X-Men:The Gifted Discussion Thread
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- Start date
Yeah man they may have to kill her
And WHO is going to face her?
Lorna only gonna kill her if she attacks the baby...
that dumbass bleach blonde son is in love with her
and she MAY be one of the MOST powerful moments on the show
I think its off her ANOTHER 2 weeks?
I actually LIKE this show but the buzz is nonexistent.
Yeah. The show is decent. First season was better but now I'm getting that low budget feel. Still watching cause I can't stomach the CW shows
gone till New Year's Day at new time 9 ET
you gotta at least watch the Elseworlds Crossover
And she is dead
RIP....
ep 9 ....
crazy inside out bitch ....lol..kinda felt bad 4 her tho...
great ep....we need more of the triplets...lil slim white ho got a lil ass at certain angles....
chick from empire killing that role....she made for roles like this ....
bad as shit but i bet u her sex is like this....
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Man its been cats plotting on her since she was on Gotham seducing lil Bruce Wayne and that had to have been like 2 years ago. I think MK from Into The Badlands is the lucky 1 fucking her in real life
word ...she turned 18 over the summer is it ok now...?...
Good episode for the brother going FULL VILLAIN now...
great acting.
I guess they wanted to show the OG crew together for one last time...
cause it apparently gonna heat up.
STILL surprised this show is so under the radar.
Turner bout to go full villain now too with the way he was blasting John with that Shotty point blank range
Oh I missed spoke I WAS talking about TURNER!!!
He has been GREAT in the role...loved the arc of his character.
great effects today too.
the brother BEEN on that sh*t for a minute, when I saw the dyed hair I KNEW he was gonna go full psycho.
the show is FAR from perfect...
but I think they got some REAL solid pieces to work with.
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Evil Cory Booker has gone straight villain now. He pumped Thunderbird straight full of lead. After that raid, he's gonna be out for blood.
Same goes for Andy. He has no fucls to give after dude tried to kill his sister. Speaking of her, am I a dirty old man for wanting to raw her? Lol
I liked seeing Marcos and Lorna team up again. She looks like she has a nice lil set of hips on her. I wonder what the booty looks like.
I wish they would have kept Rebecca on longer.
Same goes for Andy. He has no fucls to give after dude tried to kill his sister. Speaking of her, am I a dirty old man for wanting to raw her? Lol
I liked seeing Marcos and Lorna team up again. She looks like she has a nice lil set of hips on her. I wonder what the booty looks like.
I wish they would have kept Rebecca on longer.
I'm done with these shows until someone explains why I should bother...
Like Gotham . It took me years to give it a chance, and now I like it, but next season looks terrible
Like Gotham . It took me years to give it a chance, and now I like it, but next season looks terrible
Yes season 2. Runaways is better, IMO. This is worth watching, but I wouldn't call it must-see.
Cool, cool...
I try to avoid Fox/ FXX shows unless they are really good....
I'll stream this from an app guilt free then
Its the LAST one you gotta watch it!
Grown men been wanting to raw Natalie Alyn Lind since she was Silver St. Cloud on Gotham like 2-3 yrs ago. Lorna is sexy to me as pale as she is.
Dope ep....like how they keep hinting that Magneto is Lorna`s biological dad...& introduced the headband...
Andy & Lauren working together was done well...like they been fighting together 4 yrs....the possibilities....
Jace blacked out....lol
Reed need to stop playing n train to master his power ...he`s gonna b one of the more powerful mutant when he does...
who`s gonna wanna fuck with that family...
....
shit is way better than runaways to me ...y`all trippin...runaways is ok but its too kiddie ...i fuck with it but too kiddie
n stop forcing the lez shit on little girls...r they even 18 on the show...?...smh
Andy & Lauren working together was done well...like they been fighting together 4 yrs....the possibilities....
Jace blacked out....lol
Reed need to stop playing n train to master his power ...he`s gonna b one of the more powerful mutant when he does...
who`s gonna wanna fuck with that family...
....shit is way better than runaways to me ...y`all trippin...runaways is ok but its too kiddie ...i fuck with it but too kiddie
n stop forcing the lez shit on little girls...r they even 18 on the show...?...smh
Dope ep....like how they keep hinting that Magneto is Lorna`s biological dad...& introduced the headband...
Andy & Lauren working together was done well...like they been fighting together 4 yrs....the possibilities....
Jace blacked out....lol
Reed need to stop playing n train to master his power ...he`s gonna b one of the more powerful mutant when he does...
who`s gonna wanna fuck with that family...
shit is way better than runaways to me ...y`all trippin...runaways is ok but its too kiddie ...i fuck with it but too kiddie
n stop forcing the lez shit on little girls...r they even 18 on the show...?...smh
^^^^
Real talk...
that is the one of the BEST most organic and realistic progression to a true "justified" villains in comic book TV.
