TV Guide’s Michael Ausiello reports that Mae Whitman has been dropped from NBC’s upcoming re-imagining of Bionic Woman.

(More about that here.)

She was set to play the Bionic Woman’s deaf sister.

I know Mae Whitman best from her role as Ann Veal, the much-maligned girlfriend of George-Michael Bluth (Michael Cera) on the late, great Arrested Development. There was a running joke on the show that no one but George-Michael thought she was attractive. For example, he’d say something about his girlfriend to someone, and the person would gesture toward Ann and say, “Her?” And then they’d usually ask if she was funny or something.

So maybe the NBC executives watched the pilot and said, “Her?”

Anyway, the funniest stuff came from George-Michael’s father, Michael (Jason Bateman), who became a Freudian machine whenever discussing Ann with his son. In the episode “Good Grief,” for example, Michael tells his George-Michael that he thinks George-Michael and Ann really have a connection (even though he doesn’t think so at all) to make George-Michael feel better for reasons that are way too complicated to get into here (which is one of the reasons Arrested Development was so good in the first place).

Anyway, George-Michael asks Michael if he really does see a connection, and Michael replies, “A father can tell, okay? It’s as Ann as the nose on plain’s face.”

(Despite the hilarity of the gag, Mae Whitman is very lovely, and I’d ask her out myself if I wasn’t old enough to be her very-older brother.)

So who will replace her on Bionic Woman? I’ve already lost any interest I had in the show, and I mainly posted this so I could talk about Arrested Development, so there you go.