing to re-imagine a show which is obviously floundering, both in viewers and in quality, but how can the right answer be to remove one of the incredibly few strong elements it had going for it? The character of Sarah Corvus works precisely because of how unique she was in the cannon of bionic characters, starting with Steve Austin and going right down the light to Sandra Bullock doing her uber-bionic running in a gymnast’s leotard, they have never exactly gone for the high drama.

Most disturbing is the thought that they might hearken back to more of the old model. Forget all the hackable body parts which can be monitored by any Tom, Dick and voyeur, deteriorating life span issues, or having emotions amputated, what kind of interesting story can be gleaned from that type of thing after all? It’s much better to watch Jamie blowing off her surveillance responsibilities so she can chat with her boyfriend.

To be fair, I’m waiting to see when (or if?) the show sheds it’s skin yet again what kind of creature is going to emerge. I’m worried they are going to do something like make Tom, or even Becca, get hurt and get Bionic-ified as a means of creating a new, more vanilla, brand of bionic mythology. That’s an assumption on my part, and it could well be the wrong one. Losing Sarah Corvus wouldn't necessarily mean the end of the bionic mythology she was the key to, but it's hard to see how it could exist without her at least finding a way to pass her angsty torch onto Jamie before exiting for good.

But trying to work up interest or excitement for the prospect for the new, new version of the show would take a big blow with losing the first bionic woman from the mix. And I mean that in every sense of the word. A new Jamie Summers has to be intriguing on her own merits, not because she shares a name with the one which has gone before. She has the potential to take big steps with the help of a character who brings so much to the table as Sarah Corvus by virtue of the connection between them, but failing that, it makes me wonder how much of the entire back story could be swept under the rug in favor of perhaps trying to turn Jamie into a bionic Sydney Bristow, or even a jacked in La Femme Nikita.

Not only because the main character herself lacks the ability, personality, and sadly the intelligence of Sydney and Nikita, but also because I know Madeline, I watched Madeline, and Ruth is no Madeline. Just as Jonas is no Jack Bristow, or even Operations for that matter.

What I hope for is that the show finds a story rather than a formula, and pathos rather than one-liners and insta-romances because Jamie’s shallow enough to obsess over every cute guy who crosses her path. I don’t have much faith (or Faith, for that matter, if Sarah Corvus were gone from the equation, naturally the one who might hold a candle to the original), but I do have hope.

It’s waning, however. Quickly.

At least I can hope that, no matter what, we won't be seeing the return of the Fembot. Right?

The Blood Ties That Bind.

Continuing on with the idea of female detectives who made their way to television from within the pages of a series of novels, we have Lifetime’s Blood Ties. A supernatural detective drama which owes a nod or two to Buffy and her Scooby gang, but surprisingly in the best sort of way. It doesn’t have the imagination or scope that Buffy had (and I’m going to go on record as assuming there will be no musical extravaganza) but what Blood Ties does have going for it in common our favorite Slayer is wit, and a re-imagining of the vampire myth in it’s own right.

The series revolves around private investigator and former police officer Vicki Nelson, whose degenerative eye disorder forced her out of official police work and into the realm of the private sector, where she learns there exist all manner of mythical creatures going bump in the night. Among them is a five hundred year old vampire named Henry Fitzroy, the lone (for the time being) vampire in the city due a territorial instinct within the vampires which keep them solitary creatures, repelled by another vampire’s presence in much the same innate predatory manner as a lion who would not want to share a hunting ground with another.

One of the more interesting, but least touched on, elements of the series is Vicki’s waning eyesight. It is something of a problem for a person who hunts creatures of the night that she is rendered nearly blind in the darkness. Also interesting is attraction/flirtation between Vicki and Henry, who accept their connection as people who understand there’s no possibility of a future between them.

Henry:(sniffing her hair longingly) You smell like death.
Vicki: Okay, how is that even remotely a turn on?

Complicating matters even further is Vicki’s ex partner, and lover, Mike Celluci, who represents the most stable but unfortunately least interesting side of the triangle. He’s everything Vicki should want, opposed by everything Vicki can’t have in the form of Henry.

