Wednesday, October 4, 2017

The Gifted - eXposed


In a world where humanity fears and distrust mutants and the X-Men and Brotherhood of Mutants have disappeared, an underground community of mutants fights to stay free. The pilot episode of The Gifted introduces us to the core group of mutants: Eclipse (Sean Teale), Blink (Jamie Chung), Thunderbird (Blair Redford), and Polaris (Emma Dumont). We also meet the Strucker family whose world is turned upside down when a federal prosecutor (Stephen Moyer) and his wife (Amy Acker) discover that their son (Percy Hynes White) and daughter (Natalie Alyn Lind) are the the kinds of mutants he's been helping put behind bars for years.

There's quite a bit of confusion and upheaval in "eXposed," which helps through the weaker cliched moments of high school and an over-zealous police state. The question is, once the show calms down and the Struckers settle into the new normal can the show continue to deliver? A world without the X-Men certainly raises the stakes as the group only has themselves to rely on. That said, if the X-Men are missing, and the Brotherhood isn't threatening the world, why is the government still got such a hard-on for mutants? Of those we've seen none (with the possible exception of Andy) present a dangerous enough threat to justify the rash actions taken by Sentinel Services. And just who are they? Jackbooted racists? Or, like Strucker, something more complicated who haven't been forced to put their own families on the line? That's another question the show will need to answer as the season unfolds.

No comments: