If you’ve been missing the X-Men on the big screen . . . they’re back on your small screen! The Gifted mixes mutants with a hefty dose of social commentary. Oh, and Stephen Moyer, aka True Blood’s Vampire Bill. That part alone gets a thumbs up from me. How I’ve missed Vampire Bill….
In case you missed the 101 on The Gifted, it’s this: The X-Men have gone underground. Mutants are deemed a menace to society, captured and sent to detention centers. When the Strucker parents, Reed and Caitlin, find out their children Andy and Lauren are mutants themselves, they go on the run to save their family. And did we mention Reed works for a government agency interrogating the mutants? Awkward!
It’s important to remember that pilots tend to be rocky in execution. A great example of this is the TV show Elementary. I watched the pilot of that show and turned off the TV in disgrace, but then vowed to stick with it for at least three episodes. Five seasons later, it’s part of my regular viewing rotation. Do keep that in mind for this show and any other new tv show you watch this season.
(Warning: spoilers for the pilot episode contained herein.)
1. The message of identity politics is strong with this show.
Let’s get what some may consider to be the elephant in the room out of the way first: the premise of this show — mutants being captured and imprisoned based on their status as such — has a strong parallel to the state of identity politics in 2017. The social commentary is strong in this episode, with talk of mutant detention centers, interrogation tactics of questionable morality and legality, siblings calling each other out on use of “racist” language for mutants (“Muties”) — does any of this sound familiar? Add in the patriarch of our family on the run being a government employee, emphasizing that no one is safe…and well, you see where this is going. The mutants’ experience in The Gifted has been the state of mind for any minority group for years upon years. Those who may look to their superhero shows as a form of escapism from the real world may be turned off by some of the heavy-handedness of this message. Conversely, this also can be a good way to educate, enlighten, and change minds on the larger social issues of immigration and prejudice, so to those who may be turned off by this, I encourage you to to watch with an open mind and heart.
2. Even in the bleakest of situations, there’s room for lighthearted moments.
Mutants may be on the run fearing for their lives, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t time for fun. I got a chuckle out of Andy and Lauren using their mutant abilities to get some free snacks at a hotel, even when Andy shatters the vending machine, he still manages to grab a Pop-Tart while on the run. And who would have thought that dog toys would have been a victim of falling through a Clarice (aka Blink) portal?
(Brief side note that I couldn’t fit in anywhere else: Gotham fans may recognize Lauren Strucker as the ever-so-brief love interest of Bruce Wayne, Silver St. Cloud.)
3. All that normalcy hit me on the head. Hard. And it hurt.
The first half of this show practically telegraphs to you that this is a normal family. Curfews for teens. Discussions of dealing with school bullies (with a very PC, touchy-feely solution provided by the school principal, nonetheless). Family dinners complete with arguments. Sneaking out to a school dance. Crisis over what to wear to said school dance. Popular older sister and not so popular younger brother. We get it. These are very normal people who will soon have very abnormal lives. There wasn’t that much of a need to telegraph it so much, and hopefully with the pilot over that is out of our way. (Though not completely out of the way — see thought #2.)
4. Special effects sometimes work and sometimes don’t.
I really did not know what to make of the mutant special effects in this episode. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t, and some that worked took a while to actually work. Lauren and Andy’s mutant abilities were rendered beautifully upon moment of introduction. I’m still surprised Andy’s primal scream didn’t level the entire school, and Lauren’s ability to bend air, trapping people and things in a cavern of bubbles is expertly done. It did take until the end of the episode for us to see the full impact and power of Clarice’s portals, and I’m still trying to grasp the full depth of what Lorna — aka Polaris, daughter of Magneto — can do. Supporting players deserve the same amount of “oh that’s seriously cool” reaction for their superpowers as the main characters. I wasn’t getting that here, and I’m hoping this was a case of production not showing their full hand in the first episode (smart, really).
5. This Final Thought Sponsored by the Stephen Moyer Appreciation Society.
I’ve loved Stephen Moyer since his Vampire Bill days, and that sold me on watching this show. But we gotta talk first about that questionable generic American accent. With a show that starts out in Atlanta City, assumed to be close enough to the US-Mexico border that escaping to Mexico via car is an option, how can you stick with a muddled mess of dialect such as that? Throw me a little bit of that Vampire Bill drawl to give a little more realism to your location (and maybe to make me swoon while we’re at it). Dialect aside, Moyer does both hard-lined lawman and tender family man to equal degree here decently, but we know he’s not the star of the show. Here’s hoping the kids have those same character traits in them because they’re now separated from Dear Old Dad for the foreseeable future.