Happily, the mixed up love triangle only serves as an undercurrent to the storyline of the series, which finds Vicki early on branded by a pair of tattoos meant to summon a demon to accept her soul as a sacrifice to enter into the world. The tattoos mark Vicki’s inexorable connection to the world of the occult, a connection largely undefined and with a decidedly ominous air. But whether they are a gift or a curse is not a subject Vicki dwells on any more than she dwells on her failing vision. She merely accepts it as her new reality, and then tries to find a way to deal with that reality. It’s this stubborn, pragmatic streak which keeps her, and the series itself, grounded in the face of the fantastic elements and monsters of the week she encounters. And the strong, even performance of Christina Cox brings a three dimensional woman to life even in the face of the supernaturally bad CGI.

And while like Buffy, Vicki is adept at clever, snarky banter that helps to keep some of the darker elements of the series at bay, unlike Buffy, Vicki does not approach her attraction to a vampire with the doe-eyed sense of a teenager. She’s a full grown woman, who had relationships long before Henry came along and, if anything, uses his presence almost as a buffer to keep the functional reality a relationship with Mike could represent at arm’s length.

One of my favorite elements of Vicki’s character is her staunch determination (otherwise defined as abject bull-headedness). Anyone looking to tell her what to do, how to do it or where it should be done would be better served, as my mother used to say, by going out and spitting into the wind. She’s strong minded to the point of absurdity sometimes, and even though she’s got a vampire at her side, Vicki is the one solving the cases, driving the investigations and never backing down from a fight. It’s demonstrated early on that Henry’s vampiric ability to alter the thoughts of the weak minded (kind of like Obi-Wan – only with black eyes and fangs) hold no sway over Vicki, herself.

What’s best about the relationship between the two of them is how unlike Angel, the character of Henry is portrayed. In the mythology of Buffy, once turned, a vampire had lost their conscience, unless a soul is restored to them by mystical means. Henry on the other hand, is not a creature without conscience or strictly of evil. He’s more a student of the human condition, viewed from just on the outside of it, who accepts his differences and even his animalistic nature in the same practical way that Vicki accepts her own limitations. He knows that he’s a killer by nature, but he’s a friend by choice. And he has met in Vicki a person who can stand as an equal of sorts to his will, despite his much greater age and experiences.

His history is one he views with a sense of nostalgia rather than overbearing guilt. He knows he has killed, and will likely kill again, but feeds mainly on the willing, who trade their blood for the thrill of how it is taken from them. And unlike the love-struck, bad poetry spouting Spike, though he is an artist as well, Henry keeps meticulous control of his emotions. Rather than being tormented by any sense that he’s been rejected by Vicki, he delights in the game of flirtation and teasing they can indulge in together, rather than dwelling on the things they cannot.

Henry: Where are you going?
Vicki: Husband hunting.
Henry: (pointing to himself) Husband material.
Vicki: You're sweet, but you're just not a morning person.
Henry: No, I'm not.

In a sense, Blood Ties manages to cover such similar ground as Buffy, perhaps even as a spiritual successor of sorts, in large part because it comes at it from such a different angle. Instead of the angst-ridden, ‘in love with my own tragedy’ of youth, it’s much more a show about the tread worn cynicism of adulthood coming face to face with these demons and nightmares. Vicki accepts the tragedy of this new path as just another thing to deal with, just another layer of an already complicated life which has seen too many tragedies and monsters of the human variety to be thrown completely by discovering the existence of mythical monsters.

She is still rocked by lives she cannot save, and annoyed by questions she can’t find an answer to. And she tackles each new case with the obsessive air of a workaholic former cop who is well versed in the art of avoiding her private life in the name of her work, and allows herself only to exist in the grey area she finds between the two. And like Henry's rather extreme allergy to sunlight, Vicki's near blindness at night helps underscore the ephemeral nature of that grey area where she is trying to forge her path. It may not be as long, and I hope it's not quite as bumpy as the path tread by Buffy, but it's certainly fun to follow along for the ride.

Lifetime's website has full episodes to stream for anyone wanting to jump on board.

Women's Murder Club

One of the most recent shows to truly surprise me has been Women’s Murder Club. I resisted watching at first, catching only a few minutes of the pilot episode. I suppose because my impression of the show resembled Desperate Housewives who solve murders! Or perhaps, The Babysitter’s Club, all grown up meets Charlie’s Angels or some other silly association which existed only in the shallowness of my mind.

