By the end of the first episode, Jim may still seem like a schlub, but he can catch bullets with his bare hands and jump a quarter of a mile in "a single leap."
"A single what?" Jim asks his buddy and confidant George, who agrees that "a single bound," matching the prologue to the old Superman TV show, might be more appropriate.
Jim may be able to catch bullets, but it's his wife, Stephanie, who is faster than a speeding bullet. Nobody can fly like a bird or a plane up in the sky, or change the course of mighty rivers, but Daphne can read minds. And their son, JJ, moves smartly from the lowly land of the losers onto some sort of intellectual Mount Olympus.
How could this be, you might be asking.
Well, it's ABC, and it had a trick that worked pretty well before, so, the creative giants thought, why not do it again?
There's a plane crash.
On a trip to the mysterious Amazon - a family attacked together by 8-ounce mosquitoes and foot-long leeches stays together, Jim must have thought - the not-so-fearsome foursome winds up in some weird water and gets just the super powers each one of them needs to help them cope with their daily problems.
There are hints that other, less savory characters may also have taken the plunge and gained super powers, and the family will probably have to negotiate with them for the duration of the series. But there will be weekly adventures, and the powers are sure to cause all sorts of difficulties that will bind the once-dysfunctional family together, perhaps in other dysfunctional ways.
