Extraordinary

Extraordinary’s superpower is its freshness. It’s not always extraordinary, but it’s never dull.

Gleefully crude, rude, lewd and almost unfailingly likable eight-part series that is quite the unusual thing—a sci-fi-inflected coming-of-age story and a sitcom that’s actually funny.

It has a lot of fun playing with the conventions of that currently dominant genre, but it is equally representative of some other favorite modes of the Walt Disney Company: the sentimental buddy comedy and the inspirational triumph-of-the-underdog tale. There are many ways that blend could go wrong, but the show’s various strains are combined in a charming and consistently amusing fashion by its creator and writer, Emma Moran.

As a whole, this first season does leave room for exploration and improvement. But as a start, it’s more than enough to prove that “Extraordinary” has some special abilities to keep it going, whether or not its main character has them too.

The first episode of Extraordinary sets up a pretty funny premise; we just hope that the joke that everyone in the world has powers except Jen doesn’t quickly wear out when the novelty of it does.