SPOILER WARNING: It's probably best you check out the first episode of No Ordinary Family before reading this review as I do reveal a few plot points! However, as I don't go into a huge amount of detail, the review won't completely spoil it for you!
I had my doubts about
No Ordinary Family when I first saw the trailer for it. I mean, it looked good and all but I just wasn't sure whether it would be my sort of show. How wrong I was, because I liked it from the first few seconds! In fact, this is one of the best pilot episodes of a series that I've ever seen. From my own experience, I find that they're normally a little rough around the edges and often feel like I need to watch subsequent episodes before deciding whether I'll stick with it. Not here though. The whole episode had a very cinematic feel about it and was brilliantly directed. There's no long and drawn out origins story here - they're involved in a plane accident on holiday and each family member then spends the episode discovering their powers and testing them out with some great results. (but more on that later)
One of the most interesting things about the show was the characters of Jim and Stephanie Powell. After seeing Michael Chiklis play a strong character like Vic Mackey in
The Shield and Julie Benz as downtrodden Rita in
Dexter, the role reversal here was extremely interesting as Benz plays the head of the household and main breadwinner who spends most of her time at work (as a research scientist) while Chiklis plays a police sketch artist who dreams of seeing his family cone together. They both really nail their respective roles, are equally impressive and have great chemistry together...they couldn't have found two better actors to lead this series. Kay Panabaker as Daphne Powell and Jimmy Bennett as JJ Powell are two young actors who I'm not in the least bit familiar with, but what a treat that the writers of this show decided to make them genuinely interesting rather than your typical whiney teens. It's a pity that neither of them are given a little more time in the episode, especially when it comes to discovering and testing their powers, but I have faith that we'll soon pick up with their stories next week and as the show progresses.
Once Jim and his wife discover their powers, we're treated to some great scenes and the CGI is particularly impressive especially for a TV show. After discovering that he can catch bullets and is near invincible (although the scene where he discovers he's not is a very nice twist) he asks his best friend George St. Cloud, a show stealing performance by
40 Year Old Virgin star Romany Malco, to shoot him and sees if he can fly by jumping off a building...both of which lead equally hilarious results. On the other hand, Stephanie takes the slightly more logical route and decides to test just how fast she can run (yes, she's like a female Flash) with the help of her lab assistant. The scene where she discovers her powers is very cool. Daphne meanwhile finds out that she has psychic powers in an interesting enough little subplot and seeing her brother, who faces being put in remedial class because of learning difficulties, discover that his newfound power is a Reed Richards like intelligence was an awesome moment even if I did see it coming.
If I had one problem with this episode, it was the fact that they all seemed a little too accepting about the powers they'd just gained and the fact that and then share their story with a marriage counsellor is a little hard to believe...it'll be interesting to see what they do with that or whether it was just a device to help move things along in this pilot episode. However, this is hardly a big deal and the episode we ended up with, is a lot better than one where the origins/discovery was dragged out for an entire 42 minutes. That's really the only fault I can fin with
No Ordinary Family at this point. A fight scene near the end of the episode that featured Chiklis taking on a teleporting bad guy was both fantastically filmed (seriously, it was better than what they did with Nightcrawler in
X-Men 2!) and also very intriguing as was the last few minutes. I'm not sure how many episodes they have planned for this season, but I hope it's the full 22, as there is a lot of potential here for some amazing stories.
This is a show most definitely worth checking out. Full of references to comic book fans and fun enough to appeal to those who aren't, it so far has all the right makings of a great TV show. Time will tell if they can keep up this momentum but right now, I have no doubt that
No Ordinary Family is something you all should check out!