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As we saw at the end of episode 18, the trilsettum Dr. RevCam King dosed Stephanie with has enhanced her powers. Now when she runs, she ends up in the future for a few moments. She can hear and see everyone, but they can't hear and see her, which is weird. She can even be in the same room with her future self, which is weirder, no? In the future, while investigating the murder of Detective Cordero, Jim reveals his super-powers at a large public gathering, by tossing a van right in front of a crowd and a TV news camera. He does so to save George's life. The bad cops who killed Cordero, are trying to off Jim and George. Jim saves George all right, but the Powells end up under siege. The kids are on the run from the government, and it's all bad, bad, very bad. Back in the present, Stephanie works furiously to figure all this out, alter the future and save her family. JJ's abilities come in handy, as does Daphne's psychic pushing prowess. When she reveals this new newbility to her family at the episode's end, her parents insist she use her new power to wipe Chris's mind of the fact that the Powells are supers. When she does so, she inadvertently wipes his mind of their relationship too, and breaks her own poor heart.
In other news, Charlotte from Lost isn't so dead after all. Xena has cured her and coerces her into getting intel on Katie's pregnancy. Charlotte morphs into the form of Katie's OB/GYN and subjects our girl to a premature amniocentesis, the results of which somehow reveal that the trilsettum is fully integrated with the baby's DNA. Xena wants the baby for fun and profit. Because Joshua is the super-sire and he and Charlotte have a sordid past, Xena dangles the baby like a carrot in front of Charlotte. She's charged with obtaining the child once it is born, and raising it, too. Man, why weren't these two on the series from day one? They're so much more interesting than anything else going on.
There's no new episode this coming Tuesday. The season (and let's face it probably the series) finale airs April 5. I'll be back tomorrow with the full weecap of "No Ordinary Future" and then on April 6th we the finale recaplet, I think. I mean, I can't super-zoop into the future or anything. Until then, join us in the show thread, where we never mess with the space-time continuum.
Watch the episode below, discuss it in our forums, and see the ineffectual TV superheroes the Powells wish they were.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Recapper: So when we last left Stephanie Powell, she was running back to the future. It seems the life-saving dose of trilsettum that Dr. RevCam King gave her at Jim's insistence has increased her powers exponentially. When she arrives at the Powell Pad, she finds it surrounded by cops and soldiers! She tries to ask someone what's going on, but everyone ignores her. Inside, Jim is rounding up the kids and trying to help them sneak to Katie's, where he says Stephanie will be waiting for them.
Stephanie: And I'm all like "Um, hello. Standing here. Right exactly here."
Recapper: Right, but as Jesse pointed out last week, there's no need to belabor this stuff. We're in the home fricking stretch, baby.
Stephanie: You know Cindy, we've become kind of good friends over the past few months, so it sort of stings that you're cheering for our demise.
Recapper: Aw, I'm sorry. I'm not cheering for your demise, or even for cancellation. Just for an end to this season. I hate to see people out of work. You and the rest of the cast will be okay, but I feel for the crew. I just -- the writing is on the wall, girl. If this show survives and is picked up for a second season, I'm going to assume Dr. King has had one of his super-villains take over ABC programming, for some nefarious purpose.
Stephanie: That. Right there. That's what I mean. This is my family we're talking about!
Recapper: Yeah, but you're fictional. You'll survive forever, unless your own writers kill you off, and I really can't see that happening. For now, I'm going to take a page out of your book and suggest we speed this up. You wanna take the reins?
Stephanie: I thought you'd never ask. Anyhow, as I'm trying to get Jim's attention, I backwards super-zoop through time and end up at home, in the present. When Jim asks what's wrong, I dissemble, which... can I just say how much that pisses me off? What a contrived, empty conflict. I would have totally told Jim what happened, right away. I mean, it involves him and our KIDS being under siege by the military. But no. I don't tell him. Soon, Jim leaves. Detective Frank Cordero is being transferred to another precinct, and there's a goodbye party for him.
Jim: At the party, Cordero is so great. Remember when he used to be an ass? Now he's just grateful and playful, even. He even compliments my unofficial "police" work. And you know how I crave validation like that. Anyhow, George and I get to talking, and I tell him I'm worried about Stephanie. She seems off, and she's had that trilsettum. I'm just uneasy.
Daphne: Later, I fill JJ in on how I read Professor Dick's thoughts and how creepy those thoughts were. He thinks he's going to killed if JJ doesn't do the alleged Academic Decathlon equations for him.
Stephanie: I'm wigged, so when I overhear the kids' conversation, I tell JJ to stop doing the equations until I get to talk to Professor Dick.