I still can't believe the same guy who did burn notice is running this show
Dope ep....like how they keep hinting that Magneto is Lorna`s biological dad...& introduced the headband...
Andy & Lauren working together was done well...like they been fighting together 4 yrs....the possibilities....
Jace blacked out....lol
Reed need to stop playing n train to master his power ...he`s gonna b one of the more powerful mutant when he does...
who`s gonna wanna fuck with that family...
shit is way better than runaways to me ...y`all trippin...runaways is ok but its too kiddie ...i fuck with it but too kiddie
n stop forcing the lez shit on little girls...r they even 18 on the show...?...smh
apparently the internet disagrees with us...
Despite a cool mutant rescue mission, The Gifted's midseason premiere looks a lot like its first season
Jesse Hassenger
Yesterday 10:15pm
Filed to: THE GIFTED
25Save
Photo: Fox
THE GIFTEDSEASON 2
C+
"eneMy of My eneMy"
SEASON
2
EPISODE
10
Since we last left the quarreling semi-emo mutants of Fox’s X-Men offshoot The Gifted, the show’s ensemble and storylines have become more fractured than ever. In any given episode, we’re following the Strucker family (minus wayward son Andy); at least two different factions within the Inner Circle (plus or minus Andy); Blink and Thunderbird working for the Underground with optional Eclipse add-on; and Jace Turner and his dalliances with the Purifiers, the anti-mutant hate group.
Also, Polaris now has a bitchin’ new Magneto headband.
All of these different groups, sub-group factions, uneasy alliances, and Evil Mutant fashion choices have made the show’s storylines more manageable, even if it sometimes reduces them to a series of one-on-one or one-on-two arguments (and even those are more likely to arrive in shorter bursts rather than tedious episode-defining debates). The usual number of subplots also makes an episode like tonight’s midseason premiere, “eneMy of My eneMy,” feel significant simply for actually tying the story threads together more tightly than usual; pretty much all of the action serves one broader plot. At the end of the last episode, Thunderbird was captured by Jace and the Purifiers, so now our Underground heroes (mainly Eclipse and Blink) go to their ex-comrades in the Inner Circle (Polaris and Andy Strucker) to propose a brief alliance and rescue mission. And for some reason, the rest of the Strucker family comes along too.
In that semi-inexplicable move and plenty of others, “eneMy” plays like a Season 1 episode of The Gifted. The show hasn’t exactly gone through the kind of radical transformation that makes its second season worlds apart from its first, but it is notable that “eneMy” momentarily drops Reeva, the Cuckoos, and the Morlocks to re-focus on a bunch of characters who were there from the beginning. Even Baby Dawn has been sidelined (presumably for the rest of the season if not longer). This back-to-basics approach is flagged immediately by the episode’s flashback to Polaris, Eclipse, and Thunderbird back in the early days of the Underground. Because this has become The Gifted’s modus operandi, the scene is both wonderfully concise (does any other show on TV adhere to the principles of a proper cold open this well?) and pretty clunky. The scene can’t just inform the characters’ psychology or actions in the episode, but directly affect it in an overly literal way, as the three make a promise that must be referred to, once Thunderbird is in trouble and the Underground folks aren’t certain about reaching out to Polaris for help.
Blink and Eclipse have to do most of the clunking, as they volley back and forth with rephrases of two of the least interesting internal-struggle storylines on modern television: “you blame yourself, don’t you?” and “can we trust her?” The Struckers, meanwhile, have their own reprise to sing: another variation on can-Andy-be-saved-from-extremism bickering. The parents’ relief and happiness as seeing Andy again gives way to horror when, during the rescue mission, he has to be stopped from murdering a disarmed Purifier who took a shot at his sister—sort of a whiplash-y scene, given that we just recently saw Andy (accidentally) kill his girlfriend Rebecca to stop her from exacting the kind of revenge he really wants to commit here. Lauren, who has been seething during the entire reunion, is furious over the trangression, and her parents are shaken. The Strucker parent stuff is still deeply dull and unimaginative, but at least Andy and Lauren are a little more interesting when they’re directly at odds, whether in real life or the occasional conversations they have in each other’s dreams (“at least he’s reaching out,” Reed says about their superpowered dreamchats that end in violence, a dorkily quasi-optimistic dad to the end).
All of this makes “eneMy” an odd outing for a midseason premiere. For all of its fast-paced and unified plotting, this is one of the weaker episodes of the 10 we’ve seen so far, slightly past the halfway mark of this 16-episode run. In general, the show hasn’t been retreading this Season One ground too heavily as it sprints through Season Two. The Inner Circle, which started off as a poor man’s Hellfire Club Redux, now has some of the most interesting character conflicts—Polaris and her protective instincts for baby Dawn, Esme’s more pronounced empathy versus other Cuckoos, Reeva’s idealism swirled in with her sneakiness—and least muddled set-piece missions (even if their heists tend to be smash-and-grab operations heavier on power-strutting than actual subterfuge). In this company, even Andy Strucker has become moderately more tolerable, especially compared to his departed love Rebecca. Anjelica Bette Fellini played Rebecca’s stunted immaturity well, but she had a gee-whiz energy that never quite squared with either side of her character’s upbringing, as a teenage rebel or a long-term torture victim.
Speaking of torture: Jace Turner! Both a practitioner of it, and a fine example of it, too. Turner, spurned by his former employers at Sentinel Services and still consumed with a desire for righteous vengeance, has gone full-on hate group. The Purifiers themselves make a fine bunch of villains, replete with a sinister cable news yelling-head played by Peter Gallagher in such a clear swipe at The Gifted’s corporate “news” sibling (soon to be separated by new adoptive parent Disney) that the obviousness becomes part of the fun. It’s a fine example of the show pivoting to give the social metaphors of the X-Men more contemporary juice—and if the particulars of those metaphors aren’t particularly smart of insightful, at the very least they’ve given the show a reliable batch of bad guys as the Inner Circle becomes more shaded.
I wonder, though, if quickly making Jace Turner the face of this group (both to the show’s audience, where he’s the character we know best, and even, weirdly, in the world of the show, where he seemed to make a leap to keynote speaker pretty quickly in recent episodes) has been a mistake. Turner could serve as a fascinating portrait of a descent into fanaticism, but he comes off like such a goddamned idiot; his interrogation of John/Thunderbird in “eneMy” is thunderously stupid, especially considering that he’s supposed to be the ex-law-enforcement guy amidst a group of yokels and dipshits. His major breakthrough: What if twomutant groups? (Thunderbird tells him about the Inner Circle relatively quickly, and it still takes Jace a while to puzzle through the significance of this revelation.) If Turner was convinced that all mutants must belong to the same resistance group forever, why was he even bothering to dig for details about an attack that already happened? Why wasn’t he trying to use Thunderbird to, you know, get intel on the Underground’s other members? (Maybe because he also knows who most of those people are, too.)
Look, tonally speaking, The Gifted is basically a serious show, and I think the people making it want to try to do right by both Jace Turner as a haunted, screwed up character and the menace of contemporary hate groups as a chilling idea. But like the X-Men feature films, The Giftedworks best when it can work in some pulpiness and some levity alongside its willingness to take the material seriousness, something that’s all the more important when the material is, in general, not as good as most of the X-Men feature films.
A lot of Season Two has been fulfilling this promise. The show has become more stylized, with more low-angle and canted-angle shots, giving it a slightly cartoony energy, especially in the episodes directed by Michael Goi (and other directors on the show seem to be taking some cues from his more eye-catching compositions). “eneMy” doesn’t adapt much of that, beyond the visual consistency of having the Purifiers’ environment always look as color-drained and brownish as possible, basically like a late-period Clint Eastwood movie. What it does have is a semi-swoony Polaris/Eclipse kiss, which turns out to be a real necessity in an episode where even Blink, usually the most plainspoken and wisecracky of the core crew, is stifled with grief and worry. At its best, The Gifted has become an energetic, sometimes dopey, sometimes soapy serial—a show that’s rarely great but often fun. “eneMy” works pretty hard to deny its recent heritage.
Stray observations:
Jesse Hassenger
Yesterday 10:15pm
Filed to: THE GIFTED
25Save
Photo: Fox
THE GIFTEDSEASON 2
C+
"eneMy of My eneMy"
SEASON
2
EPISODE
10
Since we last left the quarreling semi-emo mutants of Fox’s X-Men offshoot The Gifted, the show’s ensemble and storylines have become more fractured than ever. In any given episode, we’re following the Strucker family (minus wayward son Andy); at least two different factions within the Inner Circle (plus or minus Andy); Blink and Thunderbird working for the Underground with optional Eclipse add-on; and Jace Turner and his dalliances with the Purifiers, the anti-mutant hate group.
Also, Polaris now has a bitchin’ new Magneto headband.
All of these different groups, sub-group factions, uneasy alliances, and Evil Mutant fashion choices have made the show’s storylines more manageable, even if it sometimes reduces them to a series of one-on-one or one-on-two arguments (and even those are more likely to arrive in shorter bursts rather than tedious episode-defining debates). The usual number of subplots also makes an episode like tonight’s midseason premiere, “eneMy of My eneMy,” feel significant simply for actually tying the story threads together more tightly than usual; pretty much all of the action serves one broader plot. At the end of the last episode, Thunderbird was captured by Jace and the Purifiers, so now our Underground heroes (mainly Eclipse and Blink) go to their ex-comrades in the Inner Circle (Polaris and Andy Strucker) to propose a brief alliance and rescue mission. And for some reason, the rest of the Strucker family comes along too.