However one of my friends talked me into giving the show a second (first?) chance and I found it to be not only surprisingly good, but funny, and even charming in it’s own way.

The show, based on a series of novels, revolves around police detective Lindsay Boxer, who is by turns tough, grouchy, antagonistic, personally awkward at times and yet exceedingly good at her job. Her fellow partners in (solving) crime consist of the medical examiner Dr. Claire Washburn, ADA Jill Bernhardt and the newest member of the extremely unofficial club, a cub reporter named Cindy Thomas whose exists as the one most diametrically opposed to Boxer. She’s young, idealistic, a little too chatty, but like the rest of the women, she is also very good at her job. As a reporter, she has the most freedom from rules and procedures, but she also has the least amount of direction on any given investigation. Her job seems mainly to find whatever information can be informally gathered and pass it along to the more official members of the circle of friends. The information they share is based on their ability to trust and depend on one another, which is where the notion of a club, whose membership has to be earned, has come from.

And Cindy, as the newest member and the one most aware of the informal rules and procedures the others have grown accustomed to, is the one most often referring to it in terms of being a club. Their interaction is still new enough to her to be able to see it from the outside as well as from within.

What WMC does right is to continue the idea which exists at the heart of procedurals like the endless CSI and Law & Order franchises, which is to follow cases through the nuts and bolts of the investigation process. But instead of leaving the personal lives and interpersonal connections of those doing the investigating largely for the sidebars or up to the imaginations, the show attempts to weave their lives, or lack thereof, into the fabric of the work they do. And allowing the friendship which exists between them to be the thread which unites the two together.

Rest assured, that unlike many of those other shows, no one is going to spend years on a show like this and then pop off with something like the infamous “Is it because I’m a lesbian” type of plot contrive.. err.. device, or reveal a previously consummated relationship a la Grissom and Sarah who apparently learned nothing from the experiences of Mulder and Scully..

And while the blending of the personal and the professional with this group isn’t necessarily seamless (asking about pregnancy tests and dates over corpses is.. unusual, but understandable given that Claire, the ME, seems to be the designated 'mother' of the group), it does create a sense of pathos and kinship between all the women which radiates out to the other relationships in their lives. And the sisterly bickering and looking out for each other is a refreshing change from programs who find their bread and butter in the decidedly non-sisterly bickering and back-stabbing which are so often associated with groups of female friends on television.

The lives of these women are also very different. We have the married mother, the commitment-phobe, the divorced (and yet clearly not over it yet) detective and the very young woman who is still starry-eyed enough to come out of a quasi kidnapping remembering mainly that the guy responsible was “cute”. And the fact that each of them seems to have their own unique sets of flaws and challenges, instead of contradicting the strength demonstrated by their professional prowess, instead only helps to give a sense of balance and individuality to each of them beyond what can be gleaned from quips and banter revolving solely around whatever case they happened to be working on.

I have to believe the fact that these characters were already fully realized in another medium has helped with their transition to television, giving them an already established sense of dimension and personality which might be lacking in characters created out of whole cloth. And also gives their established, and burgeoning, friendships a similar sense of depth.

I find myself a little ashamed for needing to be prodded to give a show like this a chance, since my cynicism could have cost me a chance to watch one of the better shows and more interesting depiction of a group of friends that I’ve seen in a while. And it makes me think back to a show like Charlie’s Angels, which attempted an almost similar kind of duality between the personal and professional, even if it got too caught up in the cheese and eye candy quotient for its own good.

I almost wish WMC had a different title. For just as they often try to shake off the idea that it’s a ‘club’ which keeps them together, the word club in this context evokes images of book clubs, Tupperware parties and women gathering to define their social calendars. Professional women banding together to share their knowledge and expertise in solving crimes would be a cumbersome title, I suppose. In truth, they really are just doing their jobs, only with keeping an eye out for each other and trying to figure out what each can do to help achieve their goal. And more than that, ones who will perhaps go above and beyond what they might normally do in their jobs in order to help their friends with theirs.

So a club it is, even if it isn’t. And a good show it is, even though a big part of me didn’t expect it to be. Guess we're all better off with a little help from our friends.

Bionic Women

For all that I love to heap praise and geek out over strong portrayals of women on television, at times I’ve got to examine the other side of the coin. And with that in mind, let’s just jump right in to the murky re-imagining of Jamie Summers.

