No Ordinary Family episode 9 review: No Ordinary Anniversary

This review contains spoilers.

1.9 No Ordinary Anniversary

When a show like this is finding its feet, it’s strange how characters that you liked initially you can learn to hate when they’re altered. I had this in my mind after the first ten minutes of No Ordinary Anniversary, because George is really beginning to grind on me. The way he continually bugs Jim about fighting crime is ridiculous, and he even whines when Stephanie is brought to the ‘lair’ later in the story. How stupid is that?

But in the list of complaints I have about this show currently, I can now add gapping plot holes to them.

One of the most obvious was at the outset, where Jim rescues someone from a burning building and discovers that he’s flameproof. Except they make no explanation as to why his clothes didn’t combust, even if Jim didn’t. Perhaps they need to introduce an ‘Edna’ character, so they can have appropriate and specially resistant outfits?

But the worst hole came later when the super-fire starter (a Pyro clone) is in a secure police vehicle, which he the escapes from. When Jim and Stephanie get to the vehicle the arsonist has escaped, and the two cops inside the upturned car are unconscious. So, who called it in, for the Powells to become aware and arrive before the police?

The demise of the super-villain was also incredibly lame, and as far as was seen, Jim made no attempt to find out if he’d survived the freak accident that actually stopped him.

This gives me the same feeling I got in the latter stages of Heroes, where minor details like the plot making sense or even joining up successfully became chores the writers couldn’t be bothered to do.

If there was redemption here at all it came in the form of the mercurial ‘Watcher’ character, who provides an air of mystery to proceedings. This week we find he’s got two more powers beyond telepathy, and the fire starter could also fly in a very human torch kind of way. That suggests that the injections that Dr. Dayton King is giving out have the potency to deliver multiple abilities.

The show also moved forward in combining Jim and Stephanie as a crime-fighting duo, which I presume is the prelude for them working as a family, considering that much of this story involved Daphne and JJ working as a team too. I’ve generally disliked what they’ve done with the Powell children so far, but in a scale of what they’ve been stuck with, this week sucked slightly less than most.

Next week’s story is the last before the seasonal hiatus, and I’m really hoping that, when the show returns in 2011, they come up with some more imaginative adventures for the Powells than we’ve been given so far.

And, if they introduce a nosey journalist pursing rumoured super-heroes, then I’ll know they’ve entirely run out of ideas.

Read our review of episode 8, No Ordinary Accident, here.