No Ordinary Family – Their powers come with growing pains

Last week’s No Ordinary Family pilot was merely the obvious tease a premiere is supposed to be: The set up. The reveal. The jaw-dropping “Look what I can do!” everyone was expecting. There was wonder and pizazz and immediate likability.  And it delivered … no doubt about it.

I liked the pilot, but still thought there was some underlying vanilla plainness in the mix … something I hoped over the course of the first few episodes would work itself out, turning the show into a spiffy little series.

Well, guess what? All of a sudden, the short walk from the pilot to the sophomore effort suddenly made everything better with the show and with The Powell family. Well … not exactly better per se. But in the course of seven days No Ordinary Family feels as if it’s shifted into a higher gear, giving us more of what we want and just at the right pace for the program.

While we’re beginning to dig a little deeper at who The Powell family is, we’re getting to see some of their flaws, some of their problems … some things they didn’t see coming with the accidental acquisition of their new powers. JJ’s increased mental abilities have the eye of his mathematics teacher, but not in a good way. Daphne is having a problem coping with all the voices in her head courtesy of her telepathy. Stephanie gets in an accident hauling ass to her work attempting to head off a potential problem with Dr. Dayton King (Stephen Collins) who’s sticking his nose in her business where she doesn’t want him sticking it. (We’ll find out more about Dr. King soon enough.)

And Jim Powell? Well … Jim just hasn’t yet gotten the hang of his new super strength yet, realizing it’s going to take time for him to come to grips with what he’s got.

This was the perfect way to move this show along: A bit more ‘wowzah’, but with bumps in the road having the potential to cause some major consternation. The Powers That Be are working this show terrifically as far as I’m concerned.

But the really cool thing about the episode … the thing that brought everything home and offered the viewer the ‘umph’ in looking forward to next week came at the very end: Detective Yvonne Cho (Christina Chang), the officer who works at the same precinct as Jim, seems to have been killed by Watcher (Josh Stewart, an obvious super baddie with telekinetic mojo).

Nice little cliff hanger. Let’s see what happens next Tuesday.

In the meantime, tell us what you thought about this week’s episode.

Clacked by Michael Noble
on Oct 06, 2010 @ 07:50 EST5EDT