Obligatory disclaimer: sometimes, real life does not just
suck, but it also hurts. Like, emotionally. Sometimes, your family members are
like emotional/energy vampires, and there is nothing that you can do with them…nothing
that is truly legal, anyhow. Any solution that results in a funeral with a
closed casket/coffin/call it whatever you will has to be wrong than the
problem, it just has to!.. And now on to our feature presentation.
‘the dreaM’ of ‘the Gifted’ shows the continuous issue of
this TV series: it is conflict-driven, and primarily – it is mutants vs.
Sentinel Services. Whenever Sentinel Services went out of the equation, ‘the
Gifted’ suffered. In S2, Sentinel Services around in the equation at all; in
this episode, Jace isn’t even in it – instead we got yet another friend of Reed
Strucker’s father Otto, who’s got an entire institute, (sort of), and whose
goal is to learn how to manage and probably to suppress the X-gene, which makes
mutants mutants. Sorry about repetition, but we already had something similar
back in S1, so now it feels as if ‘the Gifted’ are going around in circles; it
didn’t help AoS, which was notorious in recycling ideas for its’ plot and
scripts, and it doesn’t really help ‘the Gifted’ either.
…This is the Strucker plot line, actually – whereas the
other two of this episode were Lorna. Her life story, her journey to the
current point in time in the world of ‘the Gifted’, and it culminates in her
giving up baby Dawn to her aunt, and making Magneto’s token (and yes, this is
the first evidence of Magneto/X-Men/Xavier/Brotherhood of Evil Mutants/etc. in
the show. Oh, there had been plenty of references, but the token is something
different, more real and precise, and Lorna makes into her own headpiece,
reminiscent of Polaris – of all of Magneto’s children, she was the one the most
like him.
The problem is that this version of Lorna is nothing like
the mainline Polaris; by, well, giving up Dawn and all, Lorna has given up
herself – her self that had been building up from the S1 premiere until now. Is
this a result of FOX and Marvel (MCU) teaming up now, I do not know; true,
there are some similarities now between ‘the Gifted’ and AoS & AC, but few
and safely buried, so there.
Finally, there were also Thunderbird and Blink searching for
Rebecca/Twist as the latter took a runner from the Inner Circle at the
beginning of ‘the dreaM’. At the end of the episode, after sharing her small
information dump with the not so dynamic duo, she seems to have been either
killed or captured, and while that is bad, (especially for her), why…hasn’t she
left D.C. yet? She had an entire day, (though the entire chronology of ‘the
dreaM’ went jumping around in a non-linear way, and the various flashbacks did
not help either), I guess… script reasons?
And the same goes for the John/Clarice fight/argument/etc.
It felt contrived in the previous episode, (two weeks ago), and it feels
contrived now. John and Clarice, it seems, just decided to fight, and Marcos…either
is fanning the flames or is staying out of it entirely. Ditto for Lauren
Strucker, even though at the S2 premiere she was shown to be an integral part
of the Mutants Underground team. Now, though, the Strucker family has gone down
one path and the Mutants’ Underground people – Marcos, Clarice, John – another.
A plot device or a plot hole? Who knows, we can only wait and see…
…Well, this is it for now. ‘the dreaM’ had been a lackluster
episode; or rather – an unbalanced one. Most of its’ focus, overwhelmingly so,
had been on Lorna/Polaris, and ‘the Gifted’, in the past, didn’t do such
character-heavy episodes. AoS, on the other hand, did, especially in its’ first
seasons, with various effects, but that did not help it either; the S6 finale
found AoS at a low point…but that is another story.
For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!
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