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No Ordinary Family is an awful show, and I kind of like it.


I finally decided to give this show a shot, and the quick verdict is total guilty pleasure.

The premise is that an "ordinary family" mysteriously gets super powers. The initial problem is that this is not an ordinary family. Mom is a brilliant researcher, who can afford to put her family in a beautiful mansion of a house, and take the entire family on business trips to Brazil. Michael Chiklis is a completely emasculated police sketch artist, slash mr. mom. The children are remarkably normal, in that they're ungrateful brats, that you'd be tempted to drown in the river if they weren't your own children.

One of the basic themes of the show is that when they get their superpowers, they each get powers that allow them to achieve what's been missing in their lives. Mom's a workaholic, and doesn't have enough time for her job and her family, so she gets super speed. Son's a moron, so he becomes a super brain. I'm not sure exactly what the deal with the daughter is, she's a telepath, maybe every teenage girl just wants to know what everyone thinks about them? Of course the star power of the show, is Mr. Mom, who is constantly ridiculed by all of his coworkers and neighbors, do detectives really trash talk the sketch artist's life choices, and treat them like the total bottom of the food chain?

I know that there are a lot of assholes in the world, but I swear everyone that this family deals with are assholes.

Okay, enough trash talking the show. It's got a lot wrong with it, but it also has a lot right, okay, maybe not a lot right, but there's a lot to it that's fun.

First off Chiklis works surprisingly well as the mopey loser that's always aspired to be more. There's just something about him, he has that wounded puppy dog look down to a tee. He responds to getting super powers in just the way that you'd expect, he decides to fight crime. He's backed up by his best friend, the DA, and the scenes of them trying to learn the limits and applications of his powers are some of the high points of the show.

Similarly, Mom has an assistant at work who is a comic nerd, she has a statue of Kitty Pride in her locker. These supporting characters are really what sells the show.

It's just good fun, it's a little rough, but you should definitely give it a shot, maybe you'll enjoy it, maybe not.
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