Genre Character of the Week: Jim Powell

After watching the first four episodes of the ABC series No Ordinary Family with my family, I've got to say that it is definitely pulling into a strong second place* this year for my favourite new genre show of the fall 2010 year. A big part of why this show is working so well for me is the lead, and the genre character of the week, Jim Powell.

Here's what I like about Jim - his first characteristic, good dad. Even before he and his family get all super powered, he is clearly invested in his kids, which as a dad, is important to me. Next, he loves his wife (I know that's pretty much a given on a family show), which definitely comes through in both the stories and the acting (hats off to Michael Chiklis and Julie Benz), and finally, even though his big change involves gaining super powers, as a guy who went through a pretty big change myself a few months back (I left my previous job of 10 years for something new), I can really relate.

Now Jim isn't perfect - he does tend to get carried away with his new hobby, being a super hero, and sometime to the cost of more important things, but he is working at it, and in the end working at it is the whole point.

Overall the show is cobbled together from various other sources (Heroes, The Incredibles and The Fantastic Four come to mind), but by focusing on the family throughout the series, it is showing a lot of heart.

*Sorry No Ordinary Family, but when a show pairs my love of zombies and apocalypses, what can I do?

Odds and Ends

Hi everyone, as I'm now two days away from my month-long journey through the Twilight Saga I have a few quick things I'd like to say:

1) Sorry I didn't get a First Impressions: No Ordinary Family post done - I had book club last night and therefore no time to check out the pilot. I'll try to do a review of the first five episodes once I'm back to normal in November.

2) As one of my book clubs is doing Twilight for our October selection, I'll also be reading the novella The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner as I now will have the space to read another book (I read 6 or 7 a month).

3) Although I will read all of the Twilight books and check out all three current soundtracks, I may have difficulty seeing the movie Eclipse - It's not on DVD yet, so I'm basically hoping I can find it at one of the cheap theatres in my area.

Have a great day everybody.

Things I've noticed: The new genre TV lineup is getting lean

Last year with the end of Lost, the networks were filled with possible replacements – from Flashforward to V and The Witches of Eastwick to The Vampire Diaries, there were a lot of new television series with a significant Genre focus.

This year there are just a handful (to my knowledge, be sure to correct me if I’m wrong); No Ordinary Family on ABC, Lost Girl on Showcase (a specialty cable network up here in Canada), The Walking Dead on AMC, and possibly The Event on NBC (Although if they are a genre show, they are playing it really close to the vest – I guess we won’t know for sure until the pilot airs).

There is a deluge of Police and Legal shows this year (as compared to last years overwhelming Medical offers), and although there are a number of these shows I want to check out (most notably Terriers on FX, but I’ll have to wait for the DVD), I am starting to feel like the offerings for genre fans are starting to get pretty lean.

I guess it’s good in a way, as it lets me focus on the massive backlog of genre shows I’ve got on my shelves and still haven’t got around to (I’m still at season seven of The X-Files, and I’m really hoping to watch both the original Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits someday too), but like with any genre fan, I wish there were more shows specifically made for me!

Hmmm... (The sound of Bookmonkey imagining a bored TV executive coming across his blog and deciding to base a show on the things this blogger talks about – and yes that is a specific sound – the sounds and behaviours of the bookmonkey are a sadly underrepresented science!)

Executive: Perhaps if we made a show focusing on storyline and intriguing concept mixed with well thought out story arcs and perhaps nods to classic genre stories of the past... matching this with any number of up and coming actors, with a significant Canadian percentage... yes, I believe this show could definitely be created at a reasonable charge and it would impress one lone Canadian blogger (and possibly the readers of his blog), we will call it, The Wisdom of Bookmonkey – quick let’s send this blogger an offer to option his blog!

...or maybe I’ll just have to wait and see which of the new shows I’ll like best like everyone else.

Tomorrow I will live in a house of teenagers

On Friday May 21 my youngest daughter Kaia will be 13-years-old and both of my kids will officially be teenagers.

I've got her a bunch of presents, but it took a little bit of searching for me to find one that would work both as a present for her and a good post for my genre-based blog.

In the past she has complained that I don't have enough pictures of hunky guys on my blog.

So to start, here's a photo of her current genre crush, Zachary Qunto (pictured right). Happy Birthday Kaia

Next, I figured I should find her a new genre based show for us to check out this fall.

You see, Like her mother, my daughter Kaia has the bizarre ability to kill TV shows she likes. Two episodes after she started watching My Name is Earl, it died. Three episodes after she started watching the 2006 BBC series Robin Hood it was cancelled, and earlier this week she found out that her current favourite show on NBC, Heroes, will not be coming back.

Like her mother, Kaia has learned to be guarded in her praises of new shows, as she is pretty sure someone can hear her and cancels them immediately.

But I've always been a hopeful person and I think I may have found an upcomming show that might ease the parting blow from the loss of Heroes.

On Tuesday nights this Fall ABC will start airing the series No Ordinary Family - think of it kind of like a mix between Heroes and The Incredibles. A family survives a plane crash and then each gets super powers. You can check out the trailer here.

I know that a super powered Dad might not be as cool as Sylar, but what the heck, it looks like it has some pretty great potential.

Happy Birthday Kaia,

Dad