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Chiklis Awaaaaaaaaaaay! Posted 07:34 (GMT) 15th December 2012 by David J. Bishop I would like to stick with the superhero theme of my last couple of rants, if I may, to tell you about a bad superhero TV show that is loads of fun to watch. It's a called No Ordinary Family. When last I checked, which was admittedly a few months ago, it was still being advertised in this country as a hit new show, whereas in America it was cancelled after its first series, which should make getting into it in this country a spectacular waste of time. And it's not MST3K bad, nor is it half as good as the genuine hits and frankly excellent shows coming out of America, which are already too numerous to watch in one lifetime without adding something mediocre to the heap. They say that generic and bland works of art are the hardest to review, since you can't dish out praise or scorn on them and they're difficult to form a persuasive recommendation for. Well, buckle up because I'm going to try to do both at the same time: collect everything that's bad about No Ordinary Family into one rant and in so doing persuade you to watch it. Let's do this. No Ordinary Family is a show executive produced by Michael Chiklis, starring Chiklis and it's about a man named Chiklis— Okay, I can't remember his character's name. There are some character names that stay with you your whole life, not because they're better written names but because the characters endure after you finish watching. Marty McFly, Han Solo, Anton Ego, Pai Mei. Then there's Chiklis. Even when the show was constantly reminding me of Chiklis's name with awkward "My husband, your father, Chiklis," lines I still couldn't hold onto it from one scene to the next so my girlfriend and I just called him Chiklis and I suggest you do the same. Look, just because this was a cute little in-joke my girlfriend and I had, that doesn't mean you can't use it too. The other day I (jokingly) asked her if she wanted to see Real Steel and she didn't understand what I meant until I said Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots (because who are we kidding?). Calling things by their incorrect name pseudo-intentionally is great fun and tremendously freeing. Next time you find yourself talking about Star Wars Episode Two, try casually calling it Send in the Clones. Wasn't that fun? It's derisive, it's subtle and, if you think about it, it's actually a remarkably apt summary of the story. So Chiklis? Just call him Chiklis. Chiklis can lift men over his head. Chiklis can punch through walls. Chiklis can jump hella high. Go, Chiklis, go! In fact, speaking of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots (the trailer for which even shows a robot's head being punched off), let's just get this out of the way now. No Ordinary Family is about a family of four who gain superpowers in an accident. It's exactly like The Fantastic Four, they just replaced their space capsule with a plane and cosmic rays with weird glowy God-knows-what in a lake somewhere in the jungle. For all I know it was cosmic rays. And wait, wasn't Chiklis in The Fantastic Four? I know he was under a ton of goofy monster makeup that didn't look a thing (hem hem) like his character but that was Chiklis under there, right? They didn't swap in Kiera Knightley without telling anybody, did they? How could he have not noticed the parallels? Do you think when they were filming the ‘get powers in accident' scene he suddenly thought, "Hey, this all seems weirdly familiar. Maybe I had a dream about making this show and then forgot it," or was he thinking, "Yes! Fuck you, Reed Richards! Now it's Chiklis's time to shine!" It would be unfair to call No Ordinary Family ‘Fantastic Four the TV Show' but this much should be painfully obvious from just watching the trailer, perhaps even from just hearing the pitch: there is no way this programme would exist without The Fantastic Four, The Incredibles and Heroes. You've got the central premise of a family trying to balance day-to-day domestic worries with battling supervillains (played for comedy) and you've got people coming to terms with new powers in secret and responding to their newfound gifts in different ways (played for drama). The only problem is that whilst both of those premises work well separately, when you put them together you get a story about a family refusing to come together to fight crime. You see, series one of Heroes was essentially an X-men origin story. Through random mutation, people all over the world discover they have extraordinary abilities. That should be familiar enough. But whilst X-men started off with the team of mutants already in place, Heroes concerned itself with how such a team comes together in the first place. The characters start off by exploring their powers and identities in isolation but gradually as the series develops their fates become intertwined, they share common goals, they spend more time in proximity with more characters and it becomes a pop rocks and coke game of "Ooh, what happens when that guy faces off against that guy?" No Ordinary Family does the same thing… but with The Fantastic Four. Can you see the flaw in this? They're already close to one another, their fates are already intertwined, they already share goals because they bloody well live together! They're a married couple and two kids! So, here's what we get. The following all happens for no reason at all. At all? At all:
