The Gifted, Season 1, Episode 9: outfoX
Time to catch up on some of the other superhero shows that... I watched, but never got the time to review. Whoops! Better take advantage of this winter break, then.
Episode 9 of the Gifted doesn't particularly leave me with that much to talk about, though, if we're being completely honest, right up until the final ten or so minutes. The first chunk is just a bit of a huge recap between Reed Strucker and his family -- and I do appreciate that we're actually giving the revelation some weight by having Reed struggle with whether to tell their kids that they could be the next Fenris, the next brother-sister-hand-holding-walking-doomsday-weapon. While I'm not sure if we needed the superfluous "oh no they held hands at a park one time when they were kids and it's glowing" flashback, it's a decent bit for them. We get to see Andy being a bit more sociopathic due to his experience of having such a great power.
Oh, and in a neat little name-drop to the bigger X-Men universe, we get the revelation that the von Struckers are part of the organization known as the Hellfire Club. I don't know much X-Men lore, but I know the Hellfire club.
In a less-neat bit of world-building, there's a... textbook about mutants? Who made those? Certainly not the mutants, if Mama Strucker had to go through all the trouble to get textbooks to teach the mutant kids a couple of episodes ago. And if it's a regular human picture textbook, how the hell does Reed Strucker not put two and two together earlier? Eh.
Meanwhile, with the rest of the mutant underground, they're kind of... there? Thunderbird and the others kind of are iffy about hitting the detention facility so soon, but every single one of the characters we care about (Polaris, Blink, Thunderbird, Eclipse and Dreamer) are all talking about how they should take it easy, allow them to properly scope out the place. We get a cool little information gathering sequence between Polaris (with her spoon brass knuckles) and Dreamer... but everything kind of gets shot to hell when Esme the telepath, a.k.a. the random girl with convenient powers that showed up last episode, basically screams at everyone "WE NEED TO SAVE MY FAMILY RIGHT NOW!" and while it's a motivation anyone can sympathize with (that's basically the motivation that drives 90% of the cast throughout the season) the fact that I know absolutely nothing about Esme makes her feel more like a walking plot device that goes around shooting dreams into Polaris's head and have her freak out over her baby, or insist that they go into the operation despite the fact that their cover's blown, or to offer up the Strucker kids as weapons in the first place.
So while I do like the set-piece where Polaris has nightmares and freaks the fuck out of their room, and the dream sequence is creepy as all hell, Esme herself feels oddly out of place. I'm not sure if she's even one of Trask's mutants, because she doesn't tip off Turner (who's surprisingly competent and suspicious throughout the episode, which is nice) so yeah.
The ending was a pretty major shock, though. There's just something so visceral about how Turner figures out that the mutants are attacking, and how despite all of Andy's bluster, they're, y'know, just scared kids in a scared location. Blink can't concentrate enough to muster her portal powers, and gets pinned down by a Sentinel drone. Dreamer blocks a door to let the kids get out, leaving the kids to be able to, well, do what they were talking about all episode and unleash all sorts of destruction upon the agents... but Andy talks the two of the down. They'll not just destroy the building and 'win', they'll kill all the agents, and maybe also Blink and Dreamer. Choosing to go this pathway instead of essentially being Fenris is a surprisingly mature choice not just for the kids to make, but for the show makers.
It's still a very harrowing scene as the group runs the fuck away from the Sentinel Services soldiers with them losing one member by one member throughout the escape, and the screaming desperation that their mother has as the kids had guns pointed to them and collared and captured. Overall, the episode itself really is just decent if we're being really honest... but it's delivered and executed pretty well that I can't help but like it. Or maybe I'm just a sucker for plot twists.
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