The original ELECTRAWOMAN AND DYNAGIRL was a very self-aware pastiche of the BATMAN series from the preceding decade. By airing as a Saturday morning kiddies' show, it was able to get away with being deliberately cheesy, campy and over-the-top in a way that other similar fare of the time, such as the truly terrible AMAZING SPIDER-MAN series with Nicolas Hammond, could not.
The producers of the 2001 revamp correctly understood that a direct remake of the original series stood no chance of success. They realized that it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to translate the program's intentionally camp nature into something acceptable to a more contemporary audience, nor would a more realistic take, such as the DARK KNIGHT series of films, be of much service to the property.
Their final reimagining of the characters and situations was clever, entertaining and apt. In a period when so many "comic book" characters were being reinvented to exist in a darker, harsher world this was hardly a bold move. Obviously depicting the formerly ridiculously white bread ElectraWoman as drunken trailer trash, a decade past her glory days, meant that this new take was not intended for a new generation of kids, but to draw in the now adult audience who's younger selves had watched and enjoyed the original series. The result is irreverent, outrageous, entertaining and filled with series potential. Purists might be offended by the brash take-no-prisoners approach, but the majority of the audience, old and new, would have got the joke and been willing to go along with it.
Likely the pilot was rejected due to a lack of courage on the part of the network; a fear of the controversy that might result from not only skewering a scared cow, but from the risqué nature of much of the humor. While it can be lamented that only this brief tryout for a new ELECTRAWOMAN AND DYNAGIRL was ever produced, at least this much does exist so that it can be judged by the public at large on its own merits, which are considerable, rather than on the hearsay of second and third hand reports.
Look for the video online and decide for yourself.
