In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
While the ordinary Stafford family is invaded by masked marauders, the Powells are invaded by Stephanie's parents, Barbara and Allan Crane (Cybill Shepherd and Bruce McGill) who drive no ordinary Mustang (and make me covet it). Jim and the kids want to come clean with Stephanie's folks about their newbilities, but Stephanie is dead set against it. "My parents; my rules. It's just for a few days." Jim reluctantly agrees. This ought to go well, so of course it doesn't. Within minutes, the writers forget that Stephanie is the one against full disclosure and have her treating Jim and the kids as if lying is their choice. This sort of sloppiness makes it hard to stay engaged. Suffice it to say, ADA George lures Jim out of normality to investigate the home invasions, which of course Allan takes as evidence that Jim is cheating on Stephanie.
At school, Daphne connects with Trent Stafford (Jackson Rathbone), a victim of the invasion, and realizes he knows more than he's telling. She not only hears his thoughts, but gets flashes of the crime when she touches him. Millions of Twihard fangirls get flashes when they touch him, too, but there's no crime involved (if we discount statutory ones). Defying her parents' wishes, Daphne spends more time with the Trent to get a clearer picture of the incident. She goes to Jim with what she saw. Jim takes it to Detective Cordero on the down-low, so of course Cordero puts Jim's perp sketch on the nightly news, making Trent a repeat-o target of his assailants.
Meanwhile, JJ uses his magic-math to beat his grandpa at pool. He does this with Jim's blessing, because grandpa never gave Jim his blessing to marry Stephanie. And Grandma? She couldn't be more disapproving of Stephanie being a working wife and mother, were Grandma the pope and Steph Martin Luther. It's too pat. It's too obvious. And with a cast like this? It's too disappointing -- the writing, that is. The cast remains delightful, but they're playing in a shallow puddle of treacle. At any rate, when the grandparents come down on the whole family, Stephanie defends them, noting that JJ is smart and Daphne is intuitive. It's about then that I lose my lunch and any engagement I'd been able to force until now. If you please, Mr. TiVo, bring me back to Mystic Falls, where the women have actual agency.
Jim saves Jasper-Trent. Stephanie takes a run to clear her head from her parental torment. I drink copious amounts of wine, talk to my Canadian cousin about hockey, and pretend there's going to be a seventh season of Lost. Eventually, Steph decides it's time to stop running. That translates into smooches between her and Jim -- with Dad eaves-dropping on their whole conversation. Of course dad doesn't pick up the whole truth and when the Powells try to confess said whole truth, the Cranes can't hear them. They leave their Mustang with JJ, because he has a penis -- I mean -- because he won it off of grandpa during a game of pool. Steph turns it over to Daphne, but only because JJ can't yet drive. In two years, it will be his, on account of his penis. The whole family goes out for a ride. The car breaks down. Steph uses her super-speed to retrieve a torque wrench. Jim lifts the car so JJ can inspect its undercarriage. Daphne stands there and looks pretty, because that's what intuitive girls do. Bah.
I'll be back tomorrow with the full weecap. In the meantime, join the discussion in our show thread, where your intuition is recognized as a component of intelligence.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Let's try something different, this week. If you want to know what happened in the episode, click on the "recaplet" link, above. If you want to read my fevered pissing and moaning, read on.
I mean that 'fevered' part. I'm sick and tired -- thanks to actual germs. But I'm also sick and tired of keeping my fingers crossed for No Ordinary Family. So far, I've kept them crossed for a few reasons: I love the cast; I love the premise; I love having a family show back on my TV; Lost is over; I got tired of covering How I Met Your Mother; and baby needs a new pair of shoes. What's more -- in just a few short weeks, I've become quite fond of the characters. In many cases, that's because of the actors who play them, which goes back to my feelings about the cast, so to say more would be redundant (if I haven't already been redundant -- see FEVERED above). But No Ordinary Family is boring me to tears -- if not death.
What is wrong with this show? I guess it's trying to be a so-called "dramedy" but it's neither funny enough, nor dramatic enough, to make me care. Every single thing that happened in this week's "No Ordinary Visitors" is completely and utterly predictable. There was no twist, no surprise. What I'm saying is -- there is no reason to watch it through to the end -- unless, like me, you're getting paid to do so (and even then, TWoP just doesn't pay all that much for weecaps, yo). And honestly? I spent a good bit of the episode talking hockey online with my Canadian cousin, without missing one important plot point -- BECAUSE THERE ARE NONE. Right now, No Ordinary Family is taking TWoP's "We watch it so you don't have to" philosophy way more literally than it ought. I mean, we provide our service for the viewers, not for the writers. God.
