No Ordinary Family 1.01: Pilot

Thanks to the magic of the internet, you can watch the pilot of No Ordinary Family on ABC's website, using the password "extraordinary." (You might need to create a profile.) Mild spoilers ahead, though most are in the commercials that have been running on TV. It's impossible to avoid comparing this to Heroes, I think. The premise is so similar: a group of people suddenly develop powers, and hilarity and angst result. The difference being, as other critics have pointed out, that while Heroes started grandly and internationally, No Ordinary Family is...okay, also international, as they seem to acquire their powers after a plane crash in Brazil, BUT it is also a micro-universe in the beginning. It's a family that's struggling to grow and change, and surprise surprise, they suddenly acquire powers that might help them with their problems. Jim (Michael Chiklis), who is feeling a bit helpless as a police sketch artist, suddenly has super-strength. Stephanie (Julie Benz), who has ten billion things to juggle as a scientist of some sort, can run faster than pretty much everything else. Daphne (Kay Panabaker, who will fall short when inevitably compared to Amber Tamblyn), whose social life has recently become complicated, can read minds. JJ (Jimmy Bennett), who has a learning disability, has that equation-solving highlighter from Numb3rs implanted in his brain or something. (Hey, kids and kids-at-heart! There is nothing wrong with having a learning disability! You do not need a superpower to deal with life's challenges. Your school receives government funding to provide you with the resources you need. FOR REAL.) The teenagers, predictably, moan and gripe about how difficult their lives are, both pre- and post-powers. The adults are much more practical, and also amusing, as they test their powers and consider how they can use them to a) improve their lives, and b) improve other people's lives. I hope, in the coming weeks, that either the kids grow the hell up, or that we focus more on Jim and Stephanie, because they are miles more interesting than their kids. The colleagues of the adults--Detective Yvonne Cho (Christina Chang), district attorney George St. Cloud (Romany Malco), boss scientist Dayton King (Stephen Collins), and geeky scientist Katie Andrews (delightfully played by Autumn Reeser in the Autumn Reeseriest way)--are similarly fun, though one can already kind of see how their relationships might play out. And near the end of the episode, we get hints of what's happening outside the micro-universe of the family, which is promising. I am disappointed at how very non-diverse the show is. Aside from the characters played by Chang and Malco, what we're shown is a fairly affluent (the first glimpse of their vast kitchen was rather staggering) and very non-chromatic world, which post-Heroes feels a bit...sterile. I also wish Jim's and Stephanie's powers weren't so traditionally gendered, but so far, we don't lack for strong female characters. The Bechdel test was passed in an extended and spectacular way, and if the mother-daughter interaction didn't go the distance there, well...at least Daphne is a basketball player, rather than the more traditional (for the genre) cheerleader. This is a family drama that also happens to be a superhero story, as you might have guessed from the endless comparisons to The Incredibles you've seen, or will be seeing very soon. It doesn't break new ground on either front, and it has the potential to be dreadfully rote. It also, however, has the potential to be solidly enjoyable. The pacing is decent even when the jokes fall flat, and all of the grown-ups, at least, are dependably versatile. I hope the show grows and expands, because I like Julie Benz and Autumn Reeser, and I'm impressed by a show that has an equal number of female and male regular characters. I'm increasingly disenchanted, however, by shows that don't have many characters of color. I like what they've done with their micro-universe so far, but it's certainly not one I can recognize as mine. I'll be crossing my fingers in their favor for the next month, but for now, this feels more like fodder for lazy Sunday afternoons, not must-see TV.