In that semi-inexplicable move and plenty of others, “eneMy” plays like a Season 1 episode of The Gifted. The show hasn’t exactly gone through the kind of radical transformation that makes its second season worlds apart from its first, but it is notable that “eneMy” momentarily drops Reeva, the Cuckoos, and the Morlocks to re-focus on a bunch of characters who were there from the beginning. Even Baby Dawn has been sidelined (presumably for the rest of the season if not longer). This back-to-basics approach is flagged immediately by the episode’s flashback to Polaris, Eclipse, and Thunderbird back in the early days of the Underground. Because this has become The Gifted’s modus operandi, the scene is both wonderfully concise (does any other show on TV adhere to the principles of a proper cold open this well?) and pretty clunky. The scene can’t just inform the characters’ psychology or actions in the episode, but directly affect it in an overly literal way, as the three make a promise that must be referred to, once Thunderbird is in trouble and the Underground folks aren’t certain about reaching out to Polaris for help.
Blink and Eclipse have to do most of the clunking, as they volley back and forth with rephrases of two of the least interesting internal-struggle storylines on modern television: “you blame yourself, don’t you?” and “can we trust her?” The Struckers, meanwhile, have their own reprise to sing: another variation on can-Andy-be-saved-from-extremism bickering. The parents’ relief and happiness as seeing Andy again gives way to horror when, during the rescue mission, he has to be stopped from murdering a disarmed Purifier who took a shot at his sister—sort of a whiplash-y scene, given that we just recently saw Andy (accidentally) kill his girlfriend Rebecca to stop her from exacting the kind of revenge he really wants to commit here. Lauren, who has been seething during the entire reunion, is furious over the trangression, and her parents are shaken. The Strucker parent stuff is still deeply dull and unimaginative, but at least Andy and Lauren are a little more interesting when they’re directly at odds, whether in real life or the occasional conversations they have in each other’s dreams (“at least he’s reaching out,” Reed says about their superpowered dreamchats that end in violence, a dorkily quasi-optimistic dad to the end).
All of this makes “eneMy” an odd outing for a midseason premiere. For all of its fast-paced and unified plotting, this is one of the weaker episodes of the 10 we’ve seen so far, slightly past the halfway mark of this 16-episode run. In general, the show hasn’t been retreading this Season One ground too heavily as it sprints through Season Two. The Inner Circle, which started off as a poor man’s Hellfire Club Redux, now has some of the most interesting character conflicts—Polaris and her protective instincts for baby Dawn, Esme’s more pronounced empathy versus other Cuckoos, Reeva’s idealism swirled in with her sneakiness—and least muddled set-piece missions (even if their heists tend to be smash-and-grab operations heavier on power-strutting than actual subterfuge). In this company, even Andy Strucker has become moderately more tolerable, especially compared to his departed love Rebecca. Anjelica Bette Fellini played Rebecca’s stunted immaturity well, but she had a gee-whiz energy that never quite squared with either side of her character’s upbringing, as a teenage rebel or a long-term torture victim.
Speaking of torture: Jace Turner! Both a practitioner of it, and a fine example of it, too. Turner, spurned by his former employers at Sentinel Services and still consumed with a desire for righteous vengeance, has gone full-on hate group. The Purifiers themselves make a fine bunch of villains, replete with a sinister cable news yelling-head played by Peter Gallagher in such a clear swipe at The Gifted’s corporate “news” sibling (soon to be separated by new adoptive parent Disney) that the obviousness becomes part of the fun. It’s a fine example of the show pivoting to give the social metaphors of the X-Men more contemporary juice—and if the particulars of those metaphors aren’t particularly smart of insightful, at the very least they’ve given the show a reliable batch of bad guys as the Inner Circle becomes more shaded.
I wonder, though, if quickly making Jace Turner the face of this group (both to the show’s audience, where he’s the character we know best, and even, weirdly, in the world of the show, where he seemed to make a leap to keynote speaker pretty quickly in recent episodes) has been a mistake. Turner could serve as a fascinating portrait of a descent into fanaticism, but he comes off like such a goddamned idiot; his interrogation of John/Thunderbird in “eneMy” is thunderously stupid, especially considering that he’s supposed to be the ex-law-enforcement guy amidst a group of yokels and dipshits. His major breakthrough: What if twomutant groups? (Thunderbird tells him about the Inner Circle relatively quickly, and it still takes Jace a while to puzzle through the significance of this revelation.) If Turner was convinced that all mutants must belong to the same resistance group forever, why was he even bothering to dig for details about an attack that already happened? Why wasn’t he trying to use Thunderbird to, you know, get intel on the Underground’s other members? (Maybe because he also knows who most of those people are, too.)
