The Gifted: oMens - Feb 26

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but sometimes you can manage. Now, onto ‘the Gifted’. It is done for its’ second season. Yay!

What can be said about the S2 finale? There was a lot of action and fighting in it, but…

But it was spread unequally – unlike, say, AoS, ‘the Gifted’ had to work on a more limited budget, especially when it came to CGI effects, and it showed. John’s fight with the Purifiers was the first and the most low-key…and what was with his ethnic make-up? Yes, John Proudstar/Thunderbird is a Native American character, but somehow, the S2 finale – ‘oMens’ – made it feel less Native American and more like Street Fighter of some sort. John looked authentic here, but also ridiculous…but hey, he made his peace with the Morlocks’ leader, who helped John defeat Jace and the Purifiers. Yay?

Well, yes – now the Morlocks’ leader, as well as the Morlocks in general, seem to have become more proactive than how they’ve been in the past, so that’s good for the mutant-kind, since in the last scenes of ‘oMens’ Marcos and co. admit that they are the Mutant Underground these days literally. However, Jace is still around – John had not killed him because of his inner goodness – but Reed is gone, his powers blew him and Reeva and Reeva’s penthouse HQ up. Remind me, what is the official U.S. stance on suicide bombers and the suicide bomber stereotype? Subverting it in ‘the Gifted’ took guts.

This brings us to the next point – the fight of Marcos, Lorna and Caitlin against Reeva’s mercenaries. It was impressive. It also used a lot of stock footage and out-of-camera actions because reasons. Budget reasons. The way that the Inner Circle’s invisible assassin died was one of the least impressive scenes in the episode – that guy was more incompetent than he appeared to be: he already been captured by the Mutant Underground once, and now the Mutant Underground – in the person of Mrs. Strucker – had killed him. The building explosion was nice though.

This brings us to the other big building takedown of the episode – Lauren & Andy’s destruction of the Sentinel Services’ HQ. Technically speaking, the sentinels are evil – remember S1 – but still, the way that the Strucker siblings are forgiven is something else. The way that AoS had dealt with Grant and Kara was bad, but the manner in which all the deaths’ that the siblings have caused are dismissed, is just as bad. Yes, Esme and her sisters had been mentally dominating them all along, but so had Hydra in regards to Bucky in ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ movie, and it still caused a rift between Steve and Tony in ‘Captain America: Civil War’, with the rest of the Avengers piling on. Now, in part it was because Tony likes Steve, Steve likes Bucky, neither man handled their feelings very well, and the rest of the Avengers piled on because they were bored…while claiming that it was all about the Sokovia Accords instead. What has come out of them, BTW? …But another part of it was because brainwashed Bucky killed Tony’s parents, and Steve just wants to let him go. That did not go well, especially at the last quarter of the movie…and on the other hand, we have the Strucker parents and friends dismissing and forgiving Andy and Lauren using precisely that excuse – they were not themselves. And then they went and had a fight with Reeva’s mercenaries – they took out the Frosts by then – and Reed died.

…Some people have suggested to me that initially Reeva’s character was somehow related to the Struckers because Reed and Reeva sound somewhat similarly. Maybe, but this sort of reasoning is better applied to AoS – ‘the Gifted’ is knitted together more tightly and has done less restructuring of itself, especially in the past, so…

So ‘oMens’ exposed the flaws and the compensations of ‘the Gifted’. On one hand, it has a small, tight cast that works marvellously together and generates plenty of drama and interactions. On the other, it makes scenes with numerous people dicey, because it does not have enough of recurring characters – most of them are episodic instead, so when they are killed off there is no investment into them from the viewers. Yes, this makes a death of a main character – i.e. Reed or Reeva – only more poignant, but on the other hand, the Purifier that Reed killed last week was Ted, Jace’s Man Friday, and as we wrote before, no one, not even Jace, seemed to care that Ted is gone, aka dead.

Back to Jace? Again, as we had written, he is no Ward with whom AoS’ scriptwriters played, making him good or bad, depending on how they wanted him without any respect for his character, the other characters, or the audience. Jace is more consistent, but he is diminished because he has fewer lines these days and his role on ‘the Gifted’ has also shrunk.

Again, the strength of ‘the Gifted’ lies in the actors and their acting – the plot, and the script – itself can be very thin indeed, so when the actors cannot properly act, the show suffers, because unlike AoS it cannot really go for cool special effects or epic fights: John’s fight with the Purifiers showed that in particular: for an angry mutant-hating mob they certainly acted nobly (cough) attacking John one at a time… and it’s doubtful that they even wanted to gun him down at all… That line of Jace – ‘kill me’ – came completely out of the left field, and unlike AoS, ‘the Gifted’ do not swing this sort of curveball very well.

So, what happens next? S2 of ‘the Gifted’ is done, and we are back to waiting – both for ‘the Gifted’ S3 (if it happens) and for C&D in April 2019. Until then, see you all soon!