Last night’s No Ordinary Family was another fun, strong episode, which found Jim and Stephanie combining their powers to bring down a superpowered pyromaniac. We also got some more insight into the show’s villains and some very creative poker cheating.
“No Ordinary Anniversary” split the parents and kids off into two pretty much completely separate plots. Jim and Stephanie hit the town to celebrate their 18th anniversary, but their plans were quickly derailed by the arrival of a superpowered arsonist. To bring down the pyromaniac, Stephanie had to use her super-speed to come to Jim’s aid, and so the show at last gave us a full-on superhero team-up. But they’re not the only ones trying to get to the supervillain – the villainous Dr. King and his henchman the Watcher are also after him.
Meanwhile, Daphne and J.J. are left at home and, predictably enough, up to no good. Desperate to make enough money to buy a supercomputer that can keep up with his brain, he invites a bunch of his fellow students over for a poker game, where he intends to take them for all they’ve got. When his suspicious opponents switch the game up on him so he can no longer count cards, he enlists Daphne’s help for even more blatant cheating, until Katie and her new boyfriend — who is, lest we forget, the Watcher — show up to check up on them. Finally, in a development that felt rather too sitcommy for its own good, it’s off to the high school to fix Jim’s broken anniversary present to Stephanie before their parents get home.
The main thing weaving these two stories together was the presence of the Watcher, who now knows Stephanie is researching people with powers and has several good reasons to think Stephanie’s research subjects are the Powells themselves. Daphne is also starting to be suspicious of Katie’s new boyfriend, who she learns is able to block her from reading his mind.
And, in an interesting development for the show’s longer storyline, Stephanie’s asshole colleague Francis gets fired for refusing to spy on Stephanie (because it’s a waste of his time) and is starting his own investigations into just what Dr. King is up to. I doubt he’s long for this Earth, but let’s hope he can give us a few juicy revelations before the Watcher mind-chokes him to death.
I’ve been waiting to see some superpowered team-ups ever since the show premiered, and this episode delivered nicely. Stephanie always did seem quite a bit more powerful than Jim, and it was a nice touch that she got a giddy thrill out of fighting crime in a way even Jim doesn’t. I don’t think the writers have quite figured out how to use her powers effectively in crime-fighting situations, but then, to be fair, Stephanie doesn’t really know either. She surely could do more with her abilities than some Matrix-inspired dodging (that needs to be retired from pop culture anyway) and running away from supervillains really fast. The end of the episode suggested we won’t see Stephanie doing this again for awhile, but come on — the door has been opened. It’s not closing again.
Alfred Hitchcock is generally credited with coining the term “fridge logic”, which refers to all the plot holes and logical problems you notice in a movie or TV show after you’ve finished watching them, say while you’re rummaging the refrigerator for a snack (or, just to pick something out at random, writing a recap of the episode for a science fiction blog). Science fiction, which requires writers to invent an entire set of laws and rules for their universe and then try to keep them internally consistent, is particularly susceptible to fridge logic, as just about any plot, no matter how apparently airtight, can be unraveled into a nonsensical mess if you think about it long enough.
That’s why, in general, I’m OK with any logical problems that I only notice after I finished watching the show. (Hell, both incarnations of Doctor Who practically run on fridge logic, and I love them both dearly.) If a show was slick and entertaining enough to keep me from noticing how ridiculous its plot contortions were while I was watching them, then I figure the show deserves some credit. It’s only when I can’t help but notice a show’s illogic while I’m watching that I get annoyed.
In the last few weeks, No Ordinary Family has morphed from the latter type of show to the former. This show has come a long way from a pilot that I still say insulted the intelligence of its viewers. Yes, there were still a bunch of logical problems in “No Ordinary Anniversary” – for instance do high schoolers really play in poker games with high enough stakes that J.J. could buy a supercomputer with the winnings? (Actually, don’t answer that.) Talking about these plot holes feels more like nitpicking than commenting on a basic flaw with the show as it did a few weeks ago, and that’s because the rest of the show has improved so much.
And this episode just did a lot of things that made me smile. There was the slick inter-cutting of Jim and Dr. King’s phone calls, George’s amusing realization that he should have partnered with Stephanie instead of Jim, Stephanie’s musings on whether Jim actually wants to fight crime in a costume, the affectionate chemistry between Michael Chiklis and Julie Benz (not to mention Kay Panabaker and Jimmy Bennett, who have a nice sibling bond developing), the ridiculously disgusting thoughts Daphne read in J.J.’s poker opponent, and Dr. King’s increasingly open evilness, just to name a few.
I also really liked the ambiguity as to whether the Watcher got rid of the poker players just because he wanted to investigate the Powells, or whether he was also wanted to help out Katie. There’s been a few suggestions that the Watcher genuinely cares about her in his own weird way, and I hope the show doesn’t abandon that. Of course, Katie had my favorite moment of the episode. After all, how many other network shows would spend thirty seconds of valuable primetime airspace talking about frakking President Laura Roslin and the Twelve Colonies?
