The Gifted S02E16 Review: Hollow Victory?

The Gifted, Season 2, Episode 16: oMens

Well, I have to hand it to The Gifted... even if the second season is cancelled, they at least did wrap up things well by killing most of the bad guys and tying up most of the loose ends. And it's kind of hard to review this episode through that lens. Judging by the cliffhanger at the end -- the thought of more mutant uprising, and Blink showing up alive, with good hair, and asking the cast to follow her into a burning wasteland, clearly meant that the writers were planning for a subsequent third season. The fact that there are still plot threads left dangling -- like whatever the fuck was up with that music box and the Andrea/Andreas hair charm -- are pretty obvious. But all in all? I guess it's a pretty decent ending. It's such a shame that The Gifted never really ended up living up to its full potential, although for what it was, it's definitely been a charming ride. 

The episode was quick to set up the confrontation between the good guys and the various bad guy factions, with the last episode getting all the pieces in place. Fade and the Stepford Cuckoos kidnap and forcibly mind-control Andy and Lauren while everyone else is getting ready to engage in a proper shoot-out with the Purifiers, and this ends up getting Thunderbird to finally break free from his "oh no I miss Blink" power incontinence to finally do some tracking, before deciding to charge straight into battle and take on an entire army of Purifiers on his own. 

Acting as bait because he is borderline-suicidal and has nothing to lose is stupid and goes against everything Blink told Thunderbird about, but it's significantly less stupid than his comic-book death of "IMMA FIGHT A PLANE WITH MY BARE HANDS". And, credit where credit's due, that face-paint was pretty badass, and so is him just being a tank and beating up waves of Purifiers, and eventually teaming up with Erg, who talks him out of just giving up. Thunderbird punches Erg a couple of times to build up energy and allow Erg to blast the Purifiers, while Thunderbird embraces his X-Men codename and finally beats the fuck out of Jace Turner, that horribly-written character. That was the most satisfying beat-down I've seen in a while. 

Meanwhile, the Cuckoos get Andy and Lauren and force them to use their Fenris powers to blow up a the Sentinel Services building. And by blow up, I mean "send a glowing white ball of light that burns everything but the bleached framework of the building". It's... it's an interesting visual effect. And I guess this was meant to set up something for the hypothetical third season, because after blowing the building up, it's sort of... not really brought up again? 

The rest of the heroes show up and face off against the Cuckoos, who are very much ready to use Andy and Lauren to blow up our heroes, until Polaris talks to Esme and, of course, being an actual character, Esme realizes that, shit, maybe they're going too far with enslaving and murdering their own kind. Esme's heel-face-turn is pretty well built-up and kind of obvious, so her deciding to side with the Mutant Underground is understandable. And then Marcos just shoots her sisters in the chest, what the hell! And... and I'm surprised Esme didn't flip out right then and there. 

With a couple of sub-bosses out of the way, the adults go off to bring down Reeva once and for all to stop even more atrocities from happening, because this is the night where Reeva's army of mutants (who we never see) will be out of the building. Doing... things that we never see the impact of. There's a shoot-out with Fade and the rest of the ship-killer crew in some loading bay, and honestly, the ship-killer crew is kind of shit, huh? That's like the shittiest usage of the powers of teleporting objects and blowing up objects, honestly. Also, Caitlin kills Fade as he tries to choke Reed. 

But everyone's pinned down by the ship-killer crew except for Reed, who decides that, after flashbacking to a conversation with Lauren (which we saw from the first season) about purpose and whatnot, decides to be a hero, charge in solo into the elevator and challenge Reeva alone. Which is kind of stupid, but Reed at least recognizes his power is going to blow up out of control sooner rather than later, so. It's just pretty fortunate that instead of decaying the floor and missing Reeva entirely, Reed's power just straight up fucking explodes and decimates the upper half of the skyscraper. It's... it's a nice end for Reed, I suppose, who's been confused about his place in the world for a good chunk of this season. Not the best arc, and probably took up more screentime than I wished it would, but it was a decent exit. 

And... and I don't think we get to see the ship-killer crew die, but the Mutant Underground and their new allies (Erg and Esme) regroup afterwards, with most of their enemies down and out -- Reeva, Fade and the evil Cuckoos are dead; Jace is probably in a coma; and in a short scene we see Benedict Ryan mind-controlled by Esme to confess on live television. The Underground decide to rebuild as a brand-new organization, which is just as well because this season really shows how incompetent their previous organization was. And... and, of course, we get that whole next-season-teaser with Blink being alive and a burning hellscape behind her. 

Overall, though, it was... it was a pretty all-right finale, all things considered, for both the season and the show. The Gifted was always a show that had potential, but never really properly realized it, and even if it wasn't due to the circumstances of the Disney/Fox merger, I'd wager they would really have to step up their game in the next season or just fall into the same rut of talking big and not really delivering. 

The Gifted S02E15 Review: Bonding Over Murder

The Gifted, Season 2, Episode 15: Monsters

Watching The Gifted knowing that it got cancelled at the end of its second season, I'm honestly sort of curious just how much the writers knew going in that the Disney/Fox acquisition was going to happen, and how much forewarning they had before the show came on the chopping block, and I wonder if the show would've been done a bit differently otherwise. More focus on the actual X-Men characters, instead of slow building-up that ends up really being nowhere as spectacular as it should've been. Because while a small-scale superhero story can work as well, and sometimes even better, than large-scale ones, The Gifted seems to be... it tries to imply that huge things are happening all over the world, but the scale of conflict it shows us is really, really small, y'know?

Take this penultimate episode, for example. It's basically a huge set-up episode, but it feels particularly bland because the entire season, other than maybe the Morlock Massacre and the scene where the Inner Circle assaults that one building, feels like nothing but build-up. Basically, this episode has everyone sort of come to their senses, and the season-long drama about Polaris and Andy joining the Inner Circle is resolved in what's in my opinion a pretty anti-climactic way. I mean, Lorna's return to the Underground is sort of already dealt with while she's playing spy very poorly over the past couple of episodes, but Andy being sort of enjoying the happy game-like "kill the racists" viewpoint of the Inner Circle feels swept under the rug very, very quickly. And like, it's not like I've been especially enjoying the Andy/Lauren drama, but the fact that it's Reed basically telling Andy that "hey, I've killed a guy too, and I wanted to kill that guy. We can bond over accidental killing because of our powers". I mean, it got Andy back, but it feels pretty off, and I really wished the show had actually showcased more of this side of Reed as opposed to generic power incontinence and just confused mulling about. 

And this episode just feels disjointed. After the whole rescuing Morlock thing, Thunderbird ends up becoming impotent because he can't track thanks to... heartbreak or some shit. Caitlin and Lauren basically tell the Morlocks in their car to run away and split up while they have a last stand, with Caitlin straight-up ready to pull off a heroic suicidal last stand to give her daughter a chance to escape, and the rest of our main characters have to go rescue them from the Purifiers. And it's Reed finally becoming angry and desperate enough to vaporize the wall that ends up allowing them to escape. Oh, and he murders someone too. 

And... and I dunno. Like, on paper, the plotlines are good. Mutant factions clashing, two characters we love realizing the bad influence and having to escape the clutches of the tyrannical evil organization, the manipulation of an extremist faction... but none of the plotlines are handled well. The Purifiers are honestly nothing short of cartoonish and I really don't care for them. Lorna and Andy's escape take place off-screen and apparently they just up and left without no one realizing. And Reeva's plan is basically just to blow up some monuments all over the country or something, which... you don't really need to control both the biggest mutant terrorist group and the biggest anti-mutant extremist group to do that, surely? 

Overall, this episode seems ambitious on the surface, but ultimately is just sort of poorly-paced setup. None of the soap opera stuff really landed for me and most of them felt like they happened because the plot needed it to happen, and honestly, other than Caitlin's increasing ruthlessness and the Inner Circle duo returning to the good guys, none of the characters really end up developing all that much in this episode. 

The Gifted S02E14 Review: Mutant Massacre

The Gifted, Season 2, Episode 14: calaMity

So yeah, the poor Morlocks get massacred, which is... sort of a sad, recurring theme with the Morlocks. In the comics in particular, the Morlocks as a group ended up being more of a character than any individual Morlock character, and when one of the first Claremont-era X-Men crossover started off, it promised multiple mutant deaths in the "Mutant Massacre" arc... in practice, it's the poor Morlock society that ended up decimated. And it seems we're getting an equivalent storyline here. 

And this is the plotline for this particular episode's storyline. The opening scenes makes it clear that a while back, Reeva Page recruited Benedict Ryan in order to basically be her little puppet on the human side to manipulate the human/mutant narrative however she chooses to. The flashback of how she found him as a washout radio host is probably unnecessary, but she ends up sending Ryan to tell his Purifiers to attack the Morlock hideout, regardless of the amount of casualties on either side of the party. 

And for the most part, this is the main plot of the episode. We get to see a bunch of random Morlock mutants show off their powers. We've got Iris, who ends up casting illusions to confuse and slow down the Purifiers as they wander around the same couple of corridors. We've got Membrane, who is this huge white lizard-man who uses the mucus from his hands to give them a live camera update on what the Purifiers are doing. We get to see that one mutant dude (Mason?) who turns into a weird mist-thing and starts picking off Purifier mooks one by one. And it's mostly a whole-episode action scene as the Purifiers realize what the Morlocks are doing, and get past these undeveloped but sympathetic Morlocks while Blink tries her best to create portals and get the civilians out into an alley where Team Mutant Underground are ready to ferry them to a scrapyard. 

Blink ends up getting the spotlight in this episode, being the literal conduit between the Mutant Underground and the Morlocks in more ways than one, advocating finding help from her allies the moment the Purifiers arrive, and her quick thinking and jump to action ended up allowing the evacuation to begin way earlier than it would've otherwise begun if they had listened to Erg. The moments she has with Thunderbird, while short, is a whole lot more emotional than anything the two of them had in any previous scene in the series. And, of course, while Erg and the rest of the combatants fight and get picked off one by one by the asshole Purifiers, Blink ends up ferrying most of the Morlock civilians out. A neat, great way for them to utilize Erg's powers too, even if the other Morlocks are kinda dumb for actually peeking out of their cover instead of just letting Erg take out the other Purifiers. I guess they aren't trained combatants. 

Also, I do like that Erg's original plan -- to flood the tunnels -- is basically something that the villainous Mikhail Rasputin did in the Uncanny X-Men series, in yet another example of a story where a large amount of the Morlocks get killed. 

Of course, Blink and Erg end up going on to try and save one little kid who got separated from the others, and in the process of this, Jace Turner manages to shoot Blink in the back several times, causing her to fall down on the sewers as her portal collapses, separating her from Thunderbird, Erg and the rest of her allies. I'm not 100% sure she's dead, but that's definitely a pretty well-done last stand for sure, and I'm pretty sure she's my favourite out of the main Mutant Underground characters, so... yeah, kinda sucks. 

The only real piss-off thing in this episode is Jace Turner, who the episode still tries to spin as a character who is totally conflicted and shit, holding a mutant teddy bear and having a sad face or whatever, but honestly at this point I just really want him to get shot in the head. Kudos for them for making such a hatable character, I guess. 

On the Inner Circle side of things, it's... it's mostly the B-plot this time around, with Reeva launching an investigation on Max, the missing member of the ship-killer crew. And... Lorna continues to be the dumbest double-agent ever, being so obviously "I AM PANICKING PLEASE DON'T SUSPECT ME" in every single one of her scenes, and honestly, Reeva, the Frost Sisters and the rest of the ship-killers are kind of dumb for not realizing that. Poor Sage ends up being confronted by Reeva, who is disappointed that someone she trusted so implicitly has betrayed her, and we get a genuinely fun detail that the technology-oriented Sage's mind is "just ones and zeroes" to the Cuckoos. Sage ends up getting killed for it, which Andy tells Lorna is a tone that is way too cheery. There's also a couple of B-points like Caitlin drumming up the courage to slam through a police roadblock, and more talk about the creepy dreams that Lauren has been having, but those are honestly just there to remind us that they exist more than anything, and is fully in the background. 

Overall, while, again, perhaps too late to save the season, it's a pretty huge "event" episode to set up a neat climax, and unlike the previous "event" of the prison outbreaks or the murder of all the X-Men-allied mutant leaders, this is a plot-relevant event that actually feels like it hits close to the center of characters we do like. I'd be content if it was just the Morlock community being overrun and some of Erg's buddies getting killed (I'm frankly surprised Erg and Glow made it out alive) but to kill of Blink too is something I genuinely did not see coming. 

The Gifted S02E13 Review: Seductive Music Box

The Gifted, Season 2, Episode 13: teMpted

That's... that's not a bad episode, actually. Sure, it's essentially just a stopgap between the previous episode and what I assume is going to be a faster-paced episodes to close off the season, but... I dunno. Not a whole ton seemed to happen in this episode, but the buildup to the series of development we got at the end was all right? It's just such a shame that the previous episode was kinda poopy as far as character developments go that I'm not the biggest fan of the storylines being explored. Maybe why the story felt so great was a significant lack of focus on the damn Purifiers and redundant flashbacks. Maybe that's what the series needed. 

The Blink/Erg/Caitlin storyline is probably my favourite out of the three main stories that happened in this episode, as... as simple as it was. It's just pleasant, y'know? I felt like, as with most episodes of Gifted, the random inclusion of a flashback showing how Erg was betrayed by his ex-girlfriend was a bit shoehorned in, but when Glow gets accidentally shot during a food-gathering mission, Erg insists that they only work with Morlocks. Blink, being a lot more level headed, ends up teleporting into the surface and ask Caitlin and Marcos for help. Well, mostly Caitlin -- Marcos is just there as a literal bloodbag and to shoehorn some bland fake love-triangle into the mix. Thankfully that plotline was quickly resolved and handwaved by all the parties involved. 

I feel like it's genuinely contrived that the Purifiers just happened to be patrolling and entered the hospital that Blink, Caitlin and Erg were trying to synthesize the cure, but it did fill the action quota of the episode, I suppose. I dunno... nothing that happens in this subplot was honestly particularly spectacular, but I just felt like Caitlin finally not being an asshat and actually being a confident healer that ends up causing Erg to rethink his stance on human allies and eventually accept Caitlin as an honourable mutant is pretty well-handled. As icky as that sewer-goop tattoo probably is. 

Perhaps in stark contrast to the well-done scenes among the Morlocks that honestly ends up ultimately being filler, is the genuinely bland and "get this over with" sequence with Polaris's espionage, and her bizarre need to have to check in every five minutes with Marcos. I know that Lorna's sort of panicking due to the seeming deadline and she's not exactly a spy, but... I dunno. The scene where she tries to investigate the Cruise Killer Crew of Generic Side Characters felt particularly hilariously bad... and I know that it's intentional, but, jeez, it kind of went too long. 

Anyway, the Inner Circle plans to hit the White House and Pentagon or some shit, Douche Cruise Guy whose name I don't think we even really got ends up suspecting Lorna, gets intimidated by the whole "queen" shit, and ends up getting attacked by Marcos... except Marcos ends up not realizing that the dude has a gun and is forced to kill the other dude in self defense. Although, honestly, I totally thought for a moment that this is how we lose Marcos. 

The scenes of Lauren trying to keep herself awake, and then succumbing to temptation when Andy and the Cuckoos reach out to give Lauren another taste of the Fenris powers is well done... although I guess the music box is just straight-up evil for some reason? I'm genuinely baffled at this plot point, because Reed acknowledges that he was drawn to it as a kid too and it's dangerous. What, because the ancient Struckers put their hair in it or something? I dunno, Not a huge fan of the music box, although thankfully the episode does give some pretty decent Reed/Lauren drama. It's drama that by rights I really should've hated, but Lauren very nearly gives in to the dark side until Reed finally gets his ass off of moping about and starts being a parent. And then, um... Reed gives the temporary cure to Lauren? It's a development that weird me out, but we'll see. 

It's a neat episode, I guess. It started off really slow, and despite by all rights having all of the formula of an episode that would've annoyed me, I actually ended up liking this one a fair bit... although admittedly at this point in The Gifted I'll take whatever I can get. 

The Gifted S02E12 Review: Mind Battles

The Gifted, Season 2, Episode 12: hoMe

More plot developments that seem like huge things, but they sort of just end up happening mostly off-screen, while the actual cast sort of just... exist? I dunno. This time around, it's the assassination of Evangeline Whedon and every other leader of the Mutant Underground, and... and it's bizarre, considering what non-entities Evangeline and the other supposed leaders have been. They're treating this like some huge, monumental event, but I genuinely forgot Evangeline exists until the final scene of the previous episode, so it's not a huge revelation that I particularly cared about. It's sort of similar to the whole "release all the mutants in prison!" bit earlier in this season, but other than some vague news reports, we don't even see much of the outcome of unleashing a couple hundred powerful and likely vengeful superhumans into society.

