For example, why did we have to spend any part of the episode dealing with Marcus and his connections to the cartel. What purpose did this serve? At best, this was a one-off distraction to build on Marcus’ past. At worst, it’s something that’s going to continue into the future. It sounded like he put himself in debt and so he’ll be called upon from time to time. Though I’ll be honest I’m not sure what Marcus owes them now? He did what he was asked and they gave him in the info he wanted. So why does this deal persist? Anyway, this pit stop felt like just a way to delay the plot until we reached the end of the episode.
The other distraction is this subplot involving Blink’s implanted memory. It sounded interesting at first, with the ethics involved and all. But now it’s playing out like a CW soap opera, that it not a compliment. It doesn’t really add anything to her or to Tommy. It just feels like a way to literally force a love triangle into existence.
The opening of the episode gave us a flashback to two years ago. One of many problems with this show is that it plays like the book. It’s predictable, so it was easy to see that introduction of Pulse would mean that he’d appear later in the episode. The “twist” that Pulse had been part of the Sentinel Services crew was also obvious. The only interesting part was the brief shot of the tattoo on his arm. Clearly these are the people who are either controlling Pulse or worked to “turn him”. Either way, I can’t say that I’m interested. This show has yet to prove that any of its subplots are worth paying attention to.
Ultimately, the issues with this show stem from the fact that none of the characters are interesting and their conflicts are boring. As a superhero show – similar to Heroes – the plots are just rote. The fact that it’s even an X-Men show makes it a little worse. In the same vein as Gotham, the show’s world isn’t what makes it interesting, it’s the characters. The Wolverine, Magneto, Professor X, and so on. These original characters on THE GIFTED are sketches and impossible to connect with.
Anyways, enough with all the things that don’t work. I’ll talk about the one thing that kind of did work. That was the rescue scene at the end of the episode. It was a somewhat exciting heist scene. The idea that the siblings powers work together in such a way helps us understand what the doctor from the previous episodes was so interested in. One can funnel the others powers and make it work even better than before.
The brightest shining spot about this whole thing is that now all the characters are together and we won’t – for now – need to deal with needless bloat. Everyone can move as one. I can only hope that this means the show is more focused from now.
Written by Peter Freeman, THE GIFTED Beat Writer
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