TV DeathRay Archive

This week’s episode of No Ordinary Family expanded the Powells’ scope of trouble as viewers were introduced to the mysterious “Ms. X,” played by Lucy Lawless.

Lawless was just as menacing here as she was as the manipulative Lucretia in Spartacus: Blood and Sand. Perhaps she is the one Joshua mentioned last week as “the person Dr. King must answer to?” Whatever her plans, she wasted little time putting them into motion with her own super-powered recruit.

Sophie Adler was a black widow personified. Her chemically enhanced pheromone seduces men into doing whatever she wants – perfect since Ms. X tasked her with building a bomb to blow up Global Tech’s secret lab. It took no time at all before George and Jim were under her spell and stealing the drugstore chemicals needed for the explosive. Then again, with beautiful Battlestar Galactica alum Tricia Helfer playing Sophie, who needs pheromones? I probably would’ve fallen for her tricks too, but nothing beats a man with super strength to do your bidding – even if he is married.

Of course, Stephanie had something to say about that, but first she dealt with her own ethical dilemma. I loved the unfolding emotional trap that came with assisting Dr. King in order to gain his trust and find out how to defeat him. She was complicit in unleashing his dangerous superhumans upon the world: When she injected Lucas Winick, a man she later discovers to be a death row inmate, with her super-serum, it gave him a version of Wolverine’s retractable claws.

A show that was once characterized as nothing more than a live-action Incredibles is now attempting to say something bigger. In the season’s concluding episodes, Stephanie’s family will now have to wrestle with the consequences of her creation. This is where the theme of the season is found: The exploration of superpowers as both a blessing and a curse.
It wasn’t until Jim realized the blessings of his marriage to Steph that he was able to break Sophie’s spell…but this was where the episode began to wane. In Jim’s case, like a fairytale, the spell could only be broken with his wife’s kiss. Yet George seemed able to snap out of the trance by getting away from Sophie – it didn’t seem fair or believable.

Daphne finally learned that she can’t keep manipulating people’s thoughts to suit her will, because eventually those old thoughts will come back again and again. Her entire storyline this week was one big punch line, since no matter how many times she changed his mind, Chris couldn’t stop bringing up this crazy notion that her family had superpowers, leading her to tell him the truth.

What happened to the Wolverine clone that Stephanie helped to create? He became Ms. X’s latest minion. He was given the job of killing Sophie, since she had failed to complete her mission. Next, watch out for former Six Feet Under cast member Eric Balfour helping to wrap up this season of NOF.

Quotables & Observations

•    Lucas Winick is named after comic book artist and former Real World star Judd Winick.

•    George: Girl smells like angel food cake, but she tastes like French toast. Jim: She sounds… fattening

•    Jim: Hey, does this guy look familiar to you? George: No, but he’s a hell of a good-looking guy. What? I’m secure enough in my masculinity to recognize a good-looking guy when I see one.

•    Stephanie: Don’t do this. Whatever you feel for Sophie, it’s not real. You and me—we’re real. Eighteen years of candlelit dinners…backyard football games, arguing over shelving units…seeing your daughter born…and JJ’s first stitches…remember? I was so scared and you held my hand and you said everything was going to be OK, and I believed you. It’s like you said. We fit. This is real.

•    Stephanie: You don’t think she’s a super do you? George: It would explain why Jim is behaving like Charlie Sheen.

•    George: I can prosecute this from my Lay-Z-Boy.

•    Stephanie: Speaking of friends with boundary issues. Jim: Hello, George.