The biggest saving grace of this episode is perhaps Blink -- she hasn't been the most well-developed character in the show, alternating from just being one of the titular main characters of the Underground, or a love interest, or just a pleasant person to be around (the role she's been filling for the past couple of episodes), but the added flashback to how her foster sister died, as well as her more jaded world-view compared to Thunderbird's one-track mind of "RAH RAH RESISTANCE FIGHT RAH RAH" honestly is genuinely refreshing. Like, is it cowardice to run and hide and save your life to survive? Is it cowardice for Erg to basically let the humans have their world while he and the rest of the Morlocks just keep their head down and live in the sewers peacefully instead of fighting a bloody, losing battle?

Blink calls out Thunderbird on just how stupid his vaunted "bravery" is, and how bravery sometimes ends up just leading people to their straight-up deaths, how dying isn't bravery but foolery, and it's amazingly done. It doesn't hurt that I've been consistently frustrated with how flat and bland Thunderbird as a character has been throughout the series. The show makes Blink's progression from being a reluctant ally to the Underground to finally leaving with Erg to join the Morlocks because of her own world-view (and thankfully not because of a stupid love-triangle) be pretty dang well-done.

Unfortunately, that's about the only real bit of praise I can give to this episode, because... I dunno. The rest of the episode just felt kinda flat. The whole gathering of the Underground leaders felt a bit bizarrely detached from everything that's going on, the Thunderbird/Erg conflict felt artificial, and Erg's insistence that Evangeline isn't the squeaky-white paragon of morals because she's low-key threatening to expose the Morlocks to the world if Erg doesn't help out ends up being kind of a dud of a plotline because Evangeline just sort of dies off-screen.

Meanwhile, Lauren and Andy continue to have weird dream battles while the ghost-memory of Andreas Strucker talk about how Fenris is apparently "the light and the dark" and they have to fight each other for dominance or something? Andy gets sweet-talked by the Cuckoo Sisters to basically "rescue" his entire family by allowing the Cuckoos to mentally prod Lauren into thinking in the way of the Inner Circle, because of some random leaps of logic that they'll be safer with the Inner Circle (to be fair, that excuse's probably accurate). Okay? It feels just contrived and bizarre.

Meanwhile, Lauren spends the entire episode bonding with Caitlin on this utterly wacky and honestly kind of pointless side-quest to meet that one brother from the first season and try to dig up some information, and it feels genuinely pointless, other than to have the both of them ambushed and show off Lauren's newfound ability to create Kienzans and blow up police cars. Also, did they just leave Caitlin's confused brother to the mercy of the police? We never get any answer to this. Meanwhile meanwhile, Reed finds the music box? Or something? And get bizarre flashbacks? There's a lot of characters pretending they're doing something but ultimately amounting to nothing. Like Lorna's kinda-pointless arc of trying to figure out what the shipkiller crew was assigned to do, only for her bad-flirting to end up accomplishing nothing, really.

Overall, kind of a messy episode. It's more of a setup to sort of emphasis how screwed the Underground is, but I've always viewed the Underground as kind of already in a pretty bad spot ever since the season started, and now we just take away a bunch of allies that the show never really acknowledges 90% of the time, so... eh? Also apparently the Inner Circle has agents in the government and likely the Purifiers or something? I dunno. 

The Gifted S02E11 Review: Dumb Decisions

The Gifted, Season 2, Episode 11: meMento

And they had a decent run too of relatively decent episodes. Oh well. This episode of The Gifted was supposed to be the huge turning point of some of the characters as they take more drastic measures in response to the recent events -- the attack on the Purifers, and the (off-screen) release of all the mutant prisoners in prisons all over the US. And... and not a whole lot of those made much sense, particularly due to how everyone on Team Underground was fully rah-rah-no-killing mode, and everyone on Team Inner Cricle was completely on board the fact that they needed to make sacrifices for the greater good. It's sort of like the final season of Game of Thrones, except this season didn't even have the excuse of "too little episodes to develop the characters". 

Polaris finally ends up realizing that the Inner Circle is evil, but it's not employing Twist or the slaughter of random innocent humans or getting her to blow up an airplane or the release of multiple psychopaths into the world or even sending out Fade to attack the Underground. No, it's because Reva... has employed a trio of mutants that are involved in a certain ship slaughter which we've never heard of before this episode. And that's like super evil, for some reason. And that's super bad, and Andy's super-excited that he gets to hang out with a bunch of dudes whose ability is... with three people, they can teleport, heat up and blow up a chair? I know this is a TV budget, but honestly, when it's three people and their combined ability is to blow a chair, and we don't even hear their names, it's pretty obvious that these guys are kind of fodder. 

But instead of taking it up to Reva or the Stepford Smiler Sisters, even to just tell them to keep an eye on the ship-killer crew, Polaris immediately zips off to sob to Marcos and ask for the Underground's help. I dunno... Lorna's change of heart really felt like it needed more of an incentive, or, alternatively, for it to have happened a bit earlier. For what it's worth, working with Marcos in the previous episode might've been the actual trigger, and this is just an excuse? Her apologizing to Marcos, apologizing and begging for help simultaneously, is definitely well-done. 

Meanwhile, both the show and Marcos himself takes note of just how kind of emotionally abusive this all is, not to mention the whole "hide our kid" thing, and he... sort of flirts with that one lady Morlock they rescued way earlier in the season? I completely forgot she exists. It's there. 

Oh, and Blink and Marcos end up basically asking the Morlocks for help, and they sort of get a non-committal intel from them or something? They end up following that lead and see Reva and the leader of the Purifiers meeting and exchanging manila envelopes. Also, Evangeline the X-Men lawyer call in Thunderbird and basically gathers all members of the Mutant Resistance, and apparently there are other resistance cells. 

The Struckers sort of revert back to being kind of boring, I'm sorry to say. The focus of this episode is Lauren, sort of, who... is obsessed with this random music box from earlier in the season, and... gets flashbacks to Andreas Strucker from a couple generations in the past? She ends up developing her powers and instead of just making force-shields, she can now make slicey-dicey force circle-blades, or something? The story bit of the racist landlord calling in the cops to shake them down, and then Caitlin deciding to essentially weaponize Lauren as a distraction to get the cops away is sort of treated by Reed and the show as basically giving into the temptation of abusing their powers, but honestly... it's not like Lauren's actually hurting anyone. And while the show plays up Lauren giving in to EEEEEVIL, all she did was protect her family (non-lethally) and threaten an asshat landlord. Which was more stupid than evil -- just pretend nothing is wrong, or move out of that apartment!

And I'm not sure about the logistics of the show. Are they staying with Thunderbird, Blink and Eclipse? Are they not? Why are they not, if they aren't? And if they are, was that apartment really the only one they could find? I dunno. The whole thing feels contrived, and that's before the whole bizarre ancestor-dream nonsense... and Lauren randomly knows German? I'm not sure if she knew before, or if this is just plot contrivance. Seeing the rest of the episode, it could be the latter. 

Jace Turner, sadly, also gets a fuck-ton of screentime, and after committing fully into being an evil "MUTANTS ARE EEEVIL AND THEY LIED TO ME" mentality, he and his buddy Ted end up beating down the doors at a shelter or an orphanage or something, and basically act all evil and shit. And then Jace gets lectured by a black kid about how racism is bad, while Jace's buddy Ted shoots the mist-making mutant kid... and then a clearly conflicted Jace covers for Ted when the police arrives... and then he's glorified as a good citizen by bad-mass-media-man Benedict Ryan, which he feels guilty about... but then his ex-wife calls him and tells him she's coming over to his point of view? That last bit... really makes no sense. I dunno. Nothing about this sequence really makes sense from a character development standpoint other than the fact that Jace Turner's a bit of a shitbag. And frankly, I've stopped giving a shit about whether Jace's sympathetic or not around halfway through season one, I just wished the show would commit. 

Like, I honestly get what they're trying to do, they're trying to set up a conflict, at last, between the Underground, the Inner Circle and the Purifiers, but the Purifiers have been such a cartoonishly poorly-written flat set of villains that I genuinely don't care about them, and the main characters involved have been relatively steadfast in their convictions that their sudden 'conflict' felt rushed and not at all earned. 

The Gifted S02E10 Review: Working Together Maybe

The Gifted, Season 2, Episode 10: eneMy of My eneMy

On with our coverage of the second season of The Gifted, with episode 10! And it's... it's pretty decent? Honestly, this episode and the previous one are pretty solid episodes in general, it's just that the handling of the characters in previous episodes have been a bit iffy. This episode sort of continues in the semi-strong streak we've been having by setting up a pretty simple "good guy/bad guy" bit, with the Mutant Underground grouping up with the Struckers after they return from their side-quest, and they decide to call up Polaris in order to get some firepower to help liberate Thunderbird, because he got his fool ass captured by the Purifiers.