But let's not be naïve. We already know why the writers are having the characters act this way. It's a simple case of "I want my story to play out like this", "I don't want him to know that yet" and "I don't want the characters to do that" so instead characters – sometimes consistently and sometimes inconsistently – do the opposite of what someone smart enough to brush their teeth without blinding themselves would do. The most consistent example is Chiklis's decision to fight crime without a superhero costume of any kind, because the show's creators don't want to do the whole ‘brightly-coloured costume' thing and not because it's a good idea. In fact, although the show is quick to invoke Batman and his ilk as a conceptual short-hand in place of real world-building, No Ordinary Family best serves as an example of what not to do. Or, to paraphrase Paradise Lost, to justify the ways of Batman to men. Anyone who would argue that The Dark Knight was an edgy crime drama ruined by the presence of a character as innately silly as Batman really needs to watch No Ordinary Family. It turns out that dressing up as a giant bat is not as preposterous as any of us thought. A good half of the No Ordinary Family episodes are about Chiklis fighting crime and in every single damn one of those the conflict arises from Chiklis refusing to hide his identity in any way: •
He has to flee from every crime scene before anyone sees him Theses are all problems that could be solved by rocking up in a plastic cowl. Well, being the clever person you are, you might point out at this point that just wearing a mask the bad guys can't take off doesn't solve the problem of victims mistaking you for a criminal. Well, slow down. You're absolutely right. Instead of being anonymous the smart thing would be to create a second identity that is instantly recognisable so that everybody — citizenry, constabulary and criminals alike — knows whose side you're on... and so nobody bothers you when you're queuing at the dry cleaner's or tries to give your kids a pair of concrete Heelys. Batman, you are a frigging genius. Chiklis, you are… not. We've talked enough about Chiklis the character, what of Chiklis the actor? Well, one of the most prominent reasons to watch this programme and one of the most consistently funny things about it is Chiklis's performance. Poor acting choices aside, his appearance alone is distracting enough to render any audience-member incapable of taking the programme seriously. Whilst he's quite convincing as a recently-disappointed baby, Chiklis is completely unconvincing as a man who can break through walls with his fist. The flab-to-muscle ratio veered into the flab zone some time ago, unfortunately. Still, he didn't have to be a physical paragon for this to work just as long as he was a hard-ass on the inside. But instead – and I don't know if this is misaimed comedy or what – Chiklis makes the decision to play the character as sensitively as possible. No, sensitive is the wrong word. Soft. Almost snivelling. At any given time he will either panic, have his feelings hurt or do something so mushy you want to be sick down the back of your sofa, and that's compounded by a one-note performance that amounts to perpetually pulling a face as if he's about to burst into tears - and that just makes him look even more like a baby. I'll be honest with you: this is a side of Chiklis I've never seen before and it's not really one I'd care to see again. Come back, goofy Thing make-up! All is forgiven! And please don't get me wrong. I'm a sensitive guy, I don't think someone who cries every time he watches The Iron Giant can really claim otherwise, and I don't think shedding some tears makes you any less of a man, but for fuck's sake there's a time and a place for it. People – men and women alike – should be able to get through at least one day a week without tears before bedtime. Chiklis loses his shit over the stupidest things. They make a big thing of his trying to prepare breakfast for his wife and kids as they rush to work or school, but then they hurry off without eating a bite, leaving poor Chiklis standing alone in the kitchen with a frying pan in his hand and a crestfallen expression on his face. I'm just saying, you'd never see Batman's lower lip trembling because nobody wants to eat his signature scrambled eggs. None of this changes even after Chiklis gains his super strength and deep-seated aversion for effective disguises, so the show becomes about Chiklis trying to reconcile being a powerhouse of physical aptitude with his soft, hysterical nature. At any rate, before the pilot episode has drawn to a close Chiklis has decided to use his powers to dish out his own brand of vigilante-style justice... mostly in broad daylight. His wife Stephanie, on the other hand, decides not to. She recognizes that fighting crime is important but decides that looking after her idiot brood of super teenagers is more important. Although actually, now I think about it, we never see her hang out with them – seriously, I think the actress refused to work with children or something – so I guess her super-parenting amounts to knocking out some incredible roast dinners and staying out of everyone's way. And wait, that was "Scrambled Eggs" Chiklis's role before the accident. I suppose the idea