Recapper: Wigged? That's a Buffy word.
Stephanie: What? I can't have layers?
Cordelia: This is my verse, hello!
Xander: And that is my verse, hello!
Recapper: Look at me. I'm dancing crazy, and my poor characters are trying to get through their penultimate recap. Can you all just shoo?
Buffy: Even me?
Recapper: Even you.
Buffy: You still my girl?
Recapper: Always.
George: Cordero's party is over, so Jim and I leave the bar with him. But just as he's getting into his car, he's shot by what appears to be gang bangers. I call an ambulance while Jim tries to help Frank. It's grisly.
Jim: The morning at work, George tells me they've found the car involved in the shooting. When I ask if Frank made it, George can only shake his head. The detectives assigned to the case approach us and ask for any information or speculation we might have. Soon thereafter, Mrs. Cordero -- Marta -- comes in to thank me for all I did for him. While she's talking to me, she confides that a case Frank was working on freaked him out. And oh man, is this all as lackluster as it sounds in my head?
Recapper: At least. But what can we do?
Jim: You could rant.
Recapper: I don't have it in me, but perhaps I could breeze. What you need to know: the two detectives who talked to Jim and George are O'Bannon and Rizzo. It's O'Bannon who's dirty, but later, he'll convince Jim that Rizzo is dirty. And in an effort to cover his ass, O'Bannon is going to try to kill both Jim and George. Jim's fairly invulnerable, so O'Bannon thinks he's killed him when he so hasn't. But George? Not so much. O'Bannon tries to take him out at a public memorial for Cordero.
Jim: And it's really dumb. O'Bannon is in uniform, and he cocks his weapon and puts on the silencer as he's walking through a crowd, in front of a whole gaggle of uniformed cops. At a public memorial. Downtown. In broad daylight.
Stephanie: Yes, it's dumb. This incident though, is also the pivotal future moment in which our family will be outed as supers -- the pivotal moment that gets caught by a TV news camera, and draws the attention of the cops, Feds, and even the military, because Jim will attempt to save George, by flipping over a van in which some hitman is aiming at George. I think it's Rizzo, too. Is it Rizzo?
[Editor: It is Rizzo.]
Katie: Hold up! I don't know if I have pregnancy brain or whatnot, but you people are going all out of order and really confusing me. I thought you said O'Bannon was going to take out George, by himself.
Recapper: The whole story is jumping back and forth in time. I was willing to tolerate the timey-wimey stuff when I was recapping Lost, but I'm so not doing it for an NOF weecap. Not enough time. Not enough money. Not enough giving of a shit by me.
Katie: Okay, let me summarize the future stuff. As Cindy and Stephanie already mentioned, the first time Stephanie super-zoops forward in time, she sees the Powell Pad surrounded by cops, soldiers and Feds. Another time she super-zoops forward, she is actually just trying to get to the school quickly to talk to Professor Dick about JJ and these increasingly unbelievable alleged Academic Decathlon assignments. But since she super-zoops, she ends up at the school, but in the future. She finds George wandering the halls. He finds the poor kids hiding out in a classroom, and is giving them some food and stuff, when the Feds come looking for them. So George lies that the kids aren't in the room. He nearly gets away with it when...
JJ: Allow me. I need to reclaim some of my self-respect. Daphne and I are hiding behind a lab bench. Now George is right at the classroom door, talking to the Feds. I'm a genius, right? And yet I reach up on the bench to get something I've left up there, right when the Feds are buying George's story. My hand bangs into a beaker or whatever. The Feds hear it and try to plow in. George has our backs, though, by letting the Feds have his back. He throws himself across the doorway and yells at us to run as he tries to block them from entering.
[Editor: Can I just add that Daphne and JJ are all dirty and grimy, like a pair of street urchins in Oliver who've been living in storm drains? It's almost comical.]
Stephanie: And it's then that I super-zoop back to the present, but on my way out of the classroom, I notice that the page-a-day calendar in the classroom indicates that I've just witnessed events on March 31. When I'm sucked back to Global Tech and the present, I confirm the present date is March 29th, which means my poor family will be going through this hell in two days. Is it in this scene that I touch a door? At some point I touch and open a door, and that pisses me off, too. Because okay, in the future, nobody can hear and see me, but I can move physical objects? And yet I don't try to touch Jim, the kids or the Agents who are trying to get to my kids? What is UP with that?
Recapper: Honey, don't. It's not good for your health. Besides, I want to give the writers props for a minor detail, here.
Writers: Really? What?