And it's... it's a decent premise, for sure. The Purifiers are definitely the worst of the bunch, with even its supposedly-sumpathetic member, Jace Turner, growing more and more unlikable by the episode. I guess we're supposed to think of Jace as the only reasonable one, since he's the only Purifier who's willing to give Thunderbird a chance to explain himself, and almost buys into the truth about how Polaris and Andy Strucker has joined the Inner Circle, meaning that there are multiple mutant groups now (how is this a revelation to the dumbass Purifiers?)... but ends up losing his grip on sanity and riddles John with buckshot when the united front of main characters assault the Purifier compound. Actor Coby Bell does his best at making Jace at least be a bit sympathetic, but the blatantly telegraphed misunderstanding twist honestly just makes me sort of shrug at the whole thing.

And... and if nothing else, the little meeting between the strained members of the Underground and the Inner Circle is interesting, with Lorna and Marcos having a decent tense "let's pretend to not hate each other while also secretly wanting to fuck" thing going on, Andy and Lauren having their whole sibling piss-off contest going on, and Blink consistently being fun as she manages to able to basically calm down Lorna, Marcos and Lauren at different points in the episode. And, admittedly... the tension felt a wee bit artificial at times, but considering The Gifted's track record at episodic tension and wangsty drama, this was honestly semi-decent.

It's satisfying to see the Gifted sort of engage in some pretty fun, if basic, mutant-on-racist action, with some awesome badass-slow-walk moments when our united mutant crew arrives and basically curb-stomps the damn Purifiers. While Polaris and Andy end up returning to the Inner Circle at the end of the episode, It's admittedly pretty nice to see the cast all together again. The conflict between the Inner Cricle people is still here, though, with Lorna making it clear that she doesn't intend to get close to Marcos (although she kisses him), while Andy is all-too-delighted to brutalize and crush the legs of some fool who tried to shoot Lauren. Justified, sure, but at the same time, it's clear that the boy's fucked in the head when it's torture for torture's sake. It's sort of fun seeing Andy gleeful in the chance to get his family to see what all this "eradicating the hateful racists" thing is all about, when, y'know, doing violent torture on people who might deserve it is definitely not the answer.

Overall, a solid episode of television, even if I admittedly realize that the poor pacing and dull writing that the show's had over its history probably has far more sway on critics and show executives, leading to the show's cancellation after this season. Shame, because it just starts to pick itself off the ground in this second half of the season. 

The Gifted S02E09 Review: Fast Paced

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.

The Gifted S02E08 Review: Mutant Insulin

The Gifted, Season 2, Episode 8: the dreaM

Still trying to continue on with The Gifted, and this episode is... it's a bit better, I guess, even if it does come off similar to a not-so-good episode of Arrow due to the whole flashback thing and a whole lot of angst. Polaris ends up becoming the huge focus of the episode, and while the flashback-within-a-flashback bit wasn't appreciated, I genuinely think the writing for Lorna is well-done in this episode, and far, far more engaging than anything that the show has going on with its other characters.

We get flashbacks showing that she has abandonment issues, lashing out against her aunt and having a lot of acceptance issues due to her thinking that her father abandoned and/or didn't want her -- something that's proven to be at least partly true when we learn that Magneto (who the show doesn't name at all, which is just DUMB since they aren't even suffering from the same embargo that the DC shows have for Batman) is at least aware enough of her to send her gifts of a small metal disc.

And as Lorna herself finds that she's in a place where her cause has devolved into a pretty scary warzone where it is decidedly not ideal to raise a kid, she finally understands what old Magneto was on about, and that Magneto didn't abandon her so much as he was forced to do so for her safety. The goodbye scene with Marcus, and Lorna finding her aunt and all that stuff -- they were pretty emotional, I have to admit. Lorna gets the brunt of the characterization, but Esme as the 'cool aunt' of sorts and Marcus in his brief scene both get pretty great scenes.

Meanwhile, the B-plots... they don't suck, at least? The Struckers find themselves with dr. Madeline Garber, who gives us a lot of exposition and mumbo-jumbo about Reed's condition, while at the same time telling us that she's essentially developing "mutant insulin", something that allows mutants that genuinely can't control their powers (a great use of a montage to show off random people with particularly destructive powers), and I do love how they don't just make Reed out into a dirty self-hating racist for not wanting to accept his powers. Of course, though, turns out that the organization dr. Garber is working for might be shady, because after Lauren goes through a lot of pointlessly cheery scenes, we find out that Garber is actually working on a more permanent cure... dun DUNN DUNNN! Okay, it's actually not that sinister and Garber's friendly assistant does tell Lauren that the cure's more of an option than anything, but you know that's going to get weaponized and shit.

Meanwhile, people are going around burning mutant orphanages and everything thanks to Rebecca's stupid-ass stunt, and Rebecca herself is basically driven out of the Inner Circle by Polaris. Shit's going down, and while Polaris has basically re-affirmed her desire to fight for the mutants (I think) and the Struckers have basically stumbled on a mutant-healing facility, the Mutant Underground remains consistently the least interesting bunch of characters in the show. It doesn't help that the only times I care for Marcus is when he's angsting over his daughter, Thunderbird's a blank slate and I'm honestly not sure why Blink hasn't thrown in her lot with the Morlocks yet. I genuinely don't care about what they're doing, and they're just repeating what they say in the previous episode.

Anyway, the episode ends in yet another music-backed montage of scenes. Lauren discovering that a permanent cure is being produced; Rebecca is attacked by some random bearded mutant man; the revelation that Garber is the sister of the Purifiers' leader; and Polaris bending Magneto's random metal disc into her comic-book headdress. Overall the pacing is still pretty damn off and the show still has a fixation on focusing on some of the least-interesting characters, but this episode's close focus on Lorna definitely goes a long way in making it a lot more interesting than some of the others. 

The Gifted S02E07 Review: Child Psychopath

The Gifted, Season 2, Episode 7: no Mercy

I guess I'll start getting somewhat caught up on The Gifted, a show that just... sort of fell off the track for me. I just stopped watching the show at one point, and ended up just... well, not watching it until the season's ended for a while. I tried booting up this episode last night and, well... yeah, there are many reasons why The Gifted's second season doesn't catch my heart the way many other superheroes do. And it's not the lack of "big name" superheroes either, because if done right, random nobodies in the superhero world can certainly carry a show on their own. But this episode really ends up selling what's problematic with The Gifted, which is repetitive plot threads and "character moments" that honestly feel identical to things I've seen before earlier in the season. Throw in the fact that the show really doesn't know how to juggle its cast, and I remember why I ended up just dropping this show.

Half the episode is spent dealing with Reed Strucker and his newly-found and hard-to-control disintegration powers. And I haven't watched this show in a while, but even then I definitely know that it's a storyline that I was sick of, and I genuinely just did not give a crap about anything the Struckers have to say in this episode. Likewise, we get even more "clues" to the Strucker family storyline and... and can I just say that I really don't care? Because I really don't they've not made the Struckers mystery that much interesting that they had to be extended so far into the second season. The Mutant Underground dudes in general are just sort of lounging around, that when Blink calls out Thunderbird and Eclipse for literally having nothing better to do but question her allegiance to the Morlocks, she makes a very good point -- what the fuck are the Underground even doing at this point? The Morlocks are being a haven separated from most people, while the Inner Circle, while clearly brutal, at least are trying to help mutants. The Underground are just sort of pussyfooting around everything and at this point the only leg up they have over the other two groups is the thin line of "oh, we don't kill humans." And even then, as shown later on in this episode, it's not like most members of the Inner Circle go around merrily blowing up buildings or anything. Honestly, Blink is probably best served just cutting off her ties and joining the Morlocks. Hell, as Blink herself notes, Marcos really doesn't have a leg to stand on with his nonsensical drug cartel allegiance.

The Turner/Purifier storyline also doesn't really work out for me.We get more scenes of Turner being hesitant but "seeing the point" of joining this clearly too-radical-for-him group, being shut out by his wife (good!) and ends up being sweet-talked into appearing on a show lead by Purifier head honcho Benedict Ryan.

The Inner Circle storyline is perhaps the most interesting part of this episode (read: the only interesting part), and it's... it's basically a huge heist to send a message and get some information. It's something that's been built up for a while now, and it's... woefully anti-climactic. It's still cool to see the scene of slow-motion walking into the building as the Inner Circle dudes walk like they're in a music video, but ultimately the actual heist, for all the buildup, feels pitifully mundane. The show tries to talk it up by having Reeva be romantically involved with some random dude that she uses to gain access to the system -- and there's certainly a neat "was this ever real?" sentiment going on, but we've already established that Reeva is cruel but not mustache-twirling "mwa-ha-ha-kill-everyone". It's at least something new and the added random backstory definitely makes Reeva far more interesting than the muddled bunch over at the Mutant Underground.