is that Stephanie is just supposed to cook the dinners and this is a return to how things should be? Or is it just that now she has super-speed she should do the cooking because she's innately better at it? Either interpretation doesn't really paint a good picture in terms of gender roles. Anyway, the man goes out and beats people up, the woman stays at home and does housework because she's better suited for the job. The super-speed just turns her into a one-joke character, in the same way that Helen Parr could have been but wasn't. We've all seen enough superhero films to know that people with powers can be used to deliver a potent metaphor. X-men was about gay rights. The first Spider-man, in which Peter Parker copes with his body's changes, notices wall-crawling barbs where there were no barbs before and furtively coats his bedroom walls with webbing, was about puberty. The Incredibles is obviously about mid-life crisis. Stephanie's power represents the fact that she is a busy working mother. Unfortunately, it's also her only personality trait. Her whole character is cynically designed as consolation for hard-working mothers. It's impossible to watch without getting the impression the show is screaming at you: Women! Do you feel rushed off your feet trying to look after your kids whilst preparing dinner for your husband and working a full time job as a leading biochemist for a huge corporation? Well, here's a woman who literally races around faster than the speed of sound balancing all that. I bet you can relate to her, right? I bet you feel like you have to be The Flash just to get the kids to hockey practice, eh? I don't know why that voice became Canadian by the end. The point is you can't relate to her, even if you are in the key demographic she's been designed to cater to, because if you're a rushed and perpetually multitasking working mother, odds are you don't have super-speed. Stephanie, on the other hand, does and therefore has none of your problems. She can have it all and put in no effort whatsoever, so the metaphor completely breaks down. It's just a dumb visual joke that barely works once. And it would be fine if she started off in the kitchen making scrambled eggs and gaining superpowers gave her the freedom to broaden her horizons and have an adventure but, like I said, that's Chiklis's arc. Stephanie takes the opposite route – she goes from being a working mother who doesn't have time to make her family dinner to being one that does. That's the fulfilment of her destiny. Chiklis gains super-strength and a healing factor and every episode he's getting run over and jumping over buildings and shot at by jewel thieves. Stephanie is fast enough to insult you and kick you in the crotch before the sound waves reach your ears and she wastes it on the most frivolous bullshit. Because that's all the writers can think to do with her. She just runs around a track really fast and, her metabolism having dramatically changed due to all her running, she eats an entire plate of muffins in fast motion. Superman has speed, sister. He uses it to catch bullets, not to needlessly show off and eat cakes. You got one of the more useful powers. Just look at your kids, with their stupid ‘we don't have a budget for invisibility or fire-starting' powers. You got lucky, why do you just make dinner really fast over and over? Like Chilis's refusal to wear a costume, Stephanie will no doubt churn the guts of superhero enthusiasts with frustration. At least Chiklis is out there flailing around trying to save lives and help people, she's just waiting on the sidelines poised in case someone needs a meal at ten seconds' notice. And all those people getting mugged, raped and murdered, sometimes all in one night? Those people she could be helping right now? Fuck those guys. She's got a meatloaf to stick in the oven. I suppose with great power comes great cooking. What about the Chiklis kids, what powers did they get anyway? Like I said, they got the budget powers, the powers that don't tax the effects team. For Daphne the teenage girl, that means reading minds and, later, implanting commands in people's heads. Why, yes, that is exactly like Parkman from Heroes, thank you for noticing. But whilst it may not look like much (which is why they used it), in the absence of a Sylar or a Peter Petrelli, mind-reading and mind-control combine to make single most insanely powerful ability any superhero can have, so Daphne turns into a walking plot hole. There is barely a single problem or enemy the family encounters that you could not easily solve with some mixture of mind control and mind-reading. She would be even better at fighting crime than either of her parents – in fact, she could just force criminals to punch themselves in the face and thus make the crime fight itself – but she and her brother have both inherited their mother's complete lack of social responsibility so they normally get relegated to a limbo of perpetual B-plots where nothing they do ever touches upon the series' main storyline and antagonist (more on him in a moment). Still, at least Daphne gets do useful things with her power, like find out when people are lying and uncovering juicy secrets. She even tries to help people sometimes, in a low-key high school way, instead of just stuffing her face with cakes. Finally there's JJ. JJ is an idiot. Even in a world of the idiots, JJ is