Look, tonally speaking, The Gifted is basically a serious show, and I think the people making it want to try to do right by both Jace Turner as a haunted, screwed up character and the menace of contemporary hate groups as a chilling idea. But like the X-Men feature films, The Giftedworks best when it can work in some pulpiness and some levity alongside its willingness to take the material seriousness, something that’s all the more important when the material is, in general, not as good as most of the X-Men feature films.
A lot of Season Two has been fulfilling this promise. The show has become more stylized, with more low-angle and canted-angle shots, giving it a slightly cartoony energy, especially in the episodes directed by Michael Goi (and other directors on the show seem to be taking some cues from his more eye-catching compositions). “eneMy” doesn’t adapt much of that, beyond the visual consistency of having the Purifiers’ environment always look as color-drained and brownish as possible, basically like a late-period Clint Eastwood movie. What it does have is a semi-swoony Polaris/Eclipse kiss, which turns out to be a real necessity in an episode where even Blink, usually the most plainspoken and wisecracky of the core crew, is stifled with grief and worry. At its best, The Gifted has become an energetic, sometimes dopey, sometimes soapy serial—a show that’s rarely great but often fun. “eneMy” works pretty hard to deny its recent heritage.
Stray observations:
- Hi, welcome back, however briefly, to some Gifted coverage here at The A.V. Club! I’m just dropping in on the show for a mid-season check-in, and I hope to be back for the finale in six to eight weeks.
- First order of business: Guys, what the hell happened to the pre-break story turn where the Inner Circle destroyed the functionality of all anti-powers collars worn by all mutants everywhere? A server that can be destroyed and will shut off a valuable mechanical tool used all around the country is a baldly ridiculous idea (even if I love how it proves my theory that The Phantom Menace has been much more influential on current entertainment than anyone will admit!) but the payoff, where imprisoned mutants everywhere realized their powers were no longer inhibited, seemed like it, I don’t know, might be a huge topic of discussion in the world at large, with the mass breakouts and riots and such. Even though this episode’s purview was intentionally limited, it felt like a major thread to drop entirely. Obviously they’ll pick it up again later, but it’s just one more decision that makes this one an odd point to re-enter the series.
- Although I generally have enjoyed the show’s expanded style, there’s one tic I wish they’d ease off of: It seems like every week, more and more superpower flexes feature angry, contorted screams, as if everyone is Reeva, whose power still looks the stupidest. I feel a deep swell of pity every time poor Grace Byers has to suffer through one of those cheesy music-video shots.
- Looks like we’re back to the Strucker drama that had lessened (or at least gotten easier for me to ignore) for next week. While I enjoy pissed-off Lauren, and try not to speak in memes, the family’s conclusion that the only way to get Andy back is to destroy the Inner Circle gets a big ol’ “this ain’t it, chief” from me. How in the world does it follow that if Andy is alienated from his family’s values, destroying other people who share his values will send him back to them?
- Also, not to be a jerk about it, but why do they want Andy back?
- Seriously, love the Magneto headband.
Dope ep....like how they keep hinting that Magneto is Lorna`s biological dad...& introduced the headband...
Andy & Lauren working together was done well...like they been fighting together 4 yrs....the possibilities....
Jace blacked out....lol
Reed need to stop playing n train to master his power ...he`s gonna b one of the more powerful mutant when he does...
who`s gonna wanna fuck with that family...
shit is way better than runaways to me ...y`all trippin...runaways is ok but its too kiddie ...i fuck with it but too kiddie
n stop forcing the lez shit on little girls...r they even 18 on the show...?...smh
Where Fox's The Gifted Went Horribly Wrong (and How It Can Still Be Fixed)
2
WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for the second season of Fox's The Gifted.
Fox's The Gifted kicks off the new year on Tuesday with a midseason premiere that picks up with Washington, D.C., in chaos, mutants nationwide freed from incarceration, the Inner Circle moving on to the next phase of Reeva's bewildering plan, and the Struckers manufacturing some new family drama (it's Lauren's turn). It's a perfect meta-commentary on the state of the once-promising X-Men television spinoff, which went completely off the rails somewhere along the way.
