If you were going to make a show about a "bionic woman," it would be all about how great it would be to have superpowerful hearing and eyesight and be able to run at a speed of 60 mph and punch holes in brick walls. C’mon, that’s be a blast, wouldn’t it? And you’d want the character to go around helping people, because life would be really boring when she could easily steal anything she wanted. So instead she’d be a sort of one-woman A-Team, like the Jaime Sommers in the 1975-78 series starring Lindsay Wagner.

And that’s the kind of show you’d want to watch, right?

Naturally, the big brains at NBC decided what we want to see is a bionic woman who’s a bartendress who lives with a teenaged sister who is always angry and rebelling against her. They just knew we want to see a show about numerous interlocking conspiracies, including within the government, with a bionic villain who might be a bionic ally or just a bionic crazy blonde woman, we just can’t tell.

And they realized we’d want it to be raining all the time, and for the government agency she works for to be some shadowy group of ambiguous morals and occupying offices that look as dank and grubby as a storm sewer.

And guess what? NBC’s gloomy Bionic Woman drew almost 14 million viewers during its premiere episode last week, a very good number indeed. Tonight’s episode was just as dreary and morose as the premiere, so it will be interesting to see if the ratings stay up.