Recapper: Well, I feel badly for you all. If this episode aired tomorrow like it was supposed to, it would have aired on March 29th. It stinks that you got that one little detail right, and then the network screwed it up by moving the show two days earlier, to a Saturday night. Maybe Dr. King has had one of his super-villains take over ABC scheduling.
Writers: We know, right?
Charlotte from Lost: Let's move forward, shall we? It's about now that I wake up in some secret corner of Global Tech. I'm not actually dead. And I am so having chocolate before dinner in celebration.
Xena: Not so fast, toots. You're only alive because of me. I can get rid of you just as easily, if you refuse to do my bidding.
Charlotte: Will there be nosebleeds involved? Because that really got to me after a while.
Xena: If I choose.
Charlotte: Anyhow, Xena knows about my past with Joshua, and claims he brought me/my corpse to her and asked her to bring me back from the dead or the brink. It's not really clear. I act like I believe her on the show, but now that it's just us -- is anyone else buying this?
Recapper: Not in the slightest.
Charlotte: Right. So, Xena wants me to use my shape-shiftiness to get intel on Katie and find out what she knows. What choice do I have, really?
Katie: Back at the lab, Stephanie and I talk about the time travel stuff, and I insist on doing some lab work on her, because she shouldn't keep doing this if it's adversely affecting her. And it seems to be. I try to get her to put the kibosh on it, but you know Stephanie.
George: Meanwhile, at the lair, Jim wants to handle Cordero's killers and I'm all like, "Nah, the cops got this." Talk about your out-of-character moments. Someone's robbing a dry cleaner? This is a job for a superhero. Cop assassination? I'm all like, "Whatever, dude. Chill."
Recapper: George, I share your frustration, but this is a waste of time. We've already spoiled the fact that it is a cop who is behind Cordero's death. I'll just note that you find out from your fellow ADA that Cordero had evidence he was going to deliver to Mr. ADA, personally, but that Cordero died before he could do so. Not long after that is when O'Bannon talks to Jim and says that Rizzo is a dirty cop, as we mentioned above. O'Bannon asks if they can meet so he can show Jim the evidence.
Jim: And I buy this, even though we recently had an episode involving Internal Affairs. I buy that a detective wants to show evidence about his dirty cop-partner to me, a fricking sketch artist.
Recapper: The show, she is to puke, yeah?
Jim: You said it, sister.
Stephanie: I still feel like we're making little progress telling the story. I'm going to give this a shot. After I'm back from super-zooping to the school, I soon super-zoop to the precinct. It's the future again, and the Feds have sedated my whole family, except future me. Yes, I'm in the room with future me. Deal with it. I have. The chief agent is questioning me. Future me asks for a lawyer. Agent Assface tells me only humans have rights, and I'd better answer his questions so he can figure out if we're worth more to him dead or alive.
Katie: Meanwhile, Stephanie has also run some tests on me and since there's no trilsettum in my blood, she says I should go ahead and schedule a prenatal visit with her OB/GYN. So I do.
Charlotte: And I attack him, take on his form, examine Katie, do a fetal ultrasound and then insist upon performing an amnio. And yet I've got a hypo that's filled with liquid rather than an empty one ready to draw some.
Katie: Well, maybe it's not really an amnio you're going to perform.
Charlotte: True, but even if it isn't, I am clearly drawing some sort of sample from your fetus.
Xena: Right, and that sample will later show that the trilsettum and the baby's DNA have merged, so let's skip to that part right now. Once I get the results, I tell Charlotte that once Katie is of no use to us, we will be getting rid of her, and Charlotte can raise Joshua's baby, which I so want for my evil schemes.
Charlotte: And I am inexplicably fine, maybe even a little psyched to have the responsibility of taking the baby of my ex-whatever and his great love. RIGHT.
Recapper: Oh, that all didn't happen to the end.
Xena: Does it matter?
Recapper: No ma'am. Sorry to have bothered you.
Stephanie: Anyhow, by now, I've come clean with Jim and the kids about what I've seen.
Daphne: And thanks to JJ, I come clean about the fact that I told Chris our big secret.
Jim: So I'm thinking it's the delinquent who outs us in the future, but as you all know, it's not. It's me, flipping over that damned van.
Marta: And somewhere in there, my house is ransacked. When George and Jim learn about it, they visit. I show them Frank's secret wall safe. Jim breaks into it and finds the evidence that probably cost Frank his life: he was ready to out a dirty cop to the DA.
Stephanie: My trip to the future takes place at Global Tech. I see Agent Asshat harassing and then roughing up poor, pregnant Katie. When they arrest her, she starts having pelvic or abdominal pain and announces she's pregnant. And through it all, my girl never gives up me or my family. So, so proud of her.