Well, that's not entirely true, as we can pinpoint precisely where it all went so wrong: the Season 1 finale, which upended the status quo with little apparent idea of what would take its place. With the Mutant Underground's Atlanta headquarters in ruins, and Lorna Dane and Andy Strucker (plus some other characters that nobody cares about) turning their backs on friends and family, and joining the Frost sisters in the Inner Circle, we were left to expect a second season packed with emotion. However, what perhaps no one fully realized is that, when you remove Lorna, Andy and the Stepford Cuckoos from the Mutant Underground, what's left is ... all of the blandest elements.
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RELATED: Frost Sisters' Tragic Backstory On The Gifted Takes Cues From the X-Men Comics
In fairness, The Gifted's debut season had the benefit of newness: There was a world to be constructed, X-Men Easter eggs to be discovered, and mysteries to be unraveled. The Mutant Underground, and the Struckers, had a driving purpose -- the former to save mutants from an ever-more-dystopian government and halt the nefarious Hound Program, and the latter to protect their children, and uncover the secrets of the family's past. They, more or less, drove the narrative, helped by the arrival of the mysterious, and manipulative, Esme Frost. But with the core characters splintered into two factions following the events of the Season 1 finale, The Gifted succumbed to a problem common to superhero comics: By and large, superheroes are reactive.
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They fight crime, and foil the unnecessarily complicated schemes of supervillains. Oh, sure, every once in a while a writer will reboot a title, and make a team proactive -- maybe "Strike Force" will be added to the name -- and they'll seek out evil-doers before they can, you know, do evil, but then they stop feeling much like "heroes"; if we're being generous, we might call them "antiheroes." Nine times out of 10, the new approach doesn't last, and the team goes back to its old, reactive ways.
With the Hound Program shut down by Lorna's actions in the finale (she destroyed a plane carrying the program's director, Roderick Campbell, and an anti-mutant U.S. senator), and the Atlanta safe house no more, the Mutant Underground became downright passive. After stopping only briefly at a Nashville way station, they moved on to Washington, but apparently only in pursuit of Lorna and Andy, now settled in to the Inner Circle's swanky, and secret, base of operations. Aside from caring for displaced and injured mutants at a community clinic, the Mutant Underground's raison d'être became pining for Lorna and Andy. It's certainly understandable that Marcos would seek out his girlfriend, and their unborn child, and that the Struckers would do anything to be reunited with their teen son. But Eclipse scanning the D.C. skyline, and power lines, for clues to Polaris' whereabouts, and Lauren dreaming about meeting her brother on a rooftop don't rise to engaging drama. (Tellingly, no one went looking Sage and Fade.)
But then, neither does Reed Strucker's struggle with his suddenly emerging mutant abilities, suppressed in childhood by his father, nor whatever it is threatening the utterly unappealing relationship between Blink and Thunderbird. (Is it that he thinks she's having a fling with Morlock leader Erg, or that she helped out the group of outcast mutants without telling him?) And that reveals the core problem with The Gifted's second season. Most of the Mutant Underground were never developed as characters; instead, they merely filled cookie-cutter roles to serve the narrative: John Proudstar is the strong leader, burdened with upholding the X-Men's legacy; Marcos Diaz is the hothead, destined to buck authority; the powerful but unstable Lorna Dane embraces a less peaceful philosophy more in line with that of her never-named father (psst, it's Magneto); and Clarice Fong is the outsider, destined to form one side of an unconvincing love triangle. There were other members of the Atlanta safe house, of course, but most of them were little more than cardboard cutouts, representing those mutants who could never pass for human. They were so one-dimensional that when some of them were reduced to cannon fodder in a Season 2 attack by the Purifiers, their deaths elicited little more than an "Oh, yeah, that guy!"
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It's telling that the two best episodes of the second season (by far) centered not on any remaining members of the Mutant Underground, but rather on Lorna and the Frost sisters. It's not simply because they dealt with their backstories -- similar flashbacks involving John and Marcos fell flat -- but instead because the audience has become invested in those characters; glimpses of their tragic pasts only help us to understand their actions in the present.
That's not to say the Inner Circle storyline hasn't had its problems. While Reeva Payge was finally given nuance with the episode "no Mercy," her plan to create a mutant utopia was as ill-defined as her superpower. And there's still no real explanation for why, when there are such powerhouses as Lorna and Andy at their disposal, the Inner Circle had to risk so much to free the teen sociopath Rebecca from a mental facility so she could use her oddly specific mutant ability -- she can twist objects, and people, inside out -- in a bank heist. (In a not-so-surprising (ahem) twist, the girl who killed her family ended up killing again, endangering everything they've been working toward.) In the end, Rebecca's accidental death, at the hand of boyfriend Andy, was as pointless as her introduction.