the idiot of idiots. If in the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king, then JJ has negative-one eyes. Before the accident, JJ is almost too dumb to be able to function. Then he becomes a genius. Sadly, like Good Will Hunting before him, his writers are not geniuses and he in no way behaves like a typical genius. He just gains the ability to memorise long quotations by rote, which actually anyone can train themselves to do. So he's an idiot who can think and act like a normal person. I suppose his inspiration was Daredevil? The only other ways the show represents JJ's so-called genius is by having him read books and play chess and, when the budget will allow, seeing calculations in the air like an accountant with synaesthesia. He covers the screen with glowing numbers and diagrams just before doing something he probably wouldn't be able to predict, even in a mathematically abstract setting. Yes, just like in the show Numbers or, to a lesser extent, the film A Beautiful Mind. JJ's power is he can see in plagiarism-o-vision. Worse, he still manages – somehow – to act like a moron, sometimes due to the confines of idiot plot, sometimes because he's just that dumb. Yes, for a super-genius JJ really does make some head-slammingly bad decisions. For example, he refuses to tell his parents that he has powers. I mean, they all keep their powers secret but JJ keeps his charade up for several episodes, long after everyone else is comparing notes on god-like omnipotence. He eventually tells his sister why he's keeping his power secret: he wants them to judge his accomplishments on their own merits, not as the product of their remarkable accident. JJ wants them to think that he's naturally smart but not super-smart. He wants them to love him for himself, not for his powers. But here's the thing, he really is that smart now. It's not a trick, he can just work that stuff out with his brain. And there's no distinction anymore between JJ the boy and JJ the power-haver. Especially in his case, where JJ's identity, his soul, his psyche - whatever - if it exists anywhere, it is categorically housed inside his brain and the powers he's gained all pertain to his brain. So the powers are an innate part of who JJ is now, there's no getting around that. So it leads the show into some very abstract and metaphysically dubious conversations about JJ's lying, because he wants his parents to think he's smart but not because he's super-smart but because he's smart-smart and he wants them to like him for himself, the self that isn't smart, even though that same self really is exactly that smart. And somehow football is involved. Then when he does demonstrate his freakishly apt calculation skills, they start to think maybe he's on the drugs. So they sit him down and question him. They say: JJ you're really smart now. Do you have superpowers. And JJ says "No! Of course I don't!" and storms off. This
scene is repeated two or three times, without the plot being advanced. Finally, after everyone trying to follow this has contracted a headache, JJ owns up and tells them he does have powers AND he's smart – and despite his original misgivings they're really proud, as if he was smart or something. Yeah, it makes no fucking sense. The irony is, throughout these scenes they're pretty damn well accusing him of being a genius – this is his chance to own up since the penny's already dropped, it's either this or he's abusing drugs behind the bicycle shed. And yet he refuses to admit it. And of course he's right – he's not a genius, he is a fucking dipshit because only a fucking dipshit would act this way. Or, as he puts it, "I've got like the superbrain!" Way to go, champ. Superbrain indeed. By the way, the only reason JJ's parents think he's on drugs in the first place is because it's suggested by JJ's teacher, Mr Litchfield, a man with a mean-spirited disposition and gigantic weirdy eyebrows that look like they could survive independently of their master. This character doesn't make any sense either; he just hates JJ. He hates him recklessly, madly. He can never make it through a scene without saying something cutting about JJ or accusing him of wrongdoing without any proof, and many other grossly unprofessional things a teacher would never ever do. There is nothing JJ can achieve or aspire to that Mr Weirdy-Eyebrows won't try to crush. He goes out of his way to try to destroy JJ's life on a daily basis. And why? Damned if I know! Then there's Stephanie's disparaging colleague Dr Chiles; he doesn't make sense either. He's just there to provide vague antagonism at her place of work. Here's a scene from the pilot and these are the actual lines of dialogue that they use: Stephanie:
Amid the untold resources of the Amazon basin we have uncovered
