No Oridnary Family

With the recent news that Marvel will be producing three new TV shows based on Marvel characters, some are forgetting there is already a great show on TV about super heroes...."No Ordinary Family."

If you ever wondered what a real life Fantastic Four would be like, the show perfectly shows how it would work. It seems like the producers looked at the Fantastic family and tried to ground them even more. While the how they got their powers was a tad out there, everything else has worked perfectly. It's fun to see the family not only use their powers for good, but in unique ways that isn't just busting muggings. While the mother, Stephanie Powell (Julie Benz), seems like a Flash copy, she is using her brains to help the family. Jim (Michael Chiklis) is acting like the Thing and doing traditional superhero work. The son JJ (Jimmy Bennett) is using his superior brain to tutor kids who are having trouble in math. While the daughter Daphne (Kay Panabaker) has used her powers to catch a home invader, she is mostly using her powers for personal gain. While clearly not right, it's good to see both sides of using your powers for personal gain while everyone else is using their to help others.

The big conspiracy that is taking place hasn't been laid out yet, so it's mostly about the family. Hopefully the show will get a real chance unlike "Heroes," which crapped out after one season.

Thankfully the producers have looked to comic book writers for help when making the show. Marc Guggenheim ("Amazing Spider-Man"," Wolverine") has been a supervisor and has written an episode.

Like any good piece of media that involves people going through life with powers, there have been some social commentary. The most blatant of this is JJ's problem with his teacher who thinks he is cheating. As someone who is learning to become a teacher, it's interesting to see the commentary on teachers not caring for the students as they should or listening to them. I commend the actor who has been the annoying teacher, as he has really made it easy to hate him, which is his job on the show.

Final note, watch the show. It's a great show that comic book fans and non comic book fans can love