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RELATED: Reed Holds Mutankind's Fate in His Hands in New The Gifted Clip
But most of the characters in the Inner Circle (Lorna, Andy, the Frost sisters, Reeva) are compelling enough in themselves that viewers could overlook most of the shortcomings of the storylines, at least in the moment. The same can't be said for the members of the Mutant Underground, who have demonstrated over the course of the past nine episodes that they aren't interesting enough to stand on their own. The only solutions would seem to be to flesh out those characters, or at least make them tolerable, tout suite (highly unlikely); wipe out the Mutant Underground, and shift focus to the morally gray Inner Circle (again, unlikely); or reunite the principal cast, so that one-half of show is no longer weighed down by the other.
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If the promo for the midseason premiere is any indication, The Gifted may be making the first steps toward the latter, with Lorna warning Marcos of Reeva's plot to destroy the U.S. government (wait, that's what this was all about?), and Lauren's sudden (like, really sudden) tendency toward violence causing Reed to make a concerned face. Both hint at a reconciliation that could not only make the show's core "family" whole, but also begin a course correction. A ticking clock and a clearly defined mission, to take down the Inner Circle, would reinvigorate the Mutant Underground, and The Gifted, while an alliance with the Morlocks would give that group purpose, beyond fan service. And, while they're at it, return to one of the big mysteries of the first season: the cataclysmic July 15th event in Houston that led to the disappearance of the X-Men and the Brotherhood, and the crackdown on mutants.
But there's at least one major obstacle: Only seven episodes remain, leaving little time to get The Gifted back on track and salvage this second season. Unfortunately, not even the combined telepathic powers of the Frost sisters can make the audience forget what it's seen so far.
Returning Tuesday at its new time, 9 p.m. ET/PT, Fox’s The Gifted stars Stephen Moyer as Reed Strucker, Amy Acker as Caitlin Strucker, Sean Teale as Eclipse/Marcos Diaz, Jamie Chung as Blink/Clarice Fong, Coby Bell as Jace Turner, Emma Dumont as Polaris/Lorna Dane, Blair Redford as Thunderbird/John Proudstar, Natalie Alyn Lind as Lauren Strucker, Percy Hynes White as Andy Strucker, Skyler Samuels as the Frost sisters and Grace Byers as Reeva Payge.
- by Kevin Melrose
- – on Dec 30, 2018
- in CBR Exclusives
2
WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for the second season of Fox's The Gifted.
Fox's The Gifted kicks off the new year on Tuesday with a midseason premiere that picks up with Washington, D.C., in chaos, mutants nationwide freed from incarceration, the Inner Circle moving on to the next phase of Reeva's bewildering plan, and the Struckers manufacturing some new family drama (it's Lauren's turn). It's a perfect meta-commentary on the state of the once-promising X-Men television spinoff, which went completely off the rails somewhere along the way.
Well, that's not entirely true, as we can pinpoint precisely where it all went so wrong: the Season 1 finale, which upended the status quo with little apparent idea of what would take its place. With the Mutant Underground's Atlanta headquarters in ruins, and Lorna Dane and Andy Strucker (plus some other characters that nobody cares about) turning their backs on friends and family, and joining the Frost sisters in the Inner Circle, we were left to expect a second season packed with emotion. However, what perhaps no one fully realized is that, when you remove Lorna, Andy and the Stepford Cuckoos from the Mutant Underground, what's left is ... all of the blandest elements.
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In fairness, The Gifted's debut season had the benefit of newness: There was a world to be constructed, X-Men Easter eggs to be discovered, and mysteries to be unraveled. The Mutant Underground, and the Struckers, had a driving purpose -- the former to save mutants from an ever-more-dystopian government and halt the nefarious Hound Program, and the latter to protect their children, and uncover the secrets of the family's past. They, more or less, drove the narrative, helped by the arrival of the mysterious, and manipulative, Esme Frost. But with the core characters splintered into two factions following the events of the Season 1 finale, The Gifted succumbed to a problem common to superhero comics: By and large, superheroes are reactive.
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They fight crime, and foil the unnecessarily complicated schemes of supervillains. Oh, sure, every once in a while a writer will reboot a title, and make a team proactive -- maybe "Strike Force" will be added to the name -- and they'll seek out evil-doers before they can, you know, do evil, but then they stop feeling much like "heroes"; if we're being generous, we might call them "antiheroes." Nine times out of 10, the new approach doesn't last, and the team goes back to its old, reactive ways.
With the Hound Program shut down by Lorna's actions in the finale (she destroyed a plane carrying the program's director, Roderick Campbell, and an anti-mutant U.S. senator), and the Atlanta safe house no more, the Mutant Underground became downright passive. After stopping only briefly at a Nashville way station, they moved on to Washington, but apparently only in pursuit of Lorna and Andy, now settled in to the Inner Circle's swanky, and secret, base of operations. Aside from caring for displaced and injured mutants at a community clinic, the Mutant Underground's raison d'être became pining for Lorna and Andy. It's certainly understandable that Marcos would seek out his girlfriend, and their unborn child, and that the Struckers would do anything to be reunited with their teen son. But Eclipse scanning the D.C. skyline, and power lines, for clues to Polaris' whereabouts, and Lauren dreaming about meeting her brother on a rooftop don't rise to engaging drama. (Tellingly, no one went looking Sage and Fade.)
