The Gifted takes an episode to measure the height of the skateboard jumps, base jump dives, and just how many calories are in a turducken. Actually, none of that happened, and like many things marketed as extreme, it is relatively tame.
Title: “eXtreme measures”
Director: Stephen Surjik
Written: Michael Horowitz
Cast:
Stephen Moyer as Reed Strucker
Amy Acker as Kate Strucker
Sean Teale as Marcos Diaz / Eclipse
Natalie Alyn Lind as Lauren Strucker
Percy Hynes White as Andy Strucker
Coby Bell as Jace Turner
Jamie Chung as Clarice Fong / Blink
Blair Redford as John Proudstar / Thunderbird
Emma Dumont as Lorna Dane / Polaris
Garret Dillahunt as Dr. Roderick Campbell
Elena Satine as Dreamer
Michelle Veintimilla as Carmen
Christine Dunford wasn’t named
Danny Ramirez as Wes
Andrew Benator as Aide (Hound)
Premise:
Eclipse receives a call from his ex-lover, Carmen, and must revisit his dark past in order to protect the Underground. Reed and Sage comb through some secret files they recovered and find alarming information about Lauren’s new friend. Meanwhile, Thunderbird helps Blink open up about her past life and Jace greenlights a special surveillance program with the help of Dr. Campbell. (From Trakt.)
High Point:
There wasn’t a lot of things I enjoyed this episode, but I enjoyed the ties they threw into the existing X-Universe, mostly at the tail end of the episode. “Hounds“.
Low Point:
The show really leans into the CW-ing this episode1. Television has trained me to expect pointless emotions from teenagers, such as the lovable all-American scamps in Riverdale, but the “kids” in this show seem a bit old for it, and they even drag Reed into it.
The gun belt “choke”. They wanted it to choke the guard, but the way they shot it, if he’d looked up at his gun he wouldn’t have been in trouble anymore. It was as if he was desperate not for it to float away and was holding it down with his chin.
The Scores:
Originality: 1/6 Even the new power we see from a cartel member, which could have been interesting, was a trick we saw in the first X-Men movie.
Effects: 5/6 They haven’t done anything new, but they’re still doing their tricks well.
Acting: 5/6 Despite not being given much story to work with, the cast does a great job of being believable. Stephen Moyer even managed to CW and still seem like a rational adult.
Production: 5/6 The production is still well done.
Story: 3/6 The story doesn’t seem to take us anywhere, and seems to be drawing a modern, condensed series arc into more episodes than it needs. (Season one is scheduled for 13 episodes.)
Emotional Response: 4/6 With the exception of the relationship drama, the rest of the story still elicits the intended emotions.
Overall: 4/6 I would have scored this a point higher, but I am getting bothered by how much they seem to expect the teenage romance to carry the episode.
In total, “eXtreme measures” receives 27/42
1 For the record, the show does air on FOX. I am not aware of any connection to the teen drama-est of networks.
This one felt like a “moving pieces around the board” episode which the story could likely have done without. I’m willing to revise that opinion if anything that happened in the episode proves to be important later.
If I was assuming that the writers/producers were clever enough, I would say that the episode was intended as character development while the pieces were moved around the board and newer players were rounded out a bit. Alas, I learned ages ago that most shows really don’t plan things out that well.
Yeah, I am with you on this one. I can hope that those other names that Reed flips past turn out to be important, or if there are some other interesting things we didn’t see on first viewing but a future viewing would reveal, but it seems like there was a six episode story arc, but FOX ordered 13, so…….