The Gifted, Season 2, Episode 9: gaMe changer
I've been pretty down on The Gifted particularly in the second season. Between relatively poor dialogue, mis-management of the split-up cast and poor pacing, it's not been the best show to watch, and in the current state of television where superhero shows are the norm instead of the oddity, The Gifted is always gouing to be left at the wayside as that weird X-Men show that never has the cool X-Men... and mis-manages the couple of second-tier characters that they're able to work with.
Of course, though, after all of the bland and repetitive pacing that the first eight episodes of the second season has given us (and my slowness in reviewing this series is probably the biggest condemnation on my part on how uninteresting it can be) it's done its buildup pretty well, with the caveat that these are stories you've seen a couple dozen times if you've ever read an X-Men comic book or movie.
On the side of the Underground, the increasingly reduced members -- it's basically just Thunderbird, Blink and Eclipse at this point -- ends up finally doing something to try and do something before the Inner Circle/Hellfire Club raise up too much bad blood between humans and mutants. And the focus of this episode is undoubtedly Thunderbird. Eclipse is all out of sorts after being separated from his kid, while Thunderbird's super-suspicious of Blink because she hangs out with Morlocks or some shit? (Totally on Blink's side throughout all of the arguments she has, by the way). But John's self-destructive behaviour throughout this entire episode with him being particularly nasty to the civilian he's interrogating, and even lashing out at Marcos and Clarice, eventually leading to him insinuating that Clarice's cheating on him and causing her to rightfully walk off.
This, of course, leaves the two of them under-equipped when their enemies show up. First Fade (representing the Inner Circle) shows up to kill their informant, and later on the Purifiers show up, and John's forced to stay behind to hold onto a truck and buy time for for Marcos and Fade to escape. Jace Turner doesn't get a lot of scenes in this episode, but the ones he got is definitely pretty creepy, even if it's more of "someone who is convinced he is right descending into extremist hate" scenes that we've seen a fair amount of throughout the season.
Meanwhile, Reed, Caitlin and Lauren end up through a discussion to decide and destroy Madeline Garber's research, because they realize that despite all of the nice shit she's been saying, she's still pretty much going to use the research to genetically wipe out humanity. It's a bit disappointing to revert back to black-and-white morality, but honestly I've never really cared of the Madeline Garber fishy-research-institute anyway, and the fact that it's wrapped up pretty quickly in two episodes is definitely preferable to the alternative. Absolutely love that Madeline, despite all of her inherent racism towards mutants, still genuinely believes that she's helping humanity, giving her a unique perspective while also making her still pretty much a villain.
Kinda wish that we learned a wee bit more about Noah or Nathan or whoever Lauren's friend was, ebcause he's really flat and basically just end up going from the most faithful and optimistic acolyte into an angry betrayed mutant because of some poor choice in Madeline's wording, but eh. Whatever. I'd take this any day rather than the alternative of wishy-washy-ing for half a season .
The main bulk of the episode still focuses on the Inner Circle, which is very interesting. After Rebecca's capture (the subtitles call her "Twist?") she gets placed into this evil horror-Rubik's-Cube of torture where she keeps getting spun around indefinitely because they won't just outright kill her, but she's also too dangerous to let run around alone. Reva's stone-clone, Polaris is a lot less cold but understands why, and poor, poor lovesick Andy ends up, of course, releasing his beau from the prison only to realize, a bit too late, that Rebecca isn't a misunderstood girl whose powers went out of control, she is that spiteful and did mean to do everything she meant to do.
And when Rebecca tries to just straight-up murder the entire leadership of the Inner Circle, Andy ends up attacking Rebecca... and kills her. It's the sort of scene that's perhaps comparable to Anakin contributing in Mace Windu's death in Star Wars Episode III, where the killing perhaps wasn't the intended result... but Andy did use his powers to defend the Inner Circle against Rebecca, a girl he clearly cares enough to break free, so it's definitely a pretty interesting development for sure as Andy is presumably going to throw his lot in deeper and deeper with the Inner Circle.
I also really love just how Rebecca's portrayal over these past couple of episodes makes it clear that she's really sick in the head and is fully aware of what she's doing, with full agency... but also makes it clear that a good chunk of why Rebecca ended up like this was how the world hasn't been kind to her. Lorna's description of what mental institutes do to people like the mutants is chilling and well done, and while the random flashback cold open is, in my opinion, perhaps not necessary, it does help illustrate why Rebecca is such an interestingly complex character. Sure, she feels betrayed because her own parents sold her out to Sentinel Services in the midst of pancake breakfast, but on the other hand even as a cheerful child she also is kind of fucked in the head and is turning people inside out.
Anyway, as The Gifted's second season goes into its halfway point, we get the revelation that the Inner Circle's carrying out their plan. Andy has renewed fervor and Polaris has a badass looking new headpiece, and they've gone to destroy the company that manufactures mutant power-dampening collars, and because this is comic-book land and these sort of important infrastructure is managed poorly, shutting down the central core computer shuts down ALL of the collars all over the country. Cool visuals, though.
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