Tuesday, 12 February 2019

The Gifted: calaMity - Feb 12


Tonight, ‘the Gifted’ are back, so yay! ‘calaMity’, this week’s episode, did its’ best to be overwhelming, and so it was – or rather, it was just the right amount of ‘whelming’, so let us talk.
First, the bad news – Sage is dead by Reeva and the Purifiers - whose leader, Benedict Ryan, is revealed Reeva’s partner in her plan of taking over America - shot Clarice/Blink. At least they made Reeva an Afro-American, and not a Slavic immigrant of some sort, so kudos for that ballsy move. 

That said, Clarice’s about-turn regarding her attitude on all the mutants was jarring – one episode she was all about leaving, keeping her head down and not being a hero, and now she’s sounding exactly like that – exactly like John, and now she may be dead, (a self-fulfilling prophesy?), and John is left picking up his own pieces.

…On the other hand, there is still a chance for her to be alive, while Sage is genuinely dead. Somehow, let us be honest here, the writers of ‘the Gifted’ never figured out as to how to fit-in Sage into their world; for being a major character in the regular X-Men comics, in ‘the Gifted’ she was a recurring character at best, and now, she is killed off for dramatic effect and to demonstrate to the viewers just how ruthless and lethal Reeva can be. Yay? Lorna’s internal dramatics were interesting to watch, but nothing else – she is beginning to realize that she and Marcos’ can be over their heads and need to start drawing more people into their plan, maybe even Andy, because honestly? His loyalty to the Inner Circle appears to be somewhat thin after Rebecca/Twist had died…

However, if Sage’s death is somewhat problematic, in a pointless and unnecessary kind of way, reminiscent of AoS at its’ worst, then the rest of the episode certainly is not. The entire convoluted chain of command between Reeva and Benedict Ryan and Jace was certainly better than anything AoS – or the rest of MCU – showed on such a level, and the dramatic tension between the Purifiers and the Morlocks was certainly well shot, pardon the pun. Jace, of course, is beginning to have further doubts about the rightfulness of his cause, so we’ll have to wait and see as to what it will amount to, (if it ever will). Certainly, again, ‘the Gifted’ made him into a better anti-hero/villain than anything that AoS had done with Ward, or AIDA, or several other characters. As far as the within-universe rules go, Jace is still a better human being than Reeva is.

As for the Strucker family plotline, so far Reed finally decided to embrace his own mutation and stop taking the medicine; Lauren decided to stop running and to start fighting, (maybe even Andy, I don’t know, but after Sage’s death Andy might be having second thoughts of his own); and Caitlyn has stopped ‘playing nice’ and is ramming police vehicles these days. Of course the fact that the local cops seem to have gone to the ‘SW trooper’ school of shooting doesn’t hurt either, but now the Struckers are still fleeing and the cops are still chasing them, so the episode has ended on a cliffhanger; yay!

…Yes, certainly so – for all of its minor flaws, ‘calaMity’ was a very impressive, very dramatic episode, with plenty of both plot progression and character progression too – Jace and John, the Morlocks’ leader and Lorna and Andy, even Lauren and the elder Struckers have emerged from the Morlock-Purifier confrontation changed. Now we just have to wait and see as what will come out of this next week.

Ergo, for now, this is it. See you all soon!

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