Marvel's Inhumans, Season 1, Episode 6: The Gentleman's Name is Gorgon
I'll get back to you guys with Flash and Gifted and Gotham and other shows that are actually good, but I don't have much time today and Inhumans episode reviews are easier to write. So.
Yeah, at this point honestly only Iwan Rheon (Maximus) really manages to rise about the godawful script he's been given and actually make something out of his character that feels believable. Every other actor either doesn't care enough, or is saddled with such a weak script, that I just genuinely cannot bring myself to care about any of these characters. One of the biggest weakest points of this episode is, again, the lack of establishing who the Inhumans are before we cut off their powers and throw them all over Hawaii and force them into identical, poorly-written 'I have befriended a human' plots.
Like Karnak walking up and unsettling Mordis and Auran, because they're all fucking afraid that Karnak is this super-badass uber-warrior who can't possibly walk up confidently without a plan? 90% of what I saw Karnak in this show (and I'm not a particularly great in Inhumans lore) is him struggling with his lack of powers. I didn't even realize he's supposed to be Atillan's best fighter until, well, this episode. It's a badass scene for sure, but it definitely lacks the punch if it had actual buildup behind it and we actually did believe, as the characters on the show do, that Karnak is a threat and not just some dude who can see the trajectory of bullets. And since he's been wasting all his plotlines fucking a drug-dealing lady while going "I don't know what to do without powers, waaaah" there's a huge chunk of narrative payoff that's robbed from that sene.
Crystal, meanwhile, befriending Handsome McStudlyTeenMan, has the idea to use lightning to alert everyone else to her presence, reuniting her with Black Bolt and Medusa. Which is... okay. Medusa and Crystal has a conversation about how painfully obvious their character arcs are: "You've made a human friend! So did we!" and I'm reminded once more at how illogical that Louise has stuck around with Medusa for so long (McStud at least has the obvious motivation of wanting to get into Crystal's pants). They end up going through a bit of a weird subplot where McStud's vet ex tries to call the cops on them, but Louise and McStud comes up with a bullshit story about how the vet ex is a jealous psycho ex-girlfriend, while Lockjaw teleports the Inhumans away. It's kind of dumb, because I don't really give a fuck about McStud's love problems.
Thankfully, the other parts of the cast deliver more decent entertainment as I think this is the first Inhumans episode that actually end up to be somewhat exciting. Gorgon and Karnak are probably the only really likable protagonists in the show, and their little assault against Auran, Mordis and the army of mooks that Maximus recruits from the miners with shit powers. Gorgon and Karnak have to save dr. Declan and Sammy, who, after their rescue, proceeds to bugger out of the plotline... and honestly I wonder if the very uninteresting Louise or Crystal's McStud boyfriend couldn't have been replaced with the far more charismatic and interesting Sammy or Declan. I dunno.
I did like the scene of Karnak trying to unnerve Mordis by telling him how he fought to stop the Council from killing him outright due to his freakishly powerful death-face power, and just as Mordis grows from being a literal plot device gun that Auran points and shoots at anything, as he's starting to be painted as an Inhuman who's imprisoned because the main characters are afraid of his powerful power (Mordis brings up a very excellent point that no one imprisons Black Bolt for his literal whisper-and-a-city-blows-up power) he dies, just like Locus. It's really frustrating that the plot brings up all these absolutely excellent reasons that the Royal Family system is entitled and absolutely shit, but then kills off Locus and Mordis just as they're starting to make their point.
And as Mordis struggles because he refuses to be placed in jail again, Gorgon attacks him, and the two apparently kill each other when Mordis blows up the factory. It seems like an absurdly cheap death, and even if I am not particularly invested in these versions of the Inhumans, it does seem pretty ballsy for them to kill off Gorgon who, despite being a dim hoofed thug in this TV series, is probably as important as Cyclops or Beast is to the X-Men franchise. The death really fails to register on my radar,though. Sure, he's not entirely unlikable, but I've just so little investment in the live-action versions of the Inhumans that I don't particularly care... and the fact that I don't care, when other Marvel material have made me care so much for characters both from the comics and outside the comics is a testament to how absurdly shit the handling of this show has been.
Again, Iwan Rheon's Maximus is the only character who is consistently somewhat charismatic, even if he goes through yet another plotline of dealing with his own egomania and those who would stand against him. It's repetitive, but at least Rheon delivers a pretty bombastic and anguished speech about how everyone underestimates him, about how nobody respects him. There's a neat subplot with the prophetic Bronaja about how Bronaja himself is conflicted about Maximus' leadership, and kind of doesn't tell Maximus that the High Councilor is trying to assassinate Maximus, and it kinda-sorta works? There's a bit of a too-obvious parallelism thing going as we get an extended sequence of Maximus being cunning and underhanded when Gorgon and Karnak were training him how to fight, which we see reflected in the present day, but it's still not enough to save the show. I did like how Maximus is equal parts sympathetic and psychotic, making him a villain that I understand the motivations of, but still root against.
Except, y'know, the heroes are kind of far more unlikable than Maximus himself, again, another huge failing of the episode. We never actually see Black Bolt trying to give those of the lower caste of Inhumans a better life, so he's probably a pretty incompetent king. The show also gives us arguments that Locus and Mordis does about the imprisonment both figurative and literal respectively that the Royal Family has unleashed upon them. Anytime we see Gorgon or Karnak interact with Maximus, it's with derision and blatant classism, and Crystal and Medusa consistently act like arrogant entitled people who hide behind one tragedy while they literally live like princesses. Maximus is clearly a villain, but I find it hard to root for the Royal Family at all if we're not given any reason for them maintaining the caste system, or shown any attempts at them abolishing said system. Again, similar to the 'Karnak is a badass motherfucker' example above, it's another problem of the show in general where thing are neither shown nor told, while we meander around with bullshit plots of them befriending humans.
So yeah. Still a weak episode, although it's probably the strongest Inhumans episode so far... and, obviously, it's not a particularly high bar to clear. It's about to be over, thankfully.
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