Bionic Woman/Second Chances

Second Chances
Season 1, Episode 1
Airdate	September 26, 2007
Written by	Laeta Kalogridis
Directed by	Michael Dinner
← Px00 Original Pilot	1x02 → Paradise Lost
Bionic Woman — Season One

Second Chances is the first episode of the first season of Bionic Woman. Jaime Sommers is involved in a traffic accident that would have killed her if it weren't for the thinking of her boyfriend, bionic surgeon Will Anthros, and an effort to replace her amputated limbs with bionic replacements.

Michelle Ryan (Jaime Sommers), Miguel Ferrer (Jonas Bledsoe), Chris Bowers (Will Anthros), Molly Price (Ruth Truewell), Will Yun Lee (Jae Kim), Lucy Hale (Becca Sommers)

Special Guest Star: Thomas Kretschmann (The Man)

Guest Starring: Mark A. Sheppard (Anthony Anthros), Aaron Douglas (Prison Guard)

and Katee Sackhoff (Sarah Corvus)

Co-Starring: Conrad Coates (Doctor #1), Alicia Thorgrimsson (Doctor #2), Jenn Forgie (Nurse), Heather Doerksen (Mother), Roan Curtis (Little Girl), Leela Savasta (Shawna), Crystal Lowe (Jessica), Dominic Zamprogna (Med-Flight Tech #1), Jacqueline Samuda (Med-Flight Tech #2), John Mann (Drug Dealer), Craig Lobzun (Sleazy Bar Patron)

Plot Overview

In a non-distinct bunker, a vaguely military group comes across dead scientists strewn around a hallway. They discover the source of the murders, a woman named Sarah who claims that she isn't in control of her body, in a nearby room and are forced to kill her before she can attack them as well.

Three years later, Jamie Sommers is a bartender in a crowded club. While she spends her nights tending bar, Sommers is also taking care of her younger sister as a surrogate daughter, a budding hacker who has been ordered by a court to not use computers that can use the internet. Meanwhile, she is also dating a man, Will Anthros, who she believes is completely out of her league since he's a professor and a surgeon. One night, she goes to dinner with Anthros and tells him that she's pregnant. She expects him to run in the opposite direction as fast as he can, but instead he proposes marriage. They begin to drive home after dinner, but are struck by a semi truck which wraps their car around a streetlight. The truck that hit them was driven by the woman from before, who is clearly not as dead as she appeared to be.

Jamie and Will survived, but she suffered extensive damage to her arm, legs and eye. Instead of being taken to a hospital, she's airlifted to a remote location where Will performs major reconstructive surgery on her. While she's under anesthesia as a patient who technically doesn't exist, Sarah has reported the death of Will as a success.

Many hours later, Jamie comes out of surgery and wakes up. Will tells her that though she lost the baby, there was no permanent damage to her reproductive organs and that she would be able to get pregnant again. Her second concern is that she can't feel her legs or right arm, which is a bit more difficult to explain. Will tries to break it to her that her legs, right arm, right ear and right eye needed to be replaced. He tells her that her body is being healed by nanomachines that he calls "anthrocytes." Her face and arm are nearly completely healed, but her legs aren't even close. She freaks out and throws Will against a wall, prompting the surgical team to tranquilize her before she can do any more damage. When she wakes up, her legs are healed. She immediately figures that it was a dream, but Will comes back into the room with a broken arm and she knows that it wasn't a dream at all.

In the bowels of this installation, Jamie is considered as a candidate for some kind of non-military program. Though there is some disagreement from the man who "killed" the last subject, who sees a need for military applications of bionic limbs, Jamie is eventually entered into some tests to see if she can be released into the world again. This includes rehabilitation (which she refuses), a psych evaluation and combat training (even though she's a civilian). The leader of the cabal asks when Jamie's remaining implants will go online, but Will refuses to answer. Instead, he smuggles her out of the building so that she won't become part of their designs. The alarms sound while Ruth and Jae are in an elevator, when Ruth shows Jae a picture of Sarah that Jamie drew.

Thanks to her implants, Jamie easily outruns the helicopter pursuing her. She eventually gets back home after the search is called off (mainly because of Will's request), but she refuses to answer any of Will's phone calls. She also doesn't allow herself to tell her sister what happened to her. But, her relationship with her sister is the least of her problems now. Sarah is well aware of her failure to kill Will because the man who sent her on her mission has already packed up and left. She hunts down Jamie at the club she works at and, coincidentally, talks to her right when her eye and ear implants activate. Jamie runs to the bathroom and pukes, but Sarah finds her and tells her in vague terms what's happening to her, namely an overload of information.

When Jamie leaves the club someone tries to attack her, but she quickly gets the upper hand and nearly kills him with his own knife before she realizes what she's doing. She goes directly to Will's apartment to get answers about what they've done. He tells her about the microchips in her brain and connects the man who Jae saw in prison as the founder of the project and his father. She, somehow, finds it in her to forgive him for turning her into a superhuman. But, when she brings up the name Sarah Corvas, Will leaps to her side and demands to know where she heard that name. She begins to answer when Will is shot by a sniper bullet fired by Sarah. Jamie drags him out of the line of fire and goes to confront Sarah. Sarah admits to being the first Bionic Woman and tells Jamie that she's "cutting away" all of the parts of her that are weak. The two get into a fight that is broken up when the people associated with the bionic project arrive in a helicopter.

Meanwhile, Will is carted off in an ambulance and Jonas, the director, tells her she's part of their organization now and doesn't have a choice in the matter. She begs to differ and tells Jonas that she'll only work for them on her terms and that she'll bury any man he sends to kill her with if he isn't satisfied with that. She walks off and Jonas tells Ruth that they have a candidate. Elsewhere, Will's father has been sprung from prison.

Notes

Music

• Personality Crisis by New York Dolls: The song that Becca is listening to in the car is "Personality Crisis" by The New York Dolls, a pioneering influence in punk rock. The song appears on the band's first, self-titled album released in 1973 and is about someone with, of course, a personality disorder.