CBR: Feldman's "No Ordinary Family"

[CBR News]

The co-creator of the new hit ABC series Jon Feldman spoke exclusively with CBR about the show's origins, the casting of Michael Chiklis, the advantages and pitfalls of having superpowers and the series' future direction.


Full article here.

[ColonelLee]

Watched episode 1 .. Michael Chilkis and Julie Benz as a couple are a little odd to the eye. She is young babe .. he is old stocky guy ..

the age difference is not addressed in the show .. the career difference is a bit .. she is the science whiz/career woman .. he is a police sketch artist ..

like Seinfeld made famous .. "she could do better" ..

[Leocomix]

Chiklis and Benz have only nine years of difference (38/47). Hardly something worth wondering about.
I'm more surprised that the interviewee and interviewer made no mention that Chiklis played the Thing. Are they trying to avoid being sued by Marvel?

[Squashua]

Man, I hope they add someone with TIME TRAVEL powers because that always makes a show a complete success!

[mastadge]

Watched episode 1 .. Michael Chilkis and Julie Benz as a couple are a little odd to the eye. She is young babe .. he is old stocky guy ..

the age difference is not addressed in the show .. the career difference is a bit .. she is the science whiz/career woman .. he is a police sketch artist ..

like Seinfeld made famous .. "she could do better" ..

It's less than a decade difference -- he's not yet 50, she's nearly 40. I've known plenty of couples with age differences that big. She's a research scientist (of the generic comic book variety, maybe?) -- maybe he provided some stability and some child-raising support as she went through a decade of higher education and then entered a high-pressure working environment. When they met she was probably an undergrad or just graduated; he was a 30-year-old sensitive artsy type. Their coupling wasn't infeasible and far less of a turn-off to me than the very boring distribution of powers and personalities in the family. I really hope the show picks up some steam quickly.

[Lemurion]

Maybe it's why I don't usually watch much TV, but the classic superhero stuff that all these shows try to avoid focusing on is exactly what I want to see.

No tights, no flights was what turned me off Smallville in the first place.

[cosmoboy]

Chiklis and Benz have only nine years of difference (38/47). Hardly something worth wondering about.
I'm more surprised that the interviewee and interviewer made no mention that Chiklis played the Thing. Are they trying to avoid being sued by Marvel?

I doubt that. The show is being aired on a channel owned by Marvels parent company.

[cosmoboy]

Maybe it's why I don't usually watch much TV, but the classic superhero stuff that all these shows try to avoid focusing on is exactly what I want to see.

No tights, no flights was what turned me off Smallville in the first place.

Well, I think we're seeing the evolution of a super family here. Putting on tights is not the first thing I would do either. Also, there isn't a flying character yet but Chiklis can jump pretty high.

[StoneGold]

Maybe it's why I don't usually watch much TV, but the classic superhero stuff that all these shows try to avoid focusing on is exactly what I want to see.

No tights, no flights was what turned me off Smallville in the first place.

So you really want to see Michael Chiklis in tights?


First episode was pretty fast and free with the metahuman action, though. No hidden just off-screen stuff, full-on leaping over buildings with single bounds. It's not spandex, but again, do you really want to see the Comish in spandex?

[Lemurion]

So you really want to see Michael Chiklis in tights?


First episode was pretty fast and free with the metahuman action, though. No hidden just off-screen stuff, full-on leaping over buildings with single bounds. It's not spandex, but again, do you really want to see the Comish in spandex?

You're right, I don't want to see Michael Chiklis in tights, but that wasn't my point.

"No tights, no flights" was the original showrunners' way of telling the audience they didn't want to tell a traditional superhero story. At the beginning Smallville was much more a teen drama than a superhero action show.

I don't like teen dramas: I'm a parent, I get more than enough teen drama at home without having to watch it on television.

So personally, any time a superhero TV show starts up by telling me they're going to avoid superhero tropes, such as costumes and flashy powers, I lose interest.

"No tights, no flights" is a great catchphrase for a show that wants to avoid those tropes I want to revel in. For me, the phrase is a turn-off.

[charlesjbaserap]

The thing is that even though Smallville had the "no flights no tights" ruling, it only really applied to Clark himself and didn't avoid the superhero tropes in terms of him using his powers (he even did fly when under the influence of Red K), or in terms of fighting supervillains, both human and otherwise.

