With the third episode of No Ordinary Family, I bet you’re asking yourself, “is he going to like it? Or is he going to list a bunch of things he dislikes again?” That is unknown for now. What is known, however, is that this episode of No Ordinary Family might just change how you receive this review at all.
What does that mean? Find out after the cut.
Synopsis: After the family witnesses a robbery at a friend’s wedding, Jim and George crash numerous weddings to find the culprits who stole Stephanie’s engagement ring. Stephanie is worried about giving a sample of her blood to the company as a part of mandatory work physical. JJ asks Daphne to read the mind of girl he likes to see if she has mutual feelings. Daphne is desperate to tell a childhood friend about her abilities. (Synopsis from Wikipedia.)
What Was Good:
What Was Bad: Pretty much everything. I’ve nailed the show for being inconsistent between two episodes already, but let’s look at what else happens here: after previously establishing that he can just “know” things, we are forced to endure a sequence in which JJ attempts to a woo a woman by learning Hebrew and acting Jewish, which is incredibly awkward and just barely funny. On the other side of town, Jim and George are crashing weddings in an attempt to stop a series of high profile wedding robbers who a) rob weddings, which is ridiculous and b) grapple up the side of buildings for helicopter escapes. What? And then they apparently don’t notice Michael Chiklis jumping up the side of the building and crashing into the wall a few feet or so under them.
Meanwhile, Daphne continues to be a complete stereotype of a character without any three dimensional aspects which leads into what is arguably the biggest annoyance on the show – her powers. See, a big part of this episode was that Daphne needs someone to talk to, so George and Katie are brought in. The whole situation occurs because she can’t handle her psychic powers. So if her father Jim is actively trying to help her deal with this, then how on Earth did he forget his daughter has psychic powers and give her a bald-faced lie (no pun intended)? That was the point where the show officially lost me, because the episode had been ridiculous before but that just made no sense whatsoever. It’s like Heroes logic of not even trying to pull threads together.
For all intents and purposes, this was a bad episode. I hate to rule out a show so early in it’s career, but after two “just ok” episodes that steadily decrease in quality as we go, it’s not a good sign at all. With as many different shows as there are on TV, and with so many of them attempting to use legitimate science to the stories that to see one that needs it fail with it so often, I can’t help but ask myself why I’m not just watching something else instead. I don’t need long running and boring subplots and evil villains twiddling their fingers together in front of computer screens when I could just watch… oh, I dunno, Fringe? And when the show tries to be funny, well I can just wait until the next night and watch Modern Family on the same channel which a) is a better family and b) is legitimately funny instead of accidentally funny at all the wrong times.
Overview: I think I’ll be honestly surprised if I see another review for this show on the site. If I do go past, it’s simply because I made a commitment to review a season, but I’ll be damned if I actually want to anymore. The past two episodes have been fairly bad and refuse to make sense, but this one just takes the cake and then has Michael Chiklis dive into it.