But then, neither does Reed Strucker's struggle with his suddenly emerging mutant abilities, suppressed in childhood by his father, nor whatever it is threatening the utterly unappealing relationship between Blink and Thunderbird. (Is it that he thinks she's having a fling with Morlock leader Erg, or that she helped out the group of outcast mutants without telling him?) And that reveals the core problem with The Gifted's second season. Most of the Mutant Underground were never developed as characters; instead, they merely filled cookie-cutter roles to serve the narrative: John Proudstar is the strong leader, burdened with upholding the X-Men's legacy; Marcos Diaz is the hothead, destined to buck authority; the powerful but unstable Lorna Dane embraces a less peaceful philosophy more in line with that of her never-named father (psst, it's Magneto); and Clarice Fong is the outsider, destined to form one side of an unconvincing love triangle. There were other members of the Atlanta safe house, of course, but most of them were little more than cardboard cutouts, representing those mutants who could never pass for human. They were so one-dimensional that when some of them were reduced to cannon fodder in a Season 2 attack by the Purifiers, their deaths elicited little more than an "Oh, yeah, that guy!"
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It's telling that the two best episodes of the second season (by far) centered not on any remaining members of the Mutant Underground, but rather on Lorna and the Frost sisters. It's not simply because they dealt with their backstories -- similar flashbacks involving John and Marcos fell flat -- but instead because the audience has become invested in those characters; glimpses of their tragic pasts only help us to understand their actions in the present.
That's not to say the Inner Circle storyline hasn't had its problems. While Reeva Payge was finally given nuance with the episode "no Mercy," her plan to create a mutant utopia was as ill-defined as her superpower. And there's still no real explanation for why, when there are such powerhouses as Lorna and Andy at their disposal, the Inner Circle had to risk so much to free the teen sociopath Rebecca from a mental facility so she could use her oddly specific mutant ability -- she can twist objects, and people, inside out -- in a bank heist. (In a not-so-surprising (ahem) twist, the girl who killed her family ended up killing again, endangering everything they've been working toward.) In the end, Rebecca's accidental death, at the hand of boyfriend Andy, was as pointless as her introduction.
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But most of the characters in the Inner Circle (Lorna, Andy, the Frost sisters, Reeva) are compelling enough in themselves that viewers could overlook most of the shortcomings of the storylines, at least in the moment. The same can't be said for the members of the Mutant Underground, who have demonstrated over the course of the past nine episodes that they aren't interesting enough to stand on their own. The only solutions would seem to be to flesh out those characters, or at least make them tolerable, tout suite (highly unlikely); wipe out the Mutant Underground, and shift focus to the morally gray Inner Circle (again, unlikely); or reunite the principal cast, so that one-half of show is no longer weighed down by the other.
ADVERTISING
If the promo for the midseason premiere is any indication, The Gifted may be making the first steps toward the latter, with Lorna warning Marcos of Reeva's plot to destroy the U.S. government (wait, that's what this was all about?), and Lauren's sudden (like, really sudden) tendency toward violence causing Reed to make a concerned face. Both hint at a reconciliation that could not only make the show's core "family" whole, but also begin a course correction. A ticking clock and a clearly defined mission, to take down the Inner Circle, would reinvigorate the Mutant Underground, and The Gifted, while an alliance with the Morlocks would give that group purpose, beyond fan service. And, while they're at it, return to one of the big mysteries of the first season: the cataclysmic July 15th event in Houston that led to the disappearance of the X-Men and the Brotherhood, and the crackdown on mutants.
But there's at least one major obstacle: Only seven episodes remain, leaving little time to get The Gifted back on track and salvage this second season. Unfortunately, not even the combined telepathic powers of the Frost sisters can make the audience forget what it's seen so far.
Returning Tuesday at its new time, 9 p.m. ET/PT, Fox’s The Gifted stars Stephen Moyer as Reed Strucker, Amy Acker as Caitlin Strucker, Sean Teale as Eclipse/Marcos Diaz, Jamie Chung as Blink/Clarice Fong, Coby Bell as Jace Turner, Emma Dumont as Polaris/Lorna Dane, Blair Redford as Thunderbird/John Proudstar, Natalie Alyn Lind as Lauren Strucker, Percy Hynes White as Andy Strucker, Skyler Samuels as the Frost sisters and Grace Byers as Reeva Payge.