No Ordinary Family- No Ordinary Ring recap/review

Another week with the Super Powells, and the show is still sweet and entertaining. It’s not yet a gripping must-see, but we are still enjoying it much more than most of the other new fall shows.

Jim
The episode opened with Jim hitting baseballs into the ocean. Watch out, boaters. Then, he met the other Powells at the wedding, and they all looked great. Suddenly, the lights went out and there was an armed robbery where the robbers took everyone’s jewelry and money, including Stephanie’s ring. Stephanie stopped Jim from interfering in the crowded wedding, because the robbers had machine guns and guests could get caught in a crossfire. That’s exactly what we were thinking. Smart Stephanie. We think the solution to Jim being bad at crime fighting is for him to convince Stephanie to come along and think for him. As the robbers ran away, Jim followed them but loses them because the building is too high for him to jump. Jim, still angry about Stephanie’s ring and his own impotence in the face of crime, kept his rented tux and started crashing weddings with his lawyer friend, hoping he would get another crack at the robbers. At the first wedding he crashed, he ended up thinking there were robbers when there weren’t and ruining the large wedding cake, something we saw coming ten miles away. The second crashed wedding involved the perps. Jim was able to leap the building this time, because he had taken dancing lessons. He grabbed on by the ankle and threw him off the building. Huh? For stealing? That’s not right. The guy didn’t die, but in real life, he probably would have. All the perps were released because the cops had no evidence on them, even though they were at the scene of the crime, wearing black matching crook getups, and carrying guns. Man, that's a good defense attorney right there. Even lamer, the crooks just happened to be carrying Stephanie’s ring, so Jim was able to get it back. Yeah. Right. They would not be carrying that.

Stephanie
Stephanie was informed that the board was going to fund her research. They just needed a sample of her blood for an insurance physical. Predictably, her assistant donated her own blood so that Stephanie’s secret blood anomalies wouldn’t be revealed. Stephanie had to swap assistant Katie’s blood with an old sample of her own from when she was hired. Katie, are you just an excuse for the show to have another attractive woman on the show who isn’t a mom or an adolescent? Stephanie successfully pulled of the switch without being seen, but her boss noticed a difference in the footage of the vials of blood. Yeah. Right. Like there would be a perfect shot of those vials on the security cameras. Even if there were, the boss would have to be some sort of “noticing things savant.” Nothing in this plotline made any sense. The idea that two scientists would bungle the handling of the blood test so badly in the first place is laughable. At the end of the episode, Jim took her to a romantic dinner on the roof, which was cheesy, but we were touched anyway.

Daphne
Daphne is making out like a bandit in keeping JJ’s secret. If she doesn’t tell on him for having powers, he has to do her homework. Seems fair. She read her friend Megan’s mind and found out that Megan’s parents are splitting. Like a moron, Daphne starts talking about it. Megan thought Daphne had creeped in her backpack and found the info in there. (On a text? In a diary?) Upset that a peer might think she was a freak, Daphne asked Jim and Stephanie if she could tell Megan and they said no. Daphne, angry at her dad for trying to keep his crime fighting a secret (like he had any chance of doing that with a mind reader in the house), ran off to tell Megan anyway. We knew she wouldn’t, so there was no tension. We are over Daphne storming around and whining like a typical TV teenager every episode. Speaking of character themes we are over, we are also over Jim acting sad that he has a useless job compared to his wife. Can he just start the application to become a cop already? It would make it easier for him to fight crime.

JJ
JJ was crushing on a girl, and he asked his sister to read her mind to see if he should go for it. Turns out, the girl thinks, “He’s nice…for a tool. I hope he doesn’t like me.” Ouch. JJ isn’t so bad! To spare his feelings, Daphne told JJ the girl only dated Jewish boys. Predictably, this prompted JJ to learn everything there is to know about Judaism and pretend to be a Jew. This did not work at all, and it was totally awkward, but funny. We think JJ should always be comic relief. It’s ok JJ. At least you have mad knowledge of a major religion, right?

We are still fans of this new show, but the level of predictability was ridiculous in every storyline except for Jim’s. We like that he’s not a great superhero yet. It makes sense that he doesn’t yet know what to do when he arrives to stop a crime. We like that they are emphasizing how Jim’s clumsiness gets in his way, even with the powers. Also, a few things pushed the boundaries of plausibility, even in a show based on an implausible premise. There was also a weird lesson about how the dad was only lying to protect Daphne, like Daphne lied to JJ to protect him. That’s a nice lesson for a family show. We thought this one was a little sloppy, writing-wise, and it would be so easy to fix the problems and make it believable. Everything else, including tone, was good.

Episode grade: C

Catch up and watch this episode here: http://www.hulu.com/watch/184781/no-ordinary-family-no-ordinary-ring#s-p1-so-i0