The Gifted, Season 2, Episode 5: afterMath
(Sorry for the delays on this week's other superhero episodes. Haven't gotten a chance to watch them)
Finally! Finally, The Gifted ends up showing the aftermath (heh, title drop) of the Inner Circle's assault on the asylum. Sure, the news reporter is clearly biased, but showing the huge casualties among the hospital staff, the deaths and destruction caused by the rampaging mutants (who, admittedly, were all held there against their will) and the general fact that while some of them are just innocent victims of circumstance, a whole lot of them are actually real dangerous mutants. That has been one of my bigger problems with The Gifted's second season as a whole -- everyone keeps insisting that the Inner Circle is evil and they cannot be trusted, but for how they've been portrayed in the show, they just seem to be a slightly-more-destructive mutant group that ultimately is working for similar goals with the Mutant Underground, other than Reeva being pretty ready to kill Andy that one time.
And for all the rocky beginnings of this series (and all my complaints about Caitlin Strucker) "afterMath" is an episode that really shows how well-done and interesting an episode of this mutant underground fighting can be. It's a pretty well-done episode all around. The Inner Circle part focuses mostly on Andy Strucker, leaving Reeva off-screen, while Polaris and the Cuckoos are just sort of dressing, but Andy ends up talking to the super-powerful mutant Rebecca (who can turn objects inside out) and befriending her. It's a simple "treat the mutant as a person, not an object" story, and while simple, it's done effectively. I also like how Andy's attempt to befriend her, hormones aside, is a neat contrast not to just the Cuckoos who want to use her as a weapon, but also to Polaris, who sympathizes with her as a traumatized woman and just wants to give her space. Throw in some obvious guilt from Andy's part that is subtle shown... he really wants to believe in the Inner Circle's goals because he'll then have a justification for going away from his family and hurting Lauren last episode.
And while Rebecca is completely game of being buddies with Andy, we do get to see that when she actually gains some confidence, there might be a reason she was locked up in the first place, being really happy and willing to fuck police cars up. Although to be fair, if I was locked up for so long in a shithole hospital ran by racists, I'd be going around blowing things up too.
On the Purifier side of the story is Jace Turner, who I've complained about as being pretty bland and a bit of a distraction in the past couple of episodes, but this one manages to use him and his Purifier buddies pretty well. Yes, they're very bland, one-dimensional hateful racist fuckers who beat up "traitors" and threaten hospitals while wielding shotguns so they don't get any real sympathy for me, but they're portrayed convincingly enough, and Jace being trapped in a similar state to Andy -- desperately needing a cause to believe in but slowly finding that the group he's in is kind of a bit too extreme. The Purifiers briefly serve as this threat in the background of the hospital that Caitlin and Thunderbird are hanging out in, but they don't actually fight each other.
Meanwhile, the Mutant Underground -- well, mostly just Blink and Eclipse -- are trying to house the rest of the mutants unleashed from the hospital. Due to logistics and resource problems, they can't house them in their base or any of their satellite bases, and Blink has the idea to take them to the Morlocks instead. Morlock leader Erg basically strong-arms Blink into helping him to steal food and baby formula from a shop or something, telling Blink to be proud of her mutant heritage and stop hiding who she really is under contact lenses and a 'human name' (preferring her moniker 'Blink'). Meanwhile, Marcos makes a brief friendship with Glow, one of the prisoners who was detained in that hellhole of a medical institute under wrong charges... and Marcos's whole character arc for this episode is raising questions about how the Morlocks demand that all of the human-shaped mutants must get branded in their faces. It's... okay? Kind of weird, honestly, and Marcos making a bit of a fuss when everyone's just happy to have somewhere to live without being afraid feels kind of weird.
Caitlin and Thunderbird have to deal with getting information out of one of the patients, a dude with acid for blood, and while the difficulties of dealing with an acid-blood mutant in a medical setting is interesting... really? Only this specific mutant has the information that they are looking for? Knowing the name of the mutant that the Inner Circle took is going to help them to find the organization? I dunno. It does lead to a very powerful moment where the three are forced to hide in a room, while both Caitlin and acid-blood know that the latter's not going to make it, but they lie to Thunderbird to keep him from fighting the Purifiers. It's a scene that ends up sort of redeeming Caitlin in my eyes -- after so many episodes of her being kind of a bitch that doesn't see the big picture, at least she understands enough that having Thunderbird kill or maim the Purifiers in a mutant-friendly clinic will mean the end for that particular clinic.
Overall, a very, very solid episode. I'm still unconvinced that the Purifiers or Jace Turner are needed for the season, and I could very well go back to disliking them after episode 6, but at least this episode is handled very well.
No comments:
Post a Comment