perhaps the Crown Jewel, the Trilsetum Coronis. Then Stephanie goes on to explain that the plant has practical applications in the pharmaceuticals industry, paper manufacturing and alternative fuels, that it is, in fact, a wonder plant! Yet every time we see him after that all he has to say is "Ooh look it's the lady with the stupid dumb old plant!" Is this what they thought realistic workplace politics looks like? Stephanie is a scientist - what kind of scientist is never made totally clear, presumably she is either a chemist or a biochemist. She talks about the plant's DNA, for example, and we already know that the company is making medicine out of chemicals found in at least one plant. This isn't the hardest thing in the world to wrap one's head around. It's only to be assumed that the scientists working alongside her have at least some passing knowledge of, well, science. Are we to believe that there's a chemist who doesn't realise that plants are made of chemicals? That you might be able to get at those chemicals and use them to make new things? According to the internet, there are at least 120 distinct chemical substances derived from plants that are considered to be important drugs currently in use in one or more countries in the world. And even if you didn't know that - which a scientist working for a company developing new pharmaceuticals most assuredly would - it's also used as the go-to sprinkling of science flim-flam for every 'people on an expedition to the jungle' plot in film and TV for the last 10 years. It used to be something - anything - that was radioactive or from the moon. Today it's a rare orchid that reverses the aging process or a previously-undiscovered kind of herb that cures liver disease. And this guy sitting in the middle of the board room just calls it a waste of time on the basis that it is a plant. And he isn't fired on the spot. But the absolutely best What the Fuck character – the best character full stop – is Dr King, the series' arch-villain. With his grey hair and sharp suit he looks a bit like a cross between Alec Baldwin and the Devil. He drinks whiskey, sits in the dark, watches the family on computer monitors in a way which suggests (for the duration of that episode) that he knows their secret, then he gives sinister-sounding orders to his minions… and does nothing. Literally, nothing the whole show. I mean, he sends a goon to kill two characters we never cared about, and in so doing advances his grand plan not a single iota. Only we don't know what his plan is at that point and I'm not sure if the main characters ever find out that he was behind the killings. He does things, he says things and we don't know why until the last couple of episodes, when it all becomes clear... that the writers knew just as little as us. I suppose killing people still counts as doing stuff, even if he has no reason to have those people murdered. But other than those two brief moments, the villain gets nothing done. So Dr King wins the award for the most ineffectual villain of all time. Let me explain, if I can. Dr King has clearly been written by someone who likes the kind of villain who doesn't tear people's throats out with his teeth but instead sits next to them at a dinner part and quietly unravels their lives through Machiavellian genius disguised by a charming veneer of polite sophistication… except our writer never realised you need to include the Machiavellian genius. So he's just a guy. I mentioned he likes skulking in the shadows. Well, a typical episode will at one point cut to a scene of him sitting in the dark. Then he'll say that everything is going as planned or something even more vague. Then the scene will end and that will be the last we see of him until the following week. What we end up with is a character who looks the part and acts as sinister and suave as a Bond villain but who doesn't actually have a plan. We have an Affably Evil character, without the evil. At many points, in fact, he actually helps our heroes. You know, that thing well-written villains sometimes do before a last-minute double-cross, or before cleverly playing the situation to their advantage. Like that, except Dr King just helps them and never mentions it again. Time and time again I kept waiting for him to stick in the knife and twist it but no, he really was just being nice. At one point he crashes an engagement part (well, that's pretty villainous, you think, until someone mentions he was invited) and, with an evil smirk, toasts the couple with some sweet and thoughtful words. Then he never bothers them again. The fiend! But at least he sounds like a villain, even though he's mostly harmless. A typical exchange with Dr King will go something like this: KING:
Here, I made you a pie. This all seems mighty suspicious, so you wait for him to spring his diabolical trap… only he never does. The pie is fine, the watch isn't a bomb and you the spend the money on a little home foot spa. The end. Dr King – not so much a villain as a really weird ally. There are actually two genuine allies I haven't mentioned yet who help out the Chiklis clan. We've got George, Chiklis's best friend. He has only two character traits: he's divorced and he loves to deliver exposition. He gets demoted to sidekick the second Chiklis gets superpowers. Then there's Stephanie's lab assistant Katie, whose only role in life is to look pretty and ask Stephanie questions to which they both know the answer. Yes, add ‘exposition' to the list of things the writers can't seem to grasp, under ‘character motivation' but before 'doing things'. George and Katie exist only to exposit. They're also supposed to be plucky comic relief but this only amounts to exposition delivered in a funny way, which is to say it is not funny at all. But they're not the only offenders. Many shows have a character whose only job is to explain things and still make them work. The trouble is, in No Ordinary Family every character is that character. I rewatched the pilot episode in preparation