alectoperdita | What I watch: No Ordinary Family (Reply)

No Ordinary Family (ABC)
I'm definitely judging this show based on the comics medium. I had given up on Heroes after the first season when everything quickly devolved into what was essentially family drama. This show is at least upfront about the family drama part.

Power Set: I'm less than enthused about the family's power set. It's wholly generic. My biggest peeve is the son's power. They had set up something potentially really interesting when the father suggested the son had a learning disability. What super power does the son develop? Super intelligence, of course! Not only is that particular set-up trite (and sadly predictable), but they've essentially magicked away all that character's problems. So two thumbs down on the son's power.
Characters: The family is pretty bleh to me, no one is particularly compelling and their chemistry as a family is largely forgettable. You don't even really fill the alienation/drifting apart that is being set up. The father's black friend (I don't remember any of the characters name off the top of my head, that's how unforgettable it is) does this unintuitive leap from not wanting to shoot the father to egging him to jump off a ten-story building to see if he can fly. Scientific process people! There's are clear baby steps when you want to test something like that before you go leaping off of buildings.
Plot: Not much of an overall plot so far. There are hints of the standard nefarious, shadowy organizations endowing people with super powers. We'll have to see how this aspect will pan out.

So nothing spectacular and not even remotely as riveting as Heroes was at the beginning. It's not completely terrible though, just very bland and generic. And sadly, as far as comics go with the recent fuckeries of Didio and Quesada's editorial vomiting, that's one of the better things to hope for.