Few words put me on guard more than “special.” Being warned that someone is “a little special” is a storm brewing and you spend your life looking for “someone special” only to end up accepting that what is truly valuable is just a matter of seeing. First Dates, is to come across someone normal. “Special” is a bear trap camouflaged in a sumptuous orchard, a semantic trompe l’oeil. In the hilarious Extraordinary What makes you special is the same thing that in any Marvel series would not make you an extra: not having superpowers, because in the alternative reality that it proposes, when everyone turns 18, they get theirs, everyone except Jen, the protagonist, as sarcastic and mean as the British canon dictates from Mildred Roper to Fleabag. I point out that these are powers that would not earn them a place in The Avengers: There’s a guy whose rectum is a 3D photocopier and a woman who talks to the dead, but not to help them in their journey to the afterlife like the selfless Melinda from Among ghosts, but for mundane matters, see making fun of Hitler or getting breakup advice from Lady Di herself.
You will tell me that it is not new, the world of comics is saturated with tacky superheroes and some also jumped to the screen, there are the Mystery men with his deadly flatulence exhaler and his invisible man who can only disappear when no one is looking; we have also seen young misfits who do not know how to deal with their powers since Misfits to Gen V. What newcomer Emma Moran’s series brings is the absence of the slightest epic, however pathetic it may be. Nobody here wants to protect humanity, they have enough to do protecting themselves, there aren’t even villains, the biggest threat is a telepath who wants to win back her cat-ex-boyfriend — applause for Luke Rollason, the most expressive frown since Rowan Atkinson.
What Moran proposes can be understood as a lukewarm complaint against the overabundance of heroic fictions – on Disney+, it’s funny – but the fantastic thing is a mere macguffinWe could trade the lack of power for the lack of a partner, a stimulating job or a decent apartment and he wouldn’t resent it. His true focus is not on the extraordinary, but on the everyday: love, friends, family and the transition to adult life; the desire to fit into a system that, surprise, is hostile whether you are in your twenties, your sixties, “special” or a cheap superhero.
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