Over the past few seasons, they've added members of the JLA, Doomsday, the JSA, Darkseid, etc., so just because the show said "no flights, no tights," doesn't mean it avoided that stuff altogether and was just a "teen drama." It just wasn't about him whipping on the costume every time there was trouble or hanging around with the JLA waiting for the alarm. They've also, in the past few seasons, had him performing acts of heroism without showing himself to the public as they build towards him coming forward more.

[marshal99]

Man, I hope they add someone with TIME TRAVEL powers because that always makes a show a complete success!

Yeah , and then they can have a fat japanese dude with said powers. Then we can have heroes redux.

Shame that heroes is on a different network , if they have the same network , they could have cheekily show heroes on a tv show that the son or daughter was watching.

[Lemurion]

The thing is that even though Smallville had the "no flights no tights" ruling, it only really applied to Clark himself and didn't avoid the superhero tropes in terms of him using his powers (he even did fly when under the influence of Red K), or in terms of fighting supervillains, both human and otherwise.

Over the past few seasons, they've added members of the JLA, Doomsday, the JSA, Darkseid, etc., so just because the show said "no flights, no tights," doesn't mean it avoided that stuff altogether and was just a "teen drama." It just wasn't about him whipping on the costume every time there was trouble or hanging around with the JLA waiting for the alarm. They've also, in the past few seasons, had him performing acts of heroism without showing himself to the public as they build towards him coming forward more.

I've started watching it more over the last few seasons as they've started to focus more on the superheroic aspects of the show, but the fact remains that the catchphrase did turn me off originally and I've only grown interested in the show as it's moved away from being a teen drama. It was also quite late in the run that characters started appearing in costume.

I simply know that I would prefer a show that focused on what I'm interested in to one focused on what I'm not interested in.

[redvector]

At least the writers on this show know how to write an action scene without doing it off camera. Or let a minor character take over and become the focus of the show, at least so far they haven't.

I hope that the show runner has a "no time travel" rule. That's what soured a lot of people on Heroes.

[charlesjbaserap]

I've started watching it more over the last few seasons as they've started to focus more on the superheroic aspects of the show, but the fact remains that the catchphrase did turn me off originally and I've only grown interested in the show as it's moved away from being a teen drama. It was also quite late in the run that characters started appearing in costume.

I simply know that I would prefer a show that focused on what I'm interested in to one focused on what I'm not interested in.

Yeah, I can see that, how the phrase can be a turnoff. And you're right the costume aspect started happening in the latter half of the show's run, I think maybe because of the change in writers, the first batch being more adamant about the "rule."

Personally, I understood it in the beginning, as it was kind of like a new origin story spread out and him going from just discovering his powers to fighting in costume too quickly may have hampered the show. I mean, Batman Begins was a 2 hour movie, but how long did it take for him to don the full suit. That was a single movie, so imagine you're trying to pitch a show that's about the evolution of this kid who discovers he's an alien with powers and he's adjusting to his heritage and the use of those powers as he grows to adulthood. If you do it all in one season, it almost seems like blowing it all at once and while Smallville has been better in recent years partially because of the more superhero angle of it, I think right off the bat it may have become tedious and they would have tried to introduce too many big characters too soon. Already as it is in the show, he's faced Lex, Metallo, the JSA, Icicle, Silver Banshee, Doomsday, Darkseid, etc, and he's never even worn the suit yet! lol

I thought, on a related note, that that was one of the things that killed the Ultimate line of Marvel Comics. What started as a new retelling for a new generation quickly became, "Let's see how many Marvel 616 stories we can get a redux for in succession," and Ultimate X-Men especially went through almost all of the big stories from 40 years of Uncanny X-Men in only 100 issues and kept relying on new twists on old characters instead of trying to make new ones. That latter aspect is what helped Smallville a bit in the beginning; Lex is there, fine, but it was fights against guys who happened to get power from K exposure as opposed to the Smallville versions of X or Y, which came later and which I think worked well because it happened later, though perhaps a little too late for some.

But, again, I can see how the phrase could be a turnoff from the outset.