Last night’s No Ordinary Family was a return to form, with a fun little episode that delved into more unusual family ties: those between long-suffering Jim and his deadbeat brother, and the twisted father-son bond of the show’s main villains.
After last week’s smelly fart of an episode, there really wasn’t anywhere for the show to go but up, and I’m used to No Ordinary Family veering wildly between highs and lows by now. When you average all the episodes together, you still have a fundamentally mediocre show…but there’s something weirdly exhilarating watching legitimately strong episodes freely interspersed with total misfires. And, it must be said, this ended up being probably the show’s second best entry so far, with a decently well-told main story and some interesting ideas around the edges.
“No Ordinary Brother” introduces Jim’s deadbeat brother Mikey, because all stable family men in shows like this are required to have a deadbeat brother. Mikey, it turns out, owes $150,000 to an evil loanshark that the show apparently borrowed from a Guy Ritchie movie, and in the midst of saving his brother from some thugs Jim accidentally reveals his big secret. Mikey then tries to take advantage of his family’s new abilities, taking J.J. to the track to use his super brain to bet on races. But this half-baked scheme falls through, he and Jim have a big falling out, and Mikey ends up the prisoner of the loan shark, with Jim forced to come up with the money in 24 hours.
Elsewhere, Katie is offered a big promotion from new human resources director Victoria Morrow, played by Lost’s Rebecca Mader. The job means Katie will have to move to Miami, which causes friction with Stephanie. Katie’s boyfriend Joshua, alias the Watcher, realizes this is all part of an elaborate scheme by Dr. King to accomplish…something. It’s either get Katie out of the way, get the Watcher out of the way, or just sort of generally piss people off because Dr. King is evil that way. Maybe it’s a combination of all three. The point is, it’s a scheme, and the Watcher’s onto it.
Daphne also has a subplot, but it’s barely worth mentioning. Her new role as student council president – we skipped over the entire actual election, so I suppose we should be thankful for small miracles – means she takes part on a student disciplinary board, wherein three student lackeys of evil math teacher Mr. Litchfield (who is apparently the only teacher at the school) pass judgment on their fellow students. Daphne’s telepathy makes discerning the truth easy, until she meets a hulking, brooding hunk who is taking the wrap for his high-achieving brother. This then creates a subplot so tedious that even the episode itself seems to forget about it for long stretches.
As you can probably tell, there’s a lot about this episode that’s either cliched, boring, or just not that good. I suspect that’s going to be the case for a while now, so why not have some fun with it? Still, if that’s how I felt about the plot, it does kinda raise the question of what I actually liked about this episode.
Well, there’s this scene where Jim finally confronts his brother about his mistakes and misdeeds, complete with a story about his dad. The writing is standard but serviceable – the real revelation here is Michael Chiklis’s acting, which is easily his best work in this series:
Then there’s this scene between Dr. King and the Watcher after Katie is almost killed in an “accident”, which suggests these two characters are, in their own twisted way, the dark counterparts of the Powells. Plus, it features some of the first really decent acting from Josh Stewart we’ve seen on the show:
Now, I don’t mean to oversell this. This isn’t great TV, but it is solid, interesting TV that plays around with some actual thematic material about what family really means. A title like No Ordinary Family should mean that, in some way, the show is going to explore the notion of family, examining why these bonds are important, what they can mean, and who is capable of forging them. Well, that and superheroes.
Up to this point, the show hasn’t really done that – family is just sort of a thing that’s there, something that can be rocked with angst and squabbling but is ultimately just as solid and bland as the big house that the Powells live in. But in this episode, family starts to mean something different. It might mean having to finally cut ties with a brother who is nothing but a disappointment, or it might mean…well, whatever Dr. King thinks it means. The show finds a neat way out of the former idea – Mikey really is trying to change, so Jim’s course becomes clear – but Dr. King continues to be a difficult character to figure out, and Stephen Collins continues to be a ton of fun to watch with his fatherly take on evil.
Sure, the episode still makes a lot of the same old mistakes. It immediately waves away the previous episode’s big cliffhanger, although encouragingly I don’t think that can be the case with this week’s. J.J.’s use of his super-brain to pick horses is even more ludicrous than his run as the school’s star quarterback, and the fact that it fails once still isn’t really enough to point out how ridiculous the idea is. And the ease with which Mikey and Jim take down the loan shark and his thugs makes you wonder why Jim didn’t just beat the crap out of them in the first place.
Look, just because I thought the Watchmen movie was awesome doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. I know it’s a mistake to put much faith in this show, because as soon as No Ordinary Family takes a step in the right direction, it immediately takes two shambling strides in the wrong one. I can tell you that “No Ordinary Brother” ended up being a pretty good episode, but I have no idea what that means going forward. But hey, at least next episode guest stars Warehouse 13’s Joanne Kelly. It can’t be all bad, can it?
(Don’t answer that.)
