The Gifted, Season 1, Episode 4: eXit strategy
This is a bit of a weaker episode than its previous episodes, in that there's not much that's super interesting about it. The Mutant Resistance plans a raid, there's some arguments done over whether the kids should come along, Marcos gets this weird subplot where he gets hooked into the Cartel again, they do battle against Sentinel Services, Polaris and Reed fight and later ally themselves, and the Mutant Resistance escapes. There's not really that many memorable moments or character defining moments -- what we saw of Polaris, Eclipse and Reed Strucker in this episode aren't stuff we don't already know from previous episodes. Blink has a bit of a subplot where she's still confused from the whole Dreamer stuff she got from the previous episodes, but it's not too distracting.
I felt that the weakest point in the episode was the random flashback in the beginning of how Thunderbird's buddy Pulse was lost during a previous raid to a Sentinel Services facility, only for Pulse to show up working for Sentinel Services in the climax, and apparently (despite not actually showing it in the flashback) his make-electronics-go-haywire ability also functions as a way to create a field that disables all mutant abilities around him. It's obviously not a novel concept -- there have been many times where the mutants in X-Men, or superheroes in general, lose their power. Famously for X-Men, it would be the movie X-Men: The Last Stand. More recently, it'd be the Inhumans TV show (although Inhumans did it far worse in that half the cast spends the entire series depowered instead of like three minutes). .
There were a couple of somewhat cool scenes, with the addition of a couple of new mutants (Harry the invisible man, who, surprisingly for a redshirt, didn't die!) and the Strucker kids learning to do a little combo move to rip a bus axle apart. Also a big fan of how Polaris's threatening of Reed's knee screws ended up being the way for the two of them to escape the truck. Polaris and Reed's conversation is definitely my favourite parts of the episode, where Polaris condemns Reed (rightfully so, in my opinion) for his sudden change-of-heart. Thankfully she proves to not be that prideful and ends up working together with Reed to return to the Resistance, but Polaris's speech about how suddenly working with the mutants just because his kids are mutants doesn't suddenly absolve him of all the sins of throwing other mutants into jail. Yes, Polaris condemns Reed that he was one of the bad guys, and that realization, more than anything that he's experienced thus far in the show, seems to hit him the hardest.
Perhaps one of the weaker bits that the show has is the dialogue (the kids, John and Lauren get hit with it the hardest) and pacing of the episode. I'm definitely not a big fan of the Eclipse subplot at all, which felt like it just brings the whole Mutant Resistance stuff to a screeching halt just to get the information they need, and to get Marcos be tied up with this oh-so-evil Cartel members again. I just hope the Cartel doesn't show up in future episodes because I don't find them particularly interesting in the mutants-vs-government storyline, but eh. It's an interesting bit to show that Marcos used to have to work with the underworld to survive, but couldn't they have made it a mutant cartel or some shit to actually get me to care?
No comments:
Post a Comment