No Ordinary Family 1-15: No Ordinary Powell

Okay, so you know how I’ve been complaining about how this show isn’t really moving forward, how they take baby steps forward and then ignore them the next week? Well, that definitely changed tonight. Holy cow was that a great episode!

We do start with one of my least favorite storytelling techniques. It’s night, and Stephanie is coming home from work. She walks in the door to find Jim lying on the floor dead.

And we flash back 12 hours to the start of the story. You know, I’ve never found a case where we truly needed that flash back to get engrossed in the story. But lots of people seem to think it needs to be done. Heck, they used to do it on Alias all the time, and I still loved that show.

But moving on…

It’s a normal day at the Powell household, although I’m still not quite clear what day it was. Stephanie and Katie spend the day working in the lab, but the kids spend the day investigating a murder. And I’m getting ahead of myself.

Daphne uses her newfound power to get an advance on her allowance while JJ goes out to “bump” into Natalie at the place where she always has breakfast. Just as Natalie is trying to tell JJ that they won’t get back together, she sees that the barista is wearing a unique locket that her mother owned. She leaves upset, but JJ gets the brilliant idea of teaming up with Daphne to solve Natalie’s mother’s murder.

And that’s what the kids spend the rest of the episode doing. They track the locket back to the antique store it was stolen from to the man who sold it to the shop. Turns out that man was the co-worker who was also shot when Natalie’s mother was murdered. And the killer? The co-worker’s wife because the man and Natalie’s mother were having an affair. She says it was an accident; she just wanted to scare Natalie’s mother away from the affair. I’ll take her word for it. Anyway, she threatens Daphne and JJ, knocking Daphne out, but Daphne has managed to call Jim who comes roaring in to save the day.

That’s the simple story. Things are about to get a lot more complicated as we go to the adults.

Now that Dr. King knows that Jim and Stephanie have powers, he wants to know more. So he sends Victoria, the shape shifter, to the Powell family to investigate. Each time she’s caught as a different family member, she manages to explain her presence and get away with some excuse. She does manage to discover the kids’ powers.

Meanwhile, Jim is anxious to stop Dr. King so Stephanie will be safe. To that end, George has gotten his hands on Dr. King’s phone records, and they find a phone number that he has called frequently. It happens to be a land line, and Jim goes there and finds…nothing. There’s furniture, but the only pictures on the wall are of the Powell family. Jim manages to use cocoa powder to lift a finger print from the phone, and just as he’s about to leave, in walks Victoria. She sprays him with pepper spray and manages to escape.

Jim starts putting the finger print and his sketch of Victoria through the computers at work, and he gets nothing. He goes back to the lair, where George comes in and shoots him in the back. Yeah, so it was actually Victoria. She leaves and the real George enters. That’s when Jim figures out what is going on. He immediately goes to the lab to talk to Stephanie. Only it’s not Stephanie but Victoria. She uses the time in the Powell house from earlier in the episode to convince Jim she’s really his wife. He then goes on to tell her about his weakness, Stephanie’s lip gloss.

Okay, it was implied that Stephanie still had that stuff around. That was a plot hole that bugged me. I mean, if I were a Powell, I’d want that stuff out of the house if it was going to make my powers come and go at the wrong time.

It’s about this time that Jim gets the call from Daphne and rushes out to save the day. He takes the kids home and lectures them on how stupid they were, and Stephanie comes home. She’s just walked in the door and kissed Jim when the phone rings. It’s Stephanie saying she’s been held up at work and is about to leave to go home.

And that’s what leads up to the fight they’ve been promising all along. “Stephanie” turns into Victoria turns into Jim. (So at this point, the only regular cast member she hasn’t been is JJ.) The two Jim’s go at it, and it is hard to tell which one is which. So when the real Stephanie turns up and sees Jim dead on the floor, we honestly could believe it is either one, although I wasn’t too concerned they were going to kill off Jim. And while Stephanie is freaking out about her husband being dead, Jim walks down the stairs and freaks her out even more. And that’s when Dead Jim turns back into a just as dead Victoria. It looks like we may have defeated this villain. While I liked the character, I’m not sure where else they could have gone with her, especially since she’s been just about everyone.

Now to Katie and “Joshua.” Joshua is experiencing withdrawal again. He’s lost his powers and his organs are starting to shut down. Katie gets caught trying to steal stuff from the lab to make more serum for him, so she is forced to tell Stephanie what is really going on. And then Stephanie goes to Joshua and tells him that she will make him an antidote serum. He will remain normal, but as long as he is on it his organs won’t shut down. She also warns him that if he hurts Katie, she will stop giving him the serum.

And it’s Joshua that the Powells call to remove Victoria’s body. Before he leaves, he says that once Dr. King figures out that Victoria is dead, he will come after the Powells very hard. That only makes sense since we learned earlier that Victoria is Dr. King’s adopted daughter. Anyway, Joshua also mentions that Dr. King isn’t the one calling the shots. Instead, there is someone above him.

So the Powells devise a plan to fool Dr. King into thinking that Victoria is still alive. Stephanie goes to the lab and convinces Dr. King that she is Victoria. She claims that her only lead is to go to Brazil and see what she can find out there since that’s where the Powells’ powers seem to have started. While she is gone, maybe Dr. King should invite Stephanie into the inner circle of the research. Dr. King buys it, at least for now.

Yeah, as you can see, a lot happened. I feel like the story took a huge leap forward. And now I’m very anxious to see where things go in the next few weeks. No, I don’t expect every episode to be this full, but I think we are at a turning point in the season where this story is going to have to get stronger.

Here’s hoping that the episodes rise to meet my expectations.

Meanwhile, stop by my normal blog and say hi.