by Diana Vaccarelli
—SPOILER ALERT—SPOILER ALERT—SPOILER ALERT—
Monday October 2, 2017, Fox premiered the new series The Gifted. The series takes place after the X-Men film Days of Future Past. It tells the story as a “What if the X-Men didn’t succeed in defeating the Sentinel Program?” adventure.
Basically, the show addresses the issue of, given their failure, what happens to the X-Men next? The main focus of the series is that mutants are on the run from a government agency tasked with imprisoning them.
THE GOOD:
- Over the years, what fans call the “X-Men saga” has always done one thing very well: It shines a bright light on bigotry and on how we need to learn to accept one another and embrace each other’s differences.
- This theme continues in The Gifted. One scene particularly effective in making the point is when Andy Strucker (Percy Hynes White) is pulled into the school showers by bullies and tortured with blasts of both hot and cold water. Through his terror he triggers mutant abilities that nearly tear the school down.
- That storyline continues as we follow the very normal Reed Stucker (Stephen Moyer) searching for entree into the secret mutant underground in order to get help for his children their mutant natures become clear. I loved the way we could see his desperation, even though previously he had been instrumental in hunting mutants down.
THE BAD:
- The performances in general aren’t exactly the best. The actors seemed strangely (unprofessionally?) uneasy in their roles.
THE REST:
The acting problems aren’t stopping me from wanting to see more episodes of The Gifted, and as an X-Men saga fan I’m hopeful that the performances will improve as the cast gets more into the storylines and writing in general.
If Marvel superheroes, and the X-Men in particular, are your kind of thing, then I believe you should give this series a try. It’s no Legion – not by a longshot – but over time it evolve into something interesting…and besides, it’s always fun to watch mutants kick the butts of biased abusers.
Diana Vaccarelli is TVWriter™’s Critic-at-Large and a student in the TVWriter™ Online Workshop. Find out more about her HERE