Very weird, though, that they need Reeva to go through all this to seduce that random dude when they have access to the Stepford Cuckoo sisters with their mind-control powers. That seemed pretty impractical, and an obvious narrative shortsightedness to inject some drama.

Of course, while Reeva, Polaris and the Cuckoos promise that no one will be harmed if they cooperate, Rebecca clearly has different plans. She keeps questioning everyone why they let racist comments slide, and when one dude takes things too far, Rebecca refuses to listen to the other Inner Circle people telling her to "let it slide, we got to escape", and Rebecca rips apart every single person in that room with her CGI inside-out powers.

It's definitely a powerful, if obviously telegraphed, ending. The episode itself was mostly just all-right, particularly the Inner Circle parts. The show's making members of the Inner Circle way too likable, though, while the Mutant Underground and the Struckers are just being genuinely bland and uninteresting. I'm willing to finish the second season, but I'm genuinely not sure if it'll be a good watch. 

The Gifted S02E06 Review: Danger Room

The Gifted, Season 2, Episode 6: iMprint

Really haven't been catching up with The Gifted and many of the other superhero shows, huh? Been kind of busy lately, and things sort of just ended up getting piled up. Whoops! Anyway, this episode of The Gifted is... it's pretty neat. It does have some of the normal problems that the show is pretty problematic about -- unfocused episode that jumps around from one plot point to the next, pretty banal dialogue, plot developments that feel unnaturally done, and all that jazz, but still... it's ultimately not a bad episode. I liked parts of it, and didn't really care for some of it.

The best part of the episode has to be the Esme Frost flashback. I haven't realized how much I liked Esme and her sisters throughout the past season and half of this show, considering she alternates between being a mysterious presence in the background of the show or being the deliverer of huge plot twist, but here we get some short flashbacks to the Stepford Sisters' backstory, and it's... it's actually the most effective flashback the show's ever done, although admittedly that's a pretty low bar to clear. The revelation that the triplets were forced by an evil government agency to torture captives to find and seek other mutants, and then the subsequent revelation that they are in fact artificially-created clones, and then the fact that there were originally five of them, with two having died during their breakout attempt? All very effectively done, adding layer upon layer to the story, and one of the opening shots being the bizarre arrangement of their beds finally being given context when we see the original five? Definitely well done.

The fact that Esme ends up opening up to Lorna, who spends much of the episode disillusioned about the Hellfire Club/Inner Circle due to them keeping her in the dark about the operation and only forcing her to train in Danger Rooms, is actually well-done. Esme slowly showing some hints of individuality and refusing to agree with her sisters is done pretty well, and I do like the bonding moments that they have, all because Esme wants to make Lorna believe in their goal.

Of course, things go south when Esme ends up being kind of a fool and hums Lorna's lullaby, causing Lorna to damn well near choke Esme to death. It does end up leading to a very heartfelt apology and backstory-sharing on Esme's part, though, and I'm definitely a huge fan.

The other big plotline is Reed trying to control his powers, and while the original talk session with Thunderbird features some cringe-y first draft dialogue, the foundation of the plot is sound, with Reed being equally still in denial and wanting a "quick way out". We do get a brief, nice talk with former recurring character Shatter, who tells Reed about this pretty harrowing moment about how he attempted to take his life when he refused to accept his mutant nature (leading to that cool-looking, if tragic, appearance). The goddamn Purifiers show up and attack, though, leading to a do-or-die situation when their only way out is Reed activating his powers. Poor Shatter dies in the process after a badass last stand, and while Reed does activate his disintegration powers, this ends up leading to a pretty neat little twist where apparently Reed now doesn't know how to shut off the disintegrating hands.

Meanwhile, Jace Turner continues to fall deeper and deeper into the Purifier rabbit hole, trying to convince himself that the Purifiers are just a group of heroes that's a wee bit too violent for his own good. It's equal parts unintentionally hilarious and frustrating. I get that there's only so much screentime to share around so many characters, but I really felt that Turner went from a (admittedly not the best-written) conflicted character to a very flat "rah rah" antagonist.

The other real notable subplot is the whole interaction with Caitlin and Lauren. Lauren's still having dreams, their brief and somewhat-violent talk with the psychiatrist ended up with them realizing that Rebecca is pretty damn violent and killed her own family, and some talk about how it's Caitlin's responsibility to get Andy back and not Lauren's... while Lauren's just convinced that she'll have to fight Andy sooner or later.

Overall, not the most even of episodes. Some great moments from Esme, Polaris, Reed and Shatter, and I really did enjoy both Reed and Esme's storylines in the episode. The setup of the episode itself, though, and the larger plot, still remains pretty unsatisfactory.


Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Not 100% sure about this, but Creed Financial is likely a reference to Victor Creed's family. Victor Creed's more well-known as long-time X-Men villain Sabertooth, although I'm not 100% sure if it's a coincidence. 
• Lorna, Andy and Rebecca train in a super-realistic holographic room, which, of course, is an allusion to the X-Men's Danger Room. 

The Gifted S02E05 Review: Refugees and Criminals

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. 

The Gifted S02E03 Review: Jaundice

The Gifted, Season 2, Episode 3: coMplications

A bit of an interesting episode. The whole cliffhanger of the previous episode ends up being laughably mundane. Or, well, as mundane as a sick mutant baby can be. I'm not sure if it's kinda clever or just narmy, but apparently Baby Dawn is down with jaundice. Mutant jaundice. And because of comic science hullaballoo, the only way to cure said mutant-jaundice is with Papa Marcos' light powers. Okay, then. I'll buy that, and the episode actually goes into portraying Marcos' understandable anger, fear and general panic about the safety of his child pretty damn well.

And it does give the show a neat, quick way to explore how the two different mutant groups finally meeting with each other would be. The Stepford sisters basically kidnap a half-drunk Marcos, calm him down and get him to be all serious with the fact that the problem involves his child, and we get to see both Andy and Lorna sort of have to deal with possibly confronting Marcos.

Of course, Marcos ends up getting a cute moment with the baby, a brief argument with Polaris (who's dead-set on staying honestly even before the Stepford Sisters's hallucinations), but Marcos freaks out anyway and starts shooting light lasers all over the place until Reeva knocks him out.

(Reeva's weird "camera shakes all around a screaming actress's face" effect just looks dumb, by the way. Sorry.)

The question is, of course, why the Inner Circle let Marcos go at all instead of killing him (hey, Reeva was ready to murder Andy for not being honest about a phone call) or keeping him prisoner. It's a bit weird and inconsistent, especially after the show trying to shove down our throats how completely eeeeevil the members of the Hellfire Club is and how once you're inside you're never getting out.

I'm also not a big fan of the random backstory with Marcos having his own daddy issues. Really? A man who's separated from the love of his life and his newborn daughter can't be desperate to be with said daughter without needed to have some deeply-rooted racism-driven daddy issues? That felt kind of ridiculous, honestly, although at least the show does play it with tact.


The Thunderbird/Blink subplot in this episode is honestly not bad either. I've always been a bit of a fan of the Morlock community from the X-Men comics, being this group of impoverished mutants who live in the sewers, wanting to be free and live in their own community, rejecting both Magneto's desire to conquer the world and establish Homo superior as the lords of Earth as well as Xavier's attempts to create an uneasy tolerance. Honestly, I've been describing The Gifted as a stealth Morlock show. Anyway, Blink and Thunderbird end up going into the Morlock sewer society, and while we only see a bit of it and a majority of the scene is devoted to them trying to find their way out of the holographic sewer walls, we do get a neat bit of Thunderbird pouring his heart out about his lack of faith in himself, which is neat. Blink also gets to... strike a deal with Morlock leader Erg to... spy on the surface world? That doesn't sound so bad. Again, it's mostly world-building, I think, though I really wished they had done more with the Morlocks other than showing some dudes in hoodies toting guns.

The Struckers storyline... yeah, it's kind of played out at this point. Reed's disintegration powers kick in at the worst time, which is while he's driving a god damn car and holding the steering wheel. Reed and Lauren get a bit of an honesty bit, where Lauren reveals that she has been afraid of revealing her powers specifically because of an incident where Reed had promised to "protect her from them". It's simple, but at least it's unobtrusive and nowhere as loud as the previous two episodes. Maybe it's because Caitlin's left out almost entirely of the episode this time around.

