Carstairs Considers....: TV Show Review: No Ordinary Family

Thursday, June 20, 2013

TV Show Review: No Ordinary Family - The Complete Series

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Good characters, light take on superheroes with a story mostly wrapped up

Cons: Slow movement on bigger story early on

The Bottom Line:

After a slow start

I got hooked on characters

As story improved

No Ordinary TV Show

With the well-deserved demise of Heroes, what was a superhero fan to do but try to find another show? Enter ABC and the show No Ordinary Family. It started strongly, but quickly lost much of its audience. And while I will confess that it had problems early on, I stuck with it and wound up enjoying the final result.

The show focuses on the Powell family. Father Jim (Michael Chiklis) is a frustrated artist who makes his living as a police sketch artist. Stephanie (Julie Benz) is attempting to balance her family and her prestigious job as a researcher at Global Tech. And teens Daphne (Kay Panabaker) and J.J. (Jimmy Bennett) want nothing to do with their parents.

When Stephanie has to go to South America on a trip, Jim decides it would be good for all of them to go. While they are there, the plane they are on crash lands into the Amazon. They all survive, but when they get home, they discover they have new powers. Jim is now super strong and almost indestructible. Stephanie is now super-fast. Daphne can read minds. And J.J. is brilliant.

Working at her lab, Stephanie, along with her assistant Katie (Autumn Reeser), begins to research their new DNA in hopes of finding out why they have these powers. Jim, meanwhile, teams up with his best friends, ADA George (Romany Malco) to take down criminals. And the kids try to use their new powers to make high school easier for them.

But as Jim fights crime, he runs into a few other people with super powers. And Stephanie's research leads her to believe that Global Tech, led by Dr. King (Stephen Collins) might be responsible for what is happening to them. They're going to have to work fast because someone definitely wants to know about them and stop them.

Every episode of this show combined one of two stories of the week that found the family teaming up in various combinations to try to deal with life now that they have these super powers. But there was also a thread of the bigger story flowing through each episode. Some episodes hardly advanced the big story while others mainly focused on that. But the time we got to the end of the season, the stories were focused mostly on the secrets of Global Tech.

The show started out with a good mix of elements between the story of the week and the ongoing saga. But as they got into the middle of the season, things all but ground to a halt. Further frustrating me, any progress they did make or any cliffhanger they left us with was abandoned or forgotten by five minutes into the next episode. If I hadn't been blogging the show for a friend's site, I would have given up on it myself.

But as the show wound into its final third, things really picked up. Not only were there consequences to the character's actions from week to week, but they even brought back a few things I thought had been forgotten and used them to further the plot. By the time the season had ended, all the big mysteries had been wrapped up. Yes, the final minutes did set things up for a potential season two, but it still feels like a complete show.

Honestly, I think timing did the show in more than anything else. I know I am tired of shows that tease us with answers to questions and never deliver any satisfaction. (Lost? Heroes? I'm looking directly at you.) This show felt like it was going to be another one of those. Trust me, it isn't.

The characters were fairly well developed early on, and I quickly grew to love them. My favorite was Katie, the beautiful nerd who was always making some superhero reference the rest of the characters didn't get. Her enthusiasm was infectious. Really, all the characters had their moments, however, and I liked them all. That certainly helped me get through the middle episodes of the season. It was fun spending time around them even if the writers weren't good at advancing the story.

The acting was always uniformly good. That didn't surprise me with the adults since I was already familiar with Michael Chiklis, Julie Benz, and Stephen Collins. (And it was fun watching Reverend Camden from 7th Heaven playing a villain for a change.) The kids did a great job as well.

Despite the fact that the show was canceled, this release has been labeled "The Complete First Season." But what's in a name, right? All 20 episodes are here in wide screen and full surround. The only thing you get in the way of extras are some deleted scenes and the season long blooper reel.

No Ordinary Family had some issues, but overall it was a charming show. The major plot lines were wrapped up before it ended, although they certainly left things open for a second season. If you missed the show, this is a great way to catch it.

Episodes:

1. Pilot

2. No Ordinary Marriage

3. No Ordinary Ring

4. No Ordinary Vigilante

5. No Ordinary Quake

6. No Ordinary Visitors

7. No Ordinary Mobster

8. No Ordinary Accident

9. No Ordinary Anniversary

10. No Ordinary Sidekick

11. No Ordinary Friends