Brief Thoughts On The Gifted, Episode 7
by Erik Amaya
Having an X-Men adventure with your folks has to be the ultimate drag.
But this week’s episode of The Gifted did not serve that idea very well. Instead, the conflict between Lauren and Reed concerning Wes played out like a shallow family drama on another night and network. Sure, it underscored the way the rule of law changes when your family is suddenly outlaws, but the storyline itself lacked the spark The Gifted often gives its allegory.
Instead, the concept is reduced to mere bickering between father and daughter.
Melodramatic reduction seemed to be in the air as Polaris discovers Marcos is working with the Cartel once again. On the one had, Polaris has a good reason to be upset, but Marcos definitely needed the Cartel to help find her when she was in Sentinel Service’s clutches. Maybe he should’ve mentioned the price of her freedom to her earlier. And maybe she should’ve just confronted him when he was burning up the drugs. But to save their confrontation for a end-of-episode scene in an empty HQ set reeks of a poorer quality of writing than we’ve come to expect from The Gifted.
Sadly, it continues to permeate the episode as Blink’s completely reasonable distrust of John collapses into him literally holding her. Last week, I suggested her search could last a handful of episodes. Instead, it consisted of a few minutes with John by her side as she travels back to the mutant orphanage where she grew up with other kids who could not pass as full human. It seems her near-death blink storm from a few episodes back led to the orphanage being raided and the humans killed. And despite all the drama that should be there, those scenes only reinforced a potential romantic tangle for the two characters.
Oh, it also served to get Blink back to the HQ as quickly as possible.
Meanwhile, Dr. Campbell deals with a challenge to his participation in Turner’s task force by ordering his pet mutant to give a Department of Justice rep a stroke. Like the Polaris, Blink, and Strucker stories this week, it felt cartoonish and hastily written; perhaps each of these stories needed another week or two in order to develop properly.
I suppose not every episode of a network drama can work and in the plotting of stories, you sometimes find yourself cutting off ideas to get to an important milestone. Presuming, of course, that we’re getting something like that soon.
In the meantime, the curious mention of Reed’s father working at Trask Industries should not go unnoticed. In the world of The Gifted, Trask’s company has apparently shut down despite surfacing in the Sentinel records as the private contractor running the black site. They are also, presumably, the people behind Sentinel Service’s more advanced tech. The connection between Trask, Dr. Campbell and Sentinel Services leads us to this week’s dangling questions:
- Did Campbell buy up Trask assets in the hopes of learning more about the Struckers?
- Or is Trask’s apparent demise a ruse for Campbell to continue his research?
- Did Reed’s father leave behind records leading to Campbell’s interested in Andy and Lauren?
- Is Reed’s father named Wolfgang?
The Gifted airs Mondays on FOX.