**SPOILER ALERT: If you’re waiting to see the premiere episode of No Ordinary Family on ABC, do not read on.**

By Rob Siebert
Editor, Fanboy Wonder

I’m not normally so harsh with my reviews, but it has to be said: This show is a pile of crap.

But it’s no ordinary pile of crap, oh no. This show is so cheesy I still stink of limburger 24 hours later. It’s like an after-school special, or a Disney Channel movie aired in prime time on a major network.

Image from tvovermind.com

When the Powell family, comprised of The Thing, Dexter’s dead wife, a girl from the Disney Channel, and the kid who played young Captain Kirk for 30 seconds in Star Trek, find themselves in a plane that crashes into the ocean, a mysterious radioactive goo in the water gives them super powers. Jim (Michael Chiklis) gets super strength and invulnerability, his wife Stephanie (Julie Benz) gets super speed, their teenage daughter Daphne (Kay Panabaker) becomes a telepath, and their younger son JJ (Jimmy Bennett) becomes…a super genius? Or something? Eh, either way. They’ve got powers.

But wouldn’t ya know it, the family’s got problems. As a big shot scientist, Stephanie never has any time to spend with her family. Jim, a police sketch artist, feels he’s not living up to his potential in life. Daphne is worried that her metrosexual boyfriend is turned off because she’s not ready to lose her virginity yet. And JJ is having trouble in school.

All these problems float to the forefront of the show, even though, y’know…THEY JUST GOT SUPER POWERS!!!! Sheesh, you’d think getting super strength would take the edge of your son flunking a math test…

Thankfully, Jim can confide in his friend George, played by Romany Malco, a.k.a. the black guy from The 40-Year-Old Virgin. George is always there to scold Jim when he puts his wife’s pussy on a pedestal.

The episode is narrated by Jim and Stephanie as they talk to a counselor (apparently secret identities aren’t an issue on this show). At the end, Jim says something to the effect of:  ”We may not have ordinary problems anymore, but we’re no ordinary family.” But we already knew that, because the word “extraordinary” is thrown around numerous times during the episode just to remind us.

Then at the end, we find out who our big villain will be. We cue the grim music and the dark set. And there, leaning over the dead body of one of his lackies is…

Stephen Collins. Cue “Imperial March.”

Photo from zap2it.com

Ever seen an episode of 7th Heaven? Remember the dad? He was the pastor of the church, The Reverend Camden. Yeah, that was Stephen Collins. I’m guessing Alan Thicke was unavailable.

This isn’t the first time Disney (the company that owns ABC) has given us a super powered family. In 2004, they distributed Pixar’s The Incredibles. With No Ordinary Family they’re trying to catch some of that magic, throw a bit of the Heroes formula in, and get a prime time hit. But while The Incredibles was both dramatic and funny, not to mention witty and charming, Family is just laughably corny.

This show is like Heroes meets Family Matters, if very few of the jokes or zingers from the latter were been updated or changed. For instance, there’s a scene where the family is gathered in their living room talking about their new powers, and Daphne gives us the clever line: “I think I liked us better when we were just dysfunctional.”

HA HA HA HA HO HO HO HO HEE HEE HEE HEE

There’s another equally corny instance where Daphne is crying to her mother because her boyfriend has just dumped her for…wait for it…HER BEST FRIEND! 

“He said he loved me! He said he’d wait for me! Why would he say it if it wasn’t true?!?” 

*head on table* She probably should have gone to George with that one.

Mind you, I’m probably not in this show’s target demographic. It’s not meant to be as dramatic as Heroes or Fringe. They want to bring in families with young children who are into superheroes (as opposed to adults who are into superheroes), and appeal to parents with the family values angle. But that’s not going to work if the adults are rolling their eyes at everything. Oddly enough, a show like this would probably have done very well on the Disney Channel, where Hanna Montana and Wizards of Waverly Place are smash hits.

One thing I will give the pilot is that it had a really cool action sequence where a teleporter is trying to shoot Joe, and is transporting all around him as he fires. Joe has to keep catching the bullets, while trying to stop his assailant. The teleporting is very reminiscent of Nightcrawler in the second X-Men movie. But hey, with this show I’ll take what I can get.

Under the right circumstances, good performers can elevate sub-par material. Chiklis, Benz, Panabaker and the others are all good performers. But they can’t elevate this. It simply is what it is. I for one, will NOT be coming back for subsequent episodes. 

As much as I enjoy Julie Benz’s work, I’m guessing being Dexter’s dead wife is starting to look really good right about now…

Front page image from noordinaryfamily.net.