for writing this (and I still don't know Chiklis's name) and tried to spot the percentage of dialogue designed to explain something. And, while I still can't be sure, it's probably close to 100%. Some lines exist only to establish a fact about something or someone. When we first hear Daphne speak she's asking to be spared a family holiday, requesting instead that they Photoshop her in after the fact. A moment later, when her mother expresses surprise that she has a boyfriend, she says "Just because you Twitter-stalk me, it doesn't mean you know everything about my life." These lines are so awkward I'm surprised the actress was able to physically deliver them without choking. Does this count as 'exposition'? It doesn't explain anything about the plot or the setting so probably not. But it does cack-handedly establish a fact, specifically that Daphne is a teenage girl who has a passing familiarity with technology and boys. She sends text messages on the Facebooks, people! You need to know this! But then the next scene features Chiklis persuading his family to go on a plane ride with him and he tells Daphne she does nothing but text all the time. So it's not just that they had to awkwardly explain Daphne's use of social networking and phone messaging services, they felt the need to explain it twice - in the space of about twenty seconds. The pilot episode makes heavy use of Chiklis explaining chunks of the story to-the-camera in the form of a talking head confessional. And when that cuts away it becomes a voice-over narrating the story. Luckily they drop this in subsequent episodes but it still makes an important point. Chiklis does his opening 'once upon a time' narration of their lives before the plane crash, then it shows his family's plane about to crash, then Chiklis takes us back in time to before the plane crash again, so he can explain the backstory. It seems a little redundant to flash forward in time and then flash back again to the same spot - they obviously thought that without something exploding within the first ten seconds audiences would get bored and wander out into the street - but what the hell, let's go with it. It's a pilot – they have a lot of ground to cover, a whole cast of characters to set up, they might have to sacrifice storytelling elegance for the sake of time. But what's the story being told here? How they got on the plane. But the explanation amounts to "We got on the plane and then we were on the plane." The only step before that is "We were an unhappy family so we got on the plane". Chiklis shows us camcorder footage of his family frolicking in the back garden (a scene so forced and corny it looks like an antidepressant advert) with a football. Chiklis says "Everything was great". So we get a flashback within a flashback and Chiklis explaining what everything means. Then there is a typically pathetic scene in which Chiklis tries to bond with his son by standing in his doorway forlornly fondling the same ball. And Chiklis says "Do you want to play some catch with your old man?" deftly establishing why he's standing there holding a football and that they're father and son -- but JJ doesn't want to play! So Chiklis stands in Daphne's doorway fondling the ball and poses the same question. Then he stands in the doorway of his bedroom and asks his wife if she wants to play. Then he stands in the open doorway of his house and asks a passing spaniel if it wants to play with him but the dog runs away and Chiklis is left staring after it, looking like he's about to cry. Those bastards! And they won't eat his signature scrambled eggs! Do you get it yet? They don't spend a lot of time together as a family. Well, maybe you don't get it because as inevitably as rain at a British picnic Chiklis's disembodied voice explains "We weren't spending a lot of time together as a family." Cut to them walking towards a plane with Chiklis explaining why they should get on the plane - because Daphne texts too much and nobody wants to play with me - even though they're in the process of getting on the plane so presumably he's already convinced them of all this. Then narrator-Chiklis chimes in with: "And that's how we ended up on the plane." Slow down, you got on a plane? Jesus Christ, this isn't LOST. We don't need a whole flashback to before your holiday just to establish that you decided to go on holiday and we don't need to have it explained why. You could have just had Chiklis standing in the doorway and his son asking him to go away before he even opens his God-damn mouth. You could have cut that whole scene and just had a two-minute exchange between the family as they're already up in the plane that subtly establishes they don't have the best relationship. Have them make awkward small talk, have a brief disagreement break out, have them sit in silence avoiding eye-contact. Then have Daphne whip out her God-damn phone without anyone fucking telling her she's using her phone. Maybe, just maybe, the audience might be able to assume that this middle-class white American family live in the suburbs, maybe you don't need to show us what life was like pre-vacation. What do we have next? Chiklis talking to Exposition George about how he doesn't have a very good relationship with his family! It's not even that they shoe-horn clunky exposition into the dialogue to convey the exposition. It's that they use every method of