Taking Caitlin's place as a loud, obnoxious character, though, is Jace Turner's subplot. I apparently blocked out a lot of his scenes while reviewing the previous episode, though, because they apparently show him trying to actively hide his obsession with hunting down mutants, coming down to a head to him screaming his head off and trying to get the police to hunt down those damn dirty mutants. Honestly, I genuinely feel like Jace as a character is really played out and he's falling dangerously close to pre-character-retool Gotham's Barbara Kean levels of irritation.

Anyway, still a flawed episode, but one that I did find pretty enjoyable.

The Gifted S02E02 Review: LoL

The Gifted, Season 2, Episode 2: unMoored

It's another slow episode of The Gifted, although there is at least the unifying theme of feeling that their respective causes aren't performing as much as characters expect it to. Marco and Caitlin continue their tirade from the previous episode about how they want to go hunt down the Hellfire Club and recover their loved ones. Esme is slightly ostracized from the other members of the Hellfire Club for showing a softer side and asking questions about wantonly killing people they spared in the previous episode. Andy's lack of confidence and missing his family ends up causing some... performance issues in the field, which in turn causes the higher-ups of the Hellfire Club to consider disposing him. Hell, even Jace (a character I straight-up forgot existed) has trouble trying to stay out of retirement due to some doubts about the whole #LightsOutDC event.

Speaking of #LightsOutDC, the people in that city is really going to be freaked out when Marcos basically did this insane light show at the end of the episode, and it's honestly a miracle that the episode's cliffhanger is little Dawn getting a fever and not every single Sentinel Service agent in the country zeroing in on where the huge mutant strobe-light effect originated from.

The episode feels kind of unfocused other than that one theme, though, jumping from one plot thread to the next. It's watcheable, for sure, but it feels more like a chapter in a season more than an acutal standalone episode of its own. We do get some Thunderbird focus, something that's been sorely lacking despite Thunderbird technically being one of the main characters of the show, as we get to see his initial recruitment by Evangeline Whedon, the X-Men's resident dragon-mutant-lawyer, who saw potential in Thunderbird and had helped him get through his addiction problem. Evangeline admits to Thunderbird that their cause is mostly doomed at this point, and also that fighting against the Inner Circle/Hellfire Club is tantamount to suicide. Evangeline refuses to help Thunderbird basically raise an army to fight the Inner Circle, and tells Thunderbird that Polaris and Andy are basically doomed -- they're either going to be loyal to the Inner Circle, or, y'know, dead.

Meanwhile, the Strucker family drama continue to be at the forefront, which is... well-acted, but at the same time I really find it hard to care. Caitlin is just one-dimensional in wanting to get her child back, which is understandable, but at the same time I really don't want the show shoving it in my face all the time. Meanwhile, Reed is angry that Caitlin is basically being a mom-in-name-only, while Lauren is angry that everyone's only caring about Andy and not about the trauma that she felt for killing fifteen people last season. Lauren clearly have some deep-seated resentment about Andy, or at least the shared destructive power that they pack when they hold hands.

Oh, and when he's emotionally compromised, Reed apparently has corrosion powers. That's news to me.

Meanwhile, on the other mutant group, we get the aforementioned Andy-can't-perform-because-he-keeps-flashing-back-to-Lauren bit, which is... m'eh? It does allow Andy a neat bit of vulnerability as he attempts to call Lauren, only to chicken out when his dad picks up the phone instead. This is observed by Fade (who's a recurring character from the previous season), who reports it to Reeva... and it's an interesting, albeit hilarious, bit where Reeva seems ready to murder Andy for his possible doubts, even preparing her mutant power, up until Andy... gets semi-honest and talks about how he is online while playing League of Legends and Lauren knows? Or some shit? That's honestly kind of a stupid line (the mutant kids can play online games?) and Reeva is a bizarre antagonist that will kill children, but not if they're honest? I dunno, it's weird.

The episode also focuses a bit on Jace and Esme... Jace's a bit weird, because I don't think the show would bother showing this extended scene of him if he's not going to be relevant, so he's clearly going to go mutant-hunting sometime down the season. Meanwhile, Esme Frost is a pretty interesting character, because so far I don't think we've had any indication that the three Stepford sisters ever had any sort of discord among them. And while she still goes through with killing the witnesses (albeit settling for a less graphic hit-by-car instead of walk-into-jet-propeller),  it's interesting to note that when the inevitable breakout happens, Andy and Polaris might have a potential ally.

Overall, though, the episode really jumps around its massive cast too much for me to really have any sort of outright positive things to say. It's not an outright bad episode, of course, but the lack of focus or tension really hurt the pacing of this series.

The Gifted S02E01 Review: House of M

The Gifted, Season 2, Episode 1: eMergence

Oh, hey, The Gifted is a thing! I nearly forgot about this series, honestly, and it's second season is... it honestly feels like more of the same. The first season stumbled through its way without being particularly great or particularly bad, sort of this middling ground in the huge glut of new superhero shows. The thing about The Gifted that doesn't really make a lot of people have any sort of excitement is that it focuses on X-Men third-stringers instead of huge fan-favourites like the Flash or the Teen Titans or Luke Cage or Daredevil. It's sort of hard to get excited for  that, and I'm a big X-Men fan myself.

And it's... it's a pretty damn strange way to open this second season. The cold open, following on the splintering of the Mutant Underground, is pretty promising, even if the sight of the Stepford Cuckoos' sponsor, Reeva (one of the new main characters played by Grace Byers) gunning down all of the other members of the Hellfire Club's Inner Circle.

And then we cut to six months after the first season where... Polaris is really pregnant and is about to give birth to her baby, and that's the entire crux of this episode. Polaris needs to give birth, and she's trapped in her own dilemma and (honestly, well-founded) paranoia that Reeva and the Stepford Sisters are going to prioritize her life instead of her baby's. She has some neat little "surrogate sister" bits with Andy Strucker, who's grown up a fair bit and has fancy white hair, but the entire plot of Polaris giving birth kind of ends up with this huge bit of her powers causing power surges in the city and making metal objects go haywire... but the birth ends up going smoothly and we can say hello to baby Dawn. Who, as far as I can tell, is an original character for this show.

Of course, I did spend the entire episode wondering if they'll explain why they didn't just get Lorna to do a C-section, which would've been a lot cheaper and they don't have to deal with the whole "mutant contraction causing mass devastation" thing.

But as adorable as a new baby is, it's nowhere as exciting as the show thinks it is, and so much of the episode taken up by it isn't the smartest writing move. It's an interesting bit to make the Hellfire Club actually sympathetic, though, when the Stepford Sisters actually give Polaris a vision of mutants ruling the world with her daughter beside her, an actually motivating vision instead of a sinister "mwa-ha-ha control-your-mind" deal.


Meanwhile, we get Sentinel raids cracking down on mutants and killing the parents of a pair of mutant girls, and the Sentinel goons chasing down mutants end up causing our good guys to show up in a rescue operation. It's... it's a neat bit, to be fair. We show off Lauren's improved control over her bubbles, and Blink and Thunderbird are a thing now apparently... but then the show just sort of grinds to a halt as it ends up returning to the same problem that plagued the first season -- in that the Strucker family just isn't as interesting as the show thinks they are. Sure, they were great as a "audience surrogate" bit in the first season as a family who's thrown into turmoil when they realize that their kids are mutants, but on the other hand, the sheer amount of screentime that Caitlin Reed takes up this episode is just... way, way too much.

It doesn't help that Caitlin is driven by a one-track mind to rescue Andy, who Lauren points out "isn't kidnapped", but left on his own will. Caitlin ends up hanging out with Eclipse, who wants to find Polaris as well... and the two go on this wacky side-quest to find quirky hacker-mutant Wire, and I just continue to roll my eyes at Caitlin's attempted "I got this" swagger. It's... it's not delivered particularly well, and she's honestly one of the less-interesting characters in an ensemble cast, so devoting so much screentime in a plot that ultimately goes nowhere is a bit egregious to me. For all their researcch and Caitlin's insistence that Lauren's dream means that Andy is close, all  of it kind of goes nowhere when Polaris giving birth causes the whole goddamn city's electrical grid to spasm.

Meanwhile, Reed's arm is just spasming with dormant mutant powers, and I'm genuinely unsure if this happened last season or if it's something new this episode. The whole Mutant Underground subplot leads to everyone driving to hunt down where Polaris is giving birth ends up cut short when Polaris's powers stopped fluctuating after baby Dawn is born, and it's... it's huh.

Overall, though, again, while it's not actively bad, the second season premiere for The Gifted ended up feeling more puzzling than anything in that this certainly isn't the sort of plot threads that I should really be highlighted in order to excite an audience. Throw in some sub-par lines of dialogue and the viewing experience isn't the most pleasant that it could have been. It's not a bad episode per-se, and certainly entertaining... but we'll see if subsequent episodes will do better.

