A quick side note, as I was starting this blog tonight I realised I have been doing this now for over a year and produced well over 80 articles. I’m kind of proud of that fact but I am more happy that people (however few that may be) still read my nonsense.
Anyway on with the show.
This week I return to “what should have been” and take a look at a TV show that could have been great – No Ordinary Family. As before I am not delving to far into the realms of fantasy and sticking with the basic premise of the show.
No Ordinary Family done right.
The core concept of the show was a good one, drawing from both The Fantastic Four and The Incredibles we had the idea of a dysfunctional family getting superpowers; The problem was the only person who became a hero was Jim. So with that in mind my first fix is this.
1. Get the family working as a team. As a team they had an interesting set of powers, Super Strength/Invulnerability, Super Speed, Mind Reading/Power of Suggestion and a Super Genius. The problem was I can count on one hand the times they worked together and even then it was only two characters.
The show would have been a hell of a lot more fun if it was the whole family working together fighting crime while at the same time trying to lead a normal life.
2. Decent Villains The evil company has been done to death so why not try something different? The company could still have been responsible for what happened but why not make them intent on trying to clean up their mess? Make the villain one of their mistakes who has become to powerful, he could still need the serum but have stolen enough of it to keep him going for a while, all the time trying to figure out why the Powells had permanent abilities and he didn’t. You could even have the company trying to make more Superheros to stop him/her, some of whom would of course end up being villains themselves.
3. Sidekicks. Both Jim and Stephanie had sidekick characters working for them, one was a DA and the other a scientist. Why the hell didn’t they work together? It’s a simple thing but it would have made all the difference and cut out a lot of the pointless jumping back and forth between characters the show did.
All in all the show started well but went downhill fast, which was a real shame as it had real potential and could have been something special. I don’t think my suggestions are in any way groundbreaking but if they had gone down that route the show might have got more than one season.