What I'm Watching: No Ordinary Family

No Ordinary Family: Season 1, Episode 4 “No Ordinary Vigilante” (C+)

So now the things that I had initially excused about this show have begun to overwhelm the main elements of the story and put the show in a lopsided position of starting to contain more bad than good. I could have sworn that I saw J.J. on Television Without Pity's Fall TV 2010 Most Annoying Characters list, but it seems that he was mysteriously left off. His desire to have his parents be proud of him for his achievements is completely undercut by the fact that he's lying to them. Something tells me that they would be very impressed with the way he's using his newfound abilities to improve his academic and sports-related performance, yet his endlessly manipulative modus operandi negates all of that, making him an utterly dumb, detestable character. Daphne isn't that much better, and while I initially praised this show for focusing on the entire family, reading minds to get into parties and steal beer is hardly worthy of a quarter of an episode. I understand that Autumn Reeser on any show is almost entirely for comic relief, but having her and Stephanie fail to come up with anything better than “we're talking about our periods” as an excuse when cheesy villain Chiles walks in on them isn't terribly impressive. I'm also not enjoying the silliness of Jim actually faking allergies and covering up his face to avoid having the witnesses identify him as the vigilante. Guillermo Diaz, of “Weeds” and even “Mercy” fame, you do not belong behind a mustache as a cop on this show. There's much work to be done on this formerly promising show.