The Gifted S01E12-13 Review: Hellfire

The Gifted, Season 1, Episode 12/13: eXtraction/X-Roads

Yep, this is the final two-parter to close out the first season of The Gifted, and it's... pretty neat. The two-episode special honestly works better like one extended final episode of a season, and it works particularly well. Again, it's still plagued by a lot of the inherent problems that The Gifted has throughout its run, 

Still, it's got a pretty neat final-confrontation plotline going on, all the while building up to the schisms running through the members of the Struckers and the main members of the Mutant Underground that's been building up throughout episodes 10 and 11. The first half of this two-parter (or, y'know, episode 12) deals with the two-pronged storyline. The Struckers have to go off and rescue Grandma Ellen from being accosted by Sentinel Services, who are desperate to get the missing chunks of Otto Von Strucker's research, while the Mutant Underground, now working together with the Frosts, are off to take down Dr. Roderick Campbell in his big attempt to get a bill passed to essentially allow more brutal weaponization of Hounds against mutantkind. 

And... and I know the actors working as the Struckers really try their best, but at the same time they're just rehashing the same arguments they've been having since episode 4, and, yes, maybe it's slightly more explosive this time around, with Andy actively attacking a pair of Sentinel goons, causing Lauren to exchange mutant blows with him... but, y'know, if someone went after my grandmother with intent to harm, I'd telekinetically blast them as well. Lauren's argument really ends up ringing hollow when The Gifted has shown us, time and time again, how horrible and extremely dickish Sentinel Services really are, and honestly, it's not really hard to root for Andy finally taking a stand. All in all, though, the Strucker storyline really feels very bland and repetitive, and I'm not sure Caitlin has a leg to stand on when she argues with Fade and Sage about whether they've "given more", considering the Struckers honestly just pick up and leave, only to come crawling back, every other episode. The show isn't really making their arguments hold up particularly well.

The Andy/Lauren is a bit more interesting, with Andy taking a more apologetic stance towards their terrorist ancestors, noting that maybe the Von Struckers aren't actually terrorists, but are freedom fighters who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty. Andy ends up idolizing the Frosts and Fenris, and while his arguments are kind of one-dimensional, actor Percy White manages to deliver them with enough gusto that a frustrated kid with reality-warping powers is definitely going to have. It's the same dick-headed cockiness that any teenager has, except Andy actually has the powers to back his bluster up. 

Meanwhile, the assault on Campbell's organization as he talks to a Senator while giving a speech to a lot of rich people ends up being the stage for the far more interesting Mutant Underground storyline. And it's essentially whether the Underground members want to work with the Frosts. The Frosts are happy to play ball with not torturing and killing a bigoted jackass when asked to, but at the same time, their presence (and their inexplicable inaction throughout all this) causes the Underground members to go through a bit of a crisis. Marcos is the most opposed about working with the Frosts, while Blink and Thunderbird don't like them, but accept the fact that they needed allies. Polaris, meanwhile, is the most receptive. She puts up this huge front about telling the Frosts to fuck off, but it's clear that all the references to Magneto (who they also never actually say out loud) causes Polaris to... reject her father vehemently, but the seeds of doubt are kind of planted.

Polaris is perhaps the most fascinating of these characters. While Marcos is absolutely flat and the pair of Blink and Thunderbird go through a bland "I'm mad not because you did a bad thing, but because you lied" faux-conflict, Polaris's conflict of ethics and ideals feel far more genuine, making her eventual decisions in episode 13 far, far more relatable and understandable. We get to see a flashback of what appears to be a member of the X-Men called Evangeline (some lady with the ability to turn her hand into a devil hand?) telling Polaris that she's the successor of the X-Men, playing into the whole "X-Men Chose Us" concept of the Mutant Underground in a more genuine way. 

And, of course, the Campbell mission goes awry. No one is really at fault, because Campbell holds a bunch of kids hostage, and no one present but the Frosts is going to shoot through children to get to Campbell, causing Campbell and the senator to run off and try to escape on a plane. All the while, Jace Turner, reduced to an uninteresting flat Mutie-Hating character, continues on his one-man pursuit to destroy the Mutant Underground with his Hounds, setting up the big fight scene. 

And, well, it's an interesting fight scene that theoretically builds up on everything we've seen before. We see Turner face off against the mutants, fully consumed by hatred. We see the Hounds used against their fellow mutantkind. We see Polaris's little class of children help Reed, Andy and Lauren fight off the Sentinel goons. We get to even have minor characters Shatter and Pedro show off their powers (also some random huge mutant with super-strength that we've never seen before). It's all well and good, and has lots of tension as the mutants exchange powers and shit. Of course, Andy and Lauren end up using their hands-joined power-up to unleash devastation, covering their friends' escape, blowing up the mansion and killing a couple of Hounds.

And... they get off and rejoin their buddies off-screen. Okay, after a pretty badass power display, that handwave felt really dumb. Still, the action sequence was really good, with lots of great small moments (Reed's pep talk to the other kids, Fade and Caitlin's respect for each other, Andy and Lauren putting their differences aside for the moment) so I'll let that slide. 

Again, Polaris and the Frosts still the lynchpin of what makes this episode so successful. While the Frosts are being prissy about missing the chance to kill Campbell, Polaris decides to take matters into her own hands. Partly manipulated by the Frosts and partly going through her own crisis of ethics -- especially confronted with the fact that there's so, so many racist fuckers ready to kill her and her people without a second thought, and Frost's constant repetitions of the "better us than them" mantra, Polaris ends up being so scared about bringing her child into a world with so much mutant hate.

She goes off to face off against the plane with Roderick Campbell in it, and while Blink, Eclipse and Thunderbird show up, Polaris wards them off with a chainlink fence, telling them that it's not Frost that's making her do this. It's her own will, and the scene of her ripping apart the plane is amazingly emotional. Again, the scene is made into a crossing-the-moral-horizon event not because she kills Campbell and Senator Douchehole -- because no sane person will shed a tear for them -- but because Polaris ends up killing a plane full of aides and whatnot in the process. 

And thus leads to the final scene, a very powerful scene where the Frosts's main plan is revealed. Using Polaris as a new leadership figure, they show up in the Underground's new meeting ground, stating their plan to join and rebuild the Hellfire Club -- using ideals that's far more akin to the pragmatic Brotherhood as opposed to the pacifistic X-Men. It's a very powerful scene, with some of the minor characters like Fade and Sage joining the New Hellfire Club... and, of course, Andy. The Struckers have been inconsistent and problematic all season long, but Andy's frustration and descent into darkness is done particularly well, and none of the parents' "listen to us!" arguments work anymore. The final episode ends up with Andy and Polaris going off with the New Hellfire Club. Oh, and Jace Turner quits Sentinel Services, but I'd be lying if I said I cared about Turner at this point.

Overall, the ending two-parter is definitely exciting, especially in any scene involving Polaris and the Frost sisters. The action sequences here, particularly the last stand in the Undergrounds' base, as well as the attempted kidnapping of Campbell, and especially the emotional plane-wrecking sequence, are all done well. Of course, The Gifted has some really fundamental tone and writing problems that rear their ugly heads even now in the final episode, so it falls short from being great, but it's still definitely a very enjoyable finale with a far more solid emotional core in Polaris's story than I expected. Overall, the show has been rocky, but I'd argue that it really ended sticking the landing, and I'm definitely somewhat excited for the second season. Just... just maybe be less repetitive in the second season, yeah? 

The Gifted S01E11 Review: Cuckoo Clock

The Gifted, Season 1, Episode 11: 3 X 1

I completely forgot about Gifted for a while, but apparently the first season's ended, and that there's some really good stuff about it. And with only three episodes left (and two of them happening in a two-parter season finale), there's really not much left for the Gifted to do other than, y'know, to set up the finale. And that's really what "3 X 1" aims to do. The titular Three-in-One is the Frost Sisters, otherwise known as the Stepford Cuckoos in the comic books, a trio of telepathic mutants that is revealed in this episode to work for longtime X-Men antagonist, the Hellfire Club. And the Frost Sisters play the part of the tempting devil in this episode, egging the Mutant Underground to take the fight to Sentinel Services. 

The thing is... a good chunk of this episode is just stalling. We get Marcos and Polaris asking each other to trust the other. We get Blink and Thunderbird debating about trust. We got Caitlin arguing with background character Fade about the Struckers's trustworthiness. We got Reed arguing with Andy, and later on Lauren arguing with Andy, who's growing increasingly jaded with the fact that the Mutant Underground spends most of their time running away from the humans, going down the slippery slope of "well maybe they should fear us" mentality. And the fact that the Struckers decide to run away again, only to come crawling back to the Mutant Underground at the end of the episode? That's not particularly flattering, and no wonder there's implied trust issues between the Struckers and the non-main-cast members of the Underground. Reed and Catelyn has been so wiffly-waffly about sticking around with the mutants that it's genuinely insulting about their "we've given so much to be one of you!" speeches.