conveying exposition at once. Talking heads, narration, flashbacks, the best friend, another flashback and clunky dialogue. You know how they say in writing "show don't tell"? What do you think they would say about show and tell? And they don't just awkwardly cram in the information there once. They do it practically every scene. Every scene is like the last three or four scenes I described. They don't use these techniques just to establish story points, they use them to reiterate story points, over and over, since they clearly have absolutely zero faith in the audience's ability to retain information for more than ten seconds. And some of these methods are so hackneyed! The first line of nearly every episode is George saying "So let me get this straight..." That old chestnut. There are scenes in which characters sit down and share information they both already know. Nothing glaringly obvious can happen without a character pointing it out. Nothing can happen at all without a character talking about it. Fucking terrible lines like, "As you know, you are my brother," and "After all, we are married." I mean not exactly those words but that egregious. Even when Daphne reads people's minds it turns out they were conveniently thinking in exposition. I can only hear my thoughts but at any given time they sound like: "Team-by-team reporters baffled trump tethered crop look at that low plane! Fine then. Uh oh overflow population common group but it'll do save yourself serve yourself world serves its own needs listen to your heart bleed." Even
if people's thoughts took the form of coherent internal monologue,
Daphne is in high school. Every time she tries to read the mind
of a teenage boy she should be hearing: So
we have a superhero who refuses to wear a costume, his family who
are all super but refuse to be heroes, a whole cast of characters
who either act like idiots when the plot dictates or treat the audience
like idiots when it's their turn to speak, an evil villain who does
nothing but help out and a concept lifted straight from three better
superhero stories. The sad truth is that No Ordinary Family is desperately trying to imitate so many things at once. It knows that information needs to be conveyed and shoves it all into the dialogue so that it sounds nothing like human speech. It realises that characters should all have different agendas but following them leads to nothing but frustration as they nonsensically refuse to co-operate or share basic information with each other. It fills its world with scheming villains but doesn't understand what they're supposed to do beyond the superficial details like smirking from the shadows. And when No Ordinary Family doesn't offend the audience's intelligence it just plain offends through sexist characterisation. It
desperately apes The Incredibles and Heroes without
realising what made those stories great, the assured storytelling
and the well-drawn characters with convincing motivations. No Ordinary Family is the equivalent of the cucumber in the boxer shorts: it looks the part - especially if you squint - and promises a great ride but in the long term it can't deliver the goods. Still, it's campy fun – there are some good chuckles to be had, most of them at the show's expense. The sight of an obviously CG Chiklis-puppet flinging himself through the air, his shiny head glinting in the sun is one surreal and silly enough to be worth the price of admission. And if you're a fan of superheroes it's worth checking out, if only as an example of how not to do it. It's actually kind of like Watchmen in that, as I said before, it asks "What if this really happen?" but sadly it's so paper-thin and so heavily reliant on tired movie clichés it ends up being sillier than the actual Fantastic Four movies. There's really no worse way to fail, at anything. It does become horribly muddled towards the end as the number of episodes the series has to finish telling its story is cut in half. People get pregnant and give birth an episode later, dead characters come back to life for no adequately-explained reason (especially jarring given how much the show loves to over-explain) -– finally we're stuck with a frankly arrogant cliff-hanger finale (considering their run had already been cut short) followed by deserved cancellation. Yes, deserved. I started catching up with True Blood after I finished with No Ordinary Family and, no exaggeration needed, that show offered more character development, atmosphere, surprise and plot in three episodes than No Ordinary Family managed in its entire series, mostly because True Blood trusts the audience to retain information for more than 10 minutes. Yet with its light, inconsequential tone and goofy charm No Ordinary Family has won a special place in my heart that it did nothing to earn. It's like a candy heart. Sugary, ephemeral, no nutritional value, but always ready to tell you it loves you in a completely hollow, manufactured way. And in my own way I love it back. I wouldn't recommend you watch it illegally online, where every hilarious minute is readily available after a little rummaging. That is a crime (original draft of this read 'That is crume', which sounds like the rite of a fierce warrior race). No, don't steal it. Buy it on DVD, watch it, then give it as a present to a friend you don't particularly like. |
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