Now, whether or not the original was a bastion of feminist ideals and how much it was a product of it’s time, probably the thing I find most disturbing about the new Bionic Woman is how almost blatantly anti-feminist it’s being presented as. It’s not just that Jamie is young and inexperienced, being thrown into dangerous situations, because that would be an understandable weakness. The trouble with Jamie in large part is that she comes off both as not that bright, and the only problems she’s capable of solving involve running really fast, in high heels of course, while the male half of her team takes care of any pesky thinking which needs to be done. And saving that, she can be in touch with a guy over the phone to tell her what to do.

Part of the problem with this series is the collective chaos which has gone on behind the scenes. It’s hard to find or quantify a show’s identity when it keeps morphing before our eyes. Originally, the plot seemed to center around the weaknesses in the bionics. That they were prone to being hacked, that the bionic subjects (all women for some unexplained reason) were vulnerable to having their very movements and actions controlled from the outside, and saving that the nature of the beast also meant that the men at the equally amorphous Burkit group were able to tap into Jamie’s ocular implants to see through her eyes any time they felt like it. There was also the introduction of the bionics as something of a ticking clock, with only a short shelf life before the implants turned against their host and killed her.

Whatever pathos might have been gleaned from these kinds of stories has been replaced, however, now by Jamie’s search for a good boyfriend. The last few episodes have revolved around Jamie’s unlucky search for love in her dangerous counter-terrorism-ridden world.

Perhaps a lighter touch might have been good for some mindless entertainment, because if you’re looking for deep thoughts from Jamie – good luck, the character has the depth of a sea sponge. But the truly frustrating part of this series is that the potential for a more interesting story already exists in the form of the “first” bionic woman, Sarah Corvus.

It’s not just a matter of Katee Sackhoff bringing a stronger performance to the table, though she does, but the brilliance of Sarah Corvus is in her instability, the mystery surrounding what has been happening to her and who is really in control of her and her bionics. And also, in the potential bond she represented with Jamie. Because unlike Jamie, Sarah fights against the control others are trying take over her own body, she struggles for answers rather than accepting the will imposed on her. And most interesting, she represents a somehow almost telepathic link to Jamie though their bionics by having the same ‘baseline programming’.

Once she understood the danger to her life, Sarah has tried to fight back. Even tried to enlist Jamie’s help, since Jamie’s life is most likely similarly in jeopardy. She suggested they work together, using their strengths to find answers. And even though she understands that she’s as damaged mentally as she is physically, Sarah still has to try, being driven by nothing less than a need to survive.

But who could worry about silly things like that when Jamie can find a new guy to obsess over when she’s supposed to be working?

The strongest episode of the series, by far, to my mind, involved Sarah openly reaching out to Jamie. Demonstrating their connection, and representing an understanding about how to have better control over her own body. She talked about how objectifying the bionics have been, how damaging and how as the two bionic subjects, they should stick together and work to solve their mutual problems.

Sarah also informed Jamie what she should have already figured out on her own, given that she found evidence of it herself. That the fiancé doctor who gave her bionics seemingly to save her life, had somehow been watching and tracking her before they had met. That he had, in all likelihood, specifically chosen Jamie to be recruited into the program and everything which had happened between them had been toward that end.

Fortunately for the Burkit group, but unfortunately for us, the younger Dr. Anthros apparently chose his subject very well. Because if he wanted a woman he knew was easily controlled and manipulated, was too shallow to seek real answers or control on her own, was too busy worrying about her love life to be bothered worrying about her life span, he found the perfect one.

I have to spend a moment in celebration of the news that Damages has been not only renewed, but renewed for two more seasons.

Despite my appreciation for strong female characters, it took me a little bit of time to get into Damages. I think because in the beginning, Glenn Close’s Patty Hewes was too much of a dark enigma to specifically be likeable, and Rose Byrne’s Ellen Parsons was too young and naïve to truly capture my imagination.

The beauty of the series in large part was it’s structure, designed with a built in hook that seemed to acknowledge the nebulous characterizations and sought to capture people’s imaginations with the promise of what was going to happen between these two women even more than who and what they were at the beginning. There was always the tease that the story we were being told existed in flashback. In the present, cataclysmic events had helped shape the two women and the world around them, and the story existed to unfold those events, sometimes with teasing misdirection, playing on the viewers expectations to take us where they wanted us to go.