And that's the inherent problem with the Gifted as a show, really. When all of these conversations were fresh and the characters were relative unknowns, they were interesting. Now? Now they're just repetitive and tiresome, and this comes from someone who haven't seen an episode of the Gifted in months. And I guess that's why the Frost Sisters brighten up every scene they set foot in. I mean, besides the fact that they're quite pleasant lookers and also have great acting chops that sell the creepy-triplets deal. They're the new monkey wrench thrown into the mix, trying to recruit the Mutant Underground to join their Hellfire Club faction, while at the same time manipulating events to lead into those very same crises that the Underground finds themselves in. 

Of course, everyone is pissed off about the Frost Sisters's mass-murder of the Sentinel Services minions, which is the deal-breaker to everyone in the Underground except Andy and Polaris, both of whom get a visit from one of the Frosts. We get some neat Magneto allusions, with the Frost Sister noting that Polaris's biological father was a 'King' in the Hellfire Club. 

And this episode starts off with the dual funerals of Sonya and Ed Weeks, to remind us of the fallen ones... something that really doesn't hit as hard as it should since poor Ed Weeks is barely a character, whereas we spend so much time with Sonya. Plus, y'know, most of the members of the Sentinel Services group are assholes that beat kids and kidnap them, with the previously-ambivalent Jace Turner having turned into a "yeah kill all mutants mode", there really isn't much goodwill left towards Sentinel Services. So as a member of the audience, I honestly really see nothing wrong with the mutants taking a stand against the oppressors. Maybe not into mass-murder mode, but it's definitely going to be far more cathartic when the oppressed mutants (and Gifted really does oppression very well) stand up properly against the oppressors. Especially when the two members of Sentinel Services, Dr. Campbell and Jace Turner, are all comparing the mind-raping Hound Program into something 'innovative' like the atomic bomb. 

The final act of the episode ends up being an action scene, with the Struckers arriving and meeting Wes at some secondary Underground outpost, but the Hounds arrive, and apparently they have this brand-new "lock two hands together to increase their powers" deal with their brainwashed Hounds, causing mass destruction on the Underground. Team Blink shows up to bail out the Struckers and Wes, but everyone else gets arrested. And, y'know, again, any goodwill and any argument that the very idealistic Marcos has ends up getting really, really destroyed, because everyone else ends up deciding that working with the Frost Sisters, who are actively trying to help them multiple times, is probably a good idea.

Overall, "3X1" is a far, far superior episode compared to previous episodes of the Gifted, but it's not quite that successful in breaking from the bad habits that earlier Gifted episodes had. The Frost Sisters inject a huge amount of tension and obvious eventual side-selection in the future, but at the same time the show really gives its hand a bit too soon for the eventual Marcos/Lorna and Lauren/Andy conflicts, as well as reducing the previously somewhat-complex Jace turner to a bland mutie-hating bastard. Overall, The Gifted still has potential and more than a fair bit of entertainment value... but at the same time, when the X-Men IP transfers to Disney-Marvel, I wouldn't be surprised if the Gifted doesn't get a second season. 

The Gifted S01E10 Review: Stepford Triplets

The Gifted, Season 1, Episode 10: eXploited

This episode of the Gifted is actually a pretty good one. I mean, Gifted has always been a solid series when it actually deals with mutants and not, y'know, random cartels, and while its future might be somewhat murky due to Disney purchasing Fox, I really wish that we at least get a conclusion to the first season. Perhaps the only thing that makes Gifted somewhat less exciting is that it doesn't feature any big superhero names beyond maybe Polaris, and a lot of what it does is just, well, generic superhero stuff. It's not doing anything weird with its format the way that, say, Legion or Runaways do, being a trippy psychedelical story in the former's case and a teen drama meeting a superhero cult story in the latter.

But the Gifted is some really solid superhero storytelling. And despite some rather iffy patches, I found myself really rooting for these characters who, other thank Blink and Polaris, aren't characters I've even heard about. Last episode, we have four members of our cast -- Lauren, Andy, Blink and Dreamer -- captured by Sentinel Services. And as Jace Turner reminds us in her interrogation with an extremely apologetic Dreamer, he's still nursing a grudge over the whole 'you made me think my baby girl is alive, you sick fuck' thing. And as such, Turner hands over all the mutant prisoners to Roderick Campbell, the crazy scientist who's totally making biological weapons and is the psychotic mind behind the 'Hound' program. 

The majority of the cast -- Eclipse, Polaris, Thunderbird, Reed and Caitlin -- argue about just what they should do... and I really think that Reed and Caitlin's idea of going to the authorities is the stupidest thing of any magnitude they could've think up of. But in between all this arguing, we have the wild card -- Esme the telepath -- in it all. It's pretty surprising how she started off as this random telepath that is conveniently nearby two episodes ago. She even gets her own perhaps-unnecessary flashback where she infiltrates an anti-mutant senator's campaign, which ended disastrously and in her (unseen) 'family' being captured.

And, well, Esme is essentially pulling the strings of everyone involved to get things in her way. I'm not sure just how she managed to predict just what Jace Turner is going to do, but she sends Reed and Caitlin off to talk to Turner, and their very heartfelt talk to Turner... doesn't actually change Turner's mind because Turner is an angry dick, but his wife? When she hears of all the talk about torture, about how the Strucker kids awaits a fate-worse-than-death(tm) and how Turner's actions in the name of law is easily equitable to terrorism... her question "what are you doing in the name of our daughter?" hits hard for Turner. This causes him to demand a transfer of the prisoners back into Sentinel Services' jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, Esme also convinces the mutant leaders Thunderbird, Polaris and Eclipse to hit the convoy of prisoners. And it's a very interesting take on Esme as a voice that gets things done -- she stays in a corner, behind doors, listening and searching people's brains for information, then comes in and plays on their emotions to get things done. And honestly? While the episode initially portrays her as a shifty, 'where is her true allegiance at' wild card, it turns out that her manipulation is for the best.

Because, well, Roderick Campbell is a crazy, evil, cold-hearted son of a bitch and he demands that Lauren and Andy use their powers while locking them in an Adamantium-layered chamber. And while the Canadian Adamantium reference made me go yay... really? You have a room's worth of Adamantium and you use it to... make a testing chamber? Lauren and Andy refuse to kowtow to Campbell, who proceeds to execute Dreamer in front of the helpless Blink. And by god, that was a pretty traumatic and sudden death. Dreamer's easily one of the less important mutants, but she's spent a fair bit in the past few episodes becoming increasingly important, and that was an effective way for the writers to justify turning Lauren and Andy back into scared kids. They hold hands, and they unleash the power of twin mutants and blow up the room... but apparently that's not enough to kill Campbell or rip off their collars.

And just as Turner is about to perhaps be moved towards a more pro-mutant standpoint... Esme knocks out Eclipse and unleashes the full force of mutant powers on Sentinel Services, and essentially got everyone in that courtyard other than Turner (who is spared by knocking his head and being unconscious for a brief moment) to kill themselves, shoot themselves, grenade their own car... and unlock all the mutant collars. She manages to single-handedly rescue the twins and Blink by manipulating events and killing a fuckton of people in easily one of the most violent (if cathartic) sequences of the series, and at the end we get the wham shot that the 'family' she's been talking about is her two twin sisters, and together their powers are presumably stronger (google tells me their comic-book counterpart is called the 'Stepford Cuckoos', and, well, that's a pretty appropriate name). I definitely really would've liked if Esme has been developed more than two episodes, but it's honestly decently done. 

And, well, after a whole episode of seeing mutants being oppressed by the psychotic Campbell, seeing Sonya get murdered, and seeing the poor kids be traumatized and forced to do things they clearly don't want to do... and even the more sympathetic Turner turning a blind eye at the horrors that the Hound program and the mutant holding facilities are doing, it's honestly hard to say that I don't root for Esme as she delivers some justice to the people who oppress the mutants... it's just that it's the wrong people. 

It's a very enjoyable episode, don't get me wrong -- Esme was great and the Campbell stuff was chilling, and Turner's character development was decently done. I just really wish that the Polaris and the Strucker parents' motivations and competence were better handled, and that Esme was foreshadowed earlier... but it still made for a decently entertaining episode of the Gifted. I just, y'know, wished Polaris and Thunderbird and the rest of the main Mutant Underground dudes actually did more than just sulk around and occasionally remind us of their powers.