TV: No Ordinary Family

For those of you who missed the press release (and since I didn't see any promotions for the show personally, I'm sure there are a few of you), No Ordinary Family is a new series on ABC this season that centers around a family who gain superpowers. As of this writing, episodes are also available on Hulu. It just aired its third episode. Warning: spoilers follow.

The show began with a promising pilot. It was a bit rough in places, but thoroughly enjoyable and, dare I say it, exciting. Episode two saw the rough edges trimmed off and delivered everything the pilot promised in a sleeker, improved package. Watching it reminded me of The Incredibles, and Heroes – or at least, what Heroes started off as, back before all the crazy. The second episode had an ending that genuinely surprised me and left me looking forward to what would happen next.

When the third episode appeared on Hulu, I jumped on it with geeky enthusiasm. And collided with the side of a building, just as super-strong hero dad Jim does in a move that characterizes the whole of the episode. To summarize: fail.

The episode begins with the family attending a fancy wedding. By unbelievable coincidence, the wedding is beset by gun-wielding thieves who don’t even bother to mask themselves! They demand all the valuables, and while everyone else hits the dirt, Jim and super-fast wife Rita Stephanie stand there gaping until the robbers’ flashlights spot the wedding ring on Rita Stephanie’s finger and demand it be handed over. The robbers then take off.

What do you think happens when thieves steal supermom’s wedding ring? Does Rita Stephanie use her super-speed to recover her ring before the thieves can even blink? No. She just stands there. A woman with super-duper-speed lets her wedding ring be stolen.

Super-strong husband Jim gives chase. He runs outside where the thieves are scaling up the side of the building. Even though we’ve watched Jim jump buildings for two whole episodes now (albeit with some problems landing), he completely misjudges his jump, smacks into a wall, and falls back down. Then, instead of getting the hell up and trying to jump again, he just lays there and watches as the thieves make it up to the roof and escape via helicopter sound effect. With his wife’s wedding ring.

At breakfast the next day, super-smart son JJ asks dad why he didn’t use his superpowers. Rita Stephanie says, “Because it’s too dangerous!” At least, that’s what the show thinks it said. What it really said is, “Because neither of these people gives a shit about their marriage, your dad gave up after halfheartedly trying, and your mom didn’t try at all.” Additionally, despite her wedding ring being gone for all of one morning, all the IT guys at work noticed and now think Stephanie is single! (This is stupid on so many levels.)

How is Jim’s day going? Not so well, because even though he has a seemingly photographic memory for faces in the first two episodes, and the wedding featured about 11 million candles, and the thieves weren’t wearing masks and then escaped by HELICOPTER – a highly conspicuous method of travel – Jim apparently didn’t get a good enough look at any of the thieves, and neither did any of the 70-odd guests. And nobody in the whole city saw the helicopter. And there were no cameras anywhere at a wedding.

If that weren’t enough, Jim and his best friend George check out a headline on the computer: “ANOTHER LOCAL WEDDING HIT AS ROBBERY TREND CONTINUES.”

Oh my god. If I were the police, I would totally not try and stake out any potential targets! If I were getting married in a city with a wedding crime wave, I would totally not hire security! If I were a thief, I would totally target a gathering of 70+ people because there is no way anyone would manage to surreptitiously snap a photo of my unmasked face lit romantically by candles with their cell phone, much less see my face!! Also, I would totally pick helicopter as my method of escape because they are inconspicuous, impossible to follow, and not registered or tracked by any sort of government administration!!!

There are a couple of other subplots going on in this episode, but I won’t bother with them, because I feel it’s more important that we jump ahead to the next major moment in our main plot: Jim gets another chance at our wedding thieves.

Jim and best bud George start crashing weddings. The thieves show up at the second wedding they crash. (This wedding, to the thieves’ credit, has less candles.) Jim gets up during the robbery and the thieves shoot him. Because he is immune to bullets, this only puts holes in his tuxedo. The thieves assume he’s wearing Kevlar and is the police! Explain to me again why there’s no police presence?

Our thieves run by Jim’s psychic daughter into a well-lit hotel lobby full of people, guns and all. Jim chases them, but is distracted by his daughter for such a long time that when he gets outside, the thieves have managed to climb up at least 8 flights of fire escape to the roof of the building.

Despite the fact we have seen Jim jump from the ground onto roofs of much higher buildings, he opts to jump only onto the top landing of the fire escape. From there he climbs up the ladder after the slowest of the thieves and grabs his ankle! Now what do you think our “hero” does? Does he tackle our thief to the ground and restrain him until police arrive, or hog tie him with his own pants, or any sort of reasonable idea? No. He THROWS THE GUY FROM THE ROOF.

It’s obviously more than eight stories up. My immediate thought was “HE KILLED THAT GUY.”

By the way, the thief he grabbed clearly had a gun attached to his belt which mysteriously disappeared while the thief was flying through the air. I don’t mean it flew off him and landed somewhere unknown, I mean it was reclaimed by someone in the prop department between shots. One moment it was there, the next it was gone.

“He killed that guy!” would have been an amazing turn for the show. Think how conflicted our hero father would become. The guilt! The temptation to turn himself in! Having to overcome that guilt in order to do the right thing and save people using your powers! Perhaps a total reversal as his wife tries to convince him to use his powers to do good! A reluctant hero can be a very compelling – dare I say it, human – character for a television show.

We don’t go there. Instead, when Jim meets George down at the precinct, he passes the thief he threw off the roof, who has escaped completely unscathed! The guy dashes away after passing Jim at the door. We next learn that the police can’t keep the thief because there’s no evidence. Because nobody saw him and his buddies run through the well-lit lobby waving guns. Because apparently that hotel lobby had no security cameras. Because there was a getaway car (!?!) but the thieves were nowhere near it. Never mind the fact that the thieves twice climbed up to the roof and twice we heard a helicopter.

But guess what they found at the scene of the crime! STEPH’S RING! See, apparently the thieves decided to bring some of the loot from their previous heist with them, and then DROPPED IT.

So there you have it. That’s how No Ordinary Family went from a promising newcomer about a family of superheros to an unwatchable, contrived, illogical piece of crap that I feel ashamed I ever recommended to anyone. And just in case anyone wants to speculate that the helicopter we heard twice might have been the police and not an escape vehicle, then tell me why the hell did the thieves head for the roof in the first place?

Some additional points:

• Jim goes jumping around the city and nobody ever sees him or bothers to investigate that loud crashing sound on the roof. There was a conversation about secret identities in this episode. It’s been three episodes now, it’s about time Jim started hiding his face if he wants to engage in superheroics, and time the show stopped pretending that Jim is somehow invisible to the general populace.
• All of the teenage girls in this show seriously look like they have been dressed by their grandmothers.
• If you’ve seen the first two episodes, then you’ll remember psychic daughter Daphne had a boyfriend who cheated on her. Just a small word of advice, Daph: you’ll have more luck retaining a high school boyfriend when you stop dressing like Blossom.

IN CONCLUSION: For a fantastic TV show about a family dynamic affected by the existence of supernatural powers, watch Medium.