Look at the home-invasion A-plot. Where are the stakes? The invaders don't even appear to be supers (which would at least advance the Powells' arc). Okay, I'll admit at first that I thought the guy who gets the pot of boiling water in his face was a super. But he doesn't heal instantly or anything, so he isn't, so who cares? I already know he'll be caught or otherwise stopped by the end of the episode. In the meantime, he just stalks around with his ugly red face and menaces a teenager with a gun and threats of future violence.
And that teenager, Trent Stafford (played by Jackson Rathbone, aka Twilight's Jasper Cullen) spends the episode looking shell-shocked. In theory, I get the reason for that, but it's boring as hell to watch. While Rathbone is cute (and puts me in mind of a young Jeremy London, here), there's no there there. Rathbone's post-invasion Trent looks exactly like his post-Bella-blood-exposure Jasper, without (thank heaven for small favors) the ridiculous Jasper Cullen wig. There's no reason to think he's going to be a recurring character, so there's no reason to get invested in any chemistry between him and Kay Panabaker's Daphne. Since there's no real chance he's going to be a recurring character, why not up the stakes for Daphne and for the Powells? Why not have Daphne fall for him, then have his home get invaded, then have him do the PTSD shuffle, then have Daphne read his mind, and then kill him off? All I could see while watching him was a metaphor for how much potential this show squanders -- week after week. And you want to talk about waste? Well, then, let's talk about the B-plot.
While the Staffords are being invaded by masked marauders, the Powells are being invaded by the Cranes. The Cranes are Stephanie's parents, and if you were expecting anything other than trite, cliched in-law angst, you haven't been paying attention. If you were expecting the Powells to buck the secret superhero trope (like they did with their friends and their couples' therapist in the pilot) you were wrong. If you were expecting to learn that the Cranes are somehow involved in the Global Tech/super-power intrigue, you are writing a way better show in your head, than you're getting on your screen. Here, it's just the same shit, different show, and I'm sad to say there's no indication that it's going to improve.
When I first heard Cybill Shepherd was going to play Stephanie's mother, I was thrilled. I mean, she's Cybill Freaking Shepherd. But what do they write for Ms. Shepherd? They write her as a mother who is critical of her highly respected scientist-daughter for the cardinal sin of achieving some modicum of professional success and academic glory. Really? In this day and age? That's a plot straight out of the 1970s.
Look, I'm a stay-at-home-mother, and I haven't been back to work all that long (and my back-to-work work happens right in my home office). I'm a sahm by choice; it's a choice I always wanted to make; it's a choice I've been fortunate enough to be afforded. But? I have never looked down my nose in distaste at my sisters who either have had to work, or who have -- heaven forfend -- chosen to work. That's because I wasn't born in the 1930s. I mean seriously, Show? You get a beautiful, successful, talented performer like Shepherd and you write this anti-feminist claptrap for her? Yeah, yeah, I know your point is that Barbara Crane is wrong. My point is that we got there -- 25 years or more ago, so your Barbara Crane is pointless, not to mention less than credible. If you get stars like Shepherd, you write the crap out of their roles and get down on bended knee to pray that they'll return. You don't plop them in an unimaginative role that any person who looks to be at least 15 years older than Julie Benz could play.
Bruce McGill's Allan Crane is just as disappointing and it is so not McGill's fault. When he's not challenging his son-in-law and GRANDSON to dick-measuring contests, he's playing stereotypical daddy of the girl for whom no man would be good enough. We get it. Fathers like their daughters and are suspicious of their daughters' romantic partners. Jaysuzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Is there now some Mad Libs-like screen-writing software on the market that comes preloaded with plot, and only requires writers to input their characters' names? Can I get it for this show's weecaps, because that would free up a lot of my time, and take my blood pressure down a couple of notches, too.
The only development of note in "No Ordinary Visitors" is that Daphne's powers have increased. Now she doesn't just hear people's thoughts -- she sees them. But this is revealed right after JJ rags on her for trying to read a lost dog's thoughts (as if dogs think in English). Since Daphne can now see people's thoughts, shouldn't she have been able to see the doggy's thoughts? That might have been fun. That could have been the comedy in this week's dramedy. But nope, it's a throw-away line that contradicts her story in the rest of the episode. If that's what passes for misdirection on this show, please don't expect me to buy into it, or to care.
Unless Tubey sends me off for anger-management therapy, I'll be back week with my recaplet of "No Ordinary Mobster" which is likely to be perfectly ordinary. Now comes the part where I tell you to join us in our show thread, but I've lost the will to add a quippy little reason why.
Cindy McLennan is a much happier camper when she's covering The Vampire Diaries, and is way less bitter in email (CynthiaMcLennan[at]gmail.com) and on Twitter.
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Watch the episode below and see the ineffectual TV superheroes the Powells wish they were.
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