Katie: Thanks, you.
Jim: After I meet up with O'Bannon and see his evidence, I head to the parking garage, where some gang bangers open fire on me. When they leave, that's when I figure O'Bannon set me up. Thank heaven I'm basically bullet-proof.
Stephanie: Meanwhile, in my last trip to the future, I learn that the big incident that kicked off the hunt for Powell People, happens downtown at 5:07 pm. So I have my super-genius boy do some calculations to figure out how fast I'd have to go for how long to reach town and observe "the event" in person.
JJ: As if we had the right variables available for me to figure that out. Man, this is painful.
Stephanie: So anyhow, I super-zoop downtown and see future George giving his speech. I see future Jim spot the van with the shooter in it, who is aiming right at future George. Future Jim throws it across the street. Future TV cameraman captures the whole thing. Film at 11. The world knows about our newbilities. We're hunted like prey. Blah.
Jim: Back at home in the present, Stephanie tells me what's going on. I can't get in touch with George to warn him, so I have to go try to save him, even though it's putting my whole family in danger, because I couldn't call anyone else or anything, right? UGH.
Daphne: Downtown, I talk to Chris about an argument that I will explain to you after all this. It's then that Dad gets there. He spots the sniper. Is that Rizzo? Are both he and O'Bannon in on that?
Recapper: I tried to avoid that question when your mother asked me, earlier, Daphne. Please don't make me watch again. This is a weecap, not a recap. Let's just pretend it is Rizzo.
[Editor: It is Rizzo.]
Daphne: Fair enough. So, Dad walks over, opens the van door and knocks Rizzo (or "Rizzo") out with a single punch. He then works his way through the crowd and asks me (over the phone) to read all the people's minds and find O'Bannon. O'Bannon is walking through the crowd, with his gun at the ready, silencer on, and no, not one cop notices. It is to so shamefully lame. Anyhow, I hear O'Bannon thinking he's going to shoot George, once George finishes his eulogy and walks by. Now in the present, Dad hasn't had to flip the van or do anything else that would put his powers on display, so it's then that I realize I am the one who has to save the day. I approach O'Bannon and with a little psychic push, I persuade him not to shoot George, but instead to hand his gun over to me. And it totally works. Go team me!
Stephanie: Back at home, we make Daphne come clean about the thought pushing. Jim and I are upset that she was using it against us at home from time to time, but I'm so glad we've averted our own familial apocalypse that I don't come down on her too hard.
Jim: We do insist, though, that she use her pushing one more time to push Chris to forget that he knows their secret.
JJ: And I point out how often she's gotten out of doing the dishes.
Daphne: Yeah, you little fink. This so sucks. This has been a rough episode for Chris and me. First, we got in an argument, because I wouldn't push his boss to give him a raise. It felt too much like stealing. Yes, it felt too much like stealing, even though last week I pushed the Vice Principal into giving us walking-around money. I know, I know. Then my family suspected that Chris was the one who outed us. We had just made up when the attempt on George's life occurred. So anyhow, I seek out Chris at school. He apologizes some more for trying to manipulate me and my powers. I ask him if he remembers when he first suspected I had my newbilities, and then crying, I tell him I'm sorry and push him to forget everything since.
Lube Locks: HEY, MY NAME IS CHRIS. Fine, I'll "whatever" myself. I not only forget about the Powells' powers. I forget my whole relationship with Daphne. So when she tries to kiss me, post-push, I'm all, "Be gone, Freak the Flighty," and walk off leaving her there in tears.
Daphne: [SNIFF]
Lube Locks: Remember what I said, baby?
Daphne: I know. I know. Fan fic.
JJ: I come up to Daphne blathering that Professor Dick has disappeared, but when I realize what's happened, I give her a brotherly hug and let her cry on my shoulder.
Daphne: Which is really sweet, and I'm sorry about your dishpan hands, brother.
Recapper: Awwwwww. Well, I think we've gotten everything of note. There's no new episode tomorrow. The season (and let's face it, probably the series) finale airs April 5. I'll be back April 6th with the finale recaplet, I think. I mean, I can't super-zoop into the future or anything, but that's the plan. Until then, join us in the show thread, where we never mess with the space-time continuum.
Watch the episode below, discuss it in our forums, and see the ineffectual TV superheroes the Powells wish they were.
What are people saying about your favorite shows and stars right now? Find out with Talk Without Pity, the social media site for real TV fans. See Tweets and Facebook comments in real time and add your own -- all without leaving TWoP. Join the conversation now!