In that way, I suppose it existed almost as a lawyer’s summation. Giving us as the jury some idea of where it was going, but waiting until the end to hit us with the full emotional impact of how it was going to get there.

Like some other notable stories with two female leads, Damages is in no small part about the effect that each of them has on the other. There is in the beginning something of a stark, Yin/Yang dynamic between them. Passive and aggressive, wily experience versus untested potential. This element was played up in the famous promotional image, showing Rose as a dark reflection of Patty.

Darkness, or Yin, isn’t understood as something evil but instead as passive to counterbalance Yang’s aggression. But always, the real sense of balance achieved by Yin/Yang exists in the one tiny, purest piece of the other which exists in the heart of each of them.

It took most of the season before we got a real hint of Rose’s sense of aggression. And when it surfaced, it was pure and unyielding. Likewise, it was almost surprising to get glimpses of passivity from Patty, a time when she would allow Ellen to call the shots and dictate her movements.

And like any good circle, the end of the season took us back to where it had begun. To a long pier, hinting at all the secrets buried underneath the churning surface of the water.

At the end of the pilot, we saw Patty infamously throw a dog collar into that water. A tangible reminder of her guilt, and her guile and the sense that in this story there were not going to be simple understandings of good and evil, right and wrong. Everything was a means to an end, and there were few lines that Patty wouldn’t cross if she had to. Perhaps this was even the biggest hint at what was to come with the labyrinthine plot about Arthur Frobisher and Patty’s bid to milk him of everything that could be taken from him only serving as a backdrop for the relationship which would develop between the two women and what a dark, deceptive place it was born in.

Another television show to revolve around two female leads, with a story focusing on the relationship between them and the impact they would have on each other lives was Xena:Warrior Princess. Yes, yes, go ahead and laugh. What could the two shows have in common? Xena was over the top, cheesy and dancing on the edge of exploitation even as it showed a woman as the ultimate warrior. And yet, at it’s heart, the show Xena was as much about the character Gabrielle, a young, idealistic girl who follows after Xena, saying “Take me with you, teach me everything you know. I want so much to be like you.”

And through the course of the series, we see the young, happy, fumbling child Gabrielle was slowly fall away, as she followed the darker path Xena lead her down, losing her innocence slowly, often painfully, until she had indeed become something very much like what Xena had been when they met. It was both affirming and heartbreaking, because the skills and abilities she had learned at Xena’s side had come with the darkness, the pain and guilt off all the battles she had fought. And the lives she had taken, or failed to save.

Very early on in the series, there was an episode called Dreamworker which in many ways established the thematic arc of the entire series. In it, Gabrielle was taken by a priest and put through a series of tests designed to make her shed blood for the first time. With her ‘blood innocence’ paving the way for her to be sacrificed in the name of the dream god worshiped by the priest. In order to save her friend, Xena had to make her way through a passage of her own dreams, where she was assaulted with the memories of the first man she’d killed and the last, along with many others taunting her that she was leading Gabrielle down a similar path. And that she would leave Gabrielle with similar demons to face in her own dreams. In the end, Xena’s ultimate test was to face off against a dark eyed reflection of herself, taunting her with the truth that no matter how much she hated the darkness inside of her, it was that same darkness which had which had given her strength and ability.

Gabrielle’s journey in this episode had begun with her picking up a sword, in an attempt to help Xena out when they were attacked by a group of thugs and a warning from Xena that she shouldn’t pick up such a weapon if she wasn’t prepared to use it. And through the course of her trials, Gabrielle had to come close enough to the idea of taking another life to be able to see how frightening and horrible the concept seemed to her.

Now, what does all this have to do with Damages, you ask? There is this scene at the end of Dreamworker.

Likewise, the dog collar Patty tosses into the water at the end of the pilot still sits under the surface. The actions which brought it there having changed her, even if she was the only one who understood it. And when the two of them are standing out on the pier together in the end, the water around them is symbolically filled with all things which had passed between them since they met. It looked the same on the surface, but the reality was that everything had changed.

And now with the news that we’ll be getting not just one but two more seasons, I look forward very much to seeing what the consequences of those changes will be.