The Gifted – unMoored

The Gifted continues with its second episode, but it does seem to hit the wall.  My wife described this episode as “Filler”, which seems to fit last seasons pacing, but is not very good for the second episode of the season to be chained down so quickly.

Title: “unMoored”

Directed by Steven DePaul
Written by Rashad Raisani

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
Skyler Samuels as Esme Frost / Sophie Frost / Phoebe Frost
Grace Byers as Reeva Payge
Frances Turner as Paula Turner
Raymond J. Barry as Otto Strucker
Erinn Ruth as Evangeline
Danube Hermosillo as Cristina

Premise:

Thunderbird contacts a mutant lawyer who recruited him to the Underground years ago, hoping she can help him find the Inner Circle. Lauren and Andy have a shared dream, which distracts Andy from his training and prompts Reeva to consider cutting her losses with him, which, in turn, makes Andy second-guess his separation from his sister. Meanwhile, Reed must keep a huge secret from the group and Jace picks up the mutants’ trail again. (From Trakt.)

High Point:

It was nice to see the training, and it is nice to see what the Inner Circle can do with its resources, as opposed to the squalor the Underground has to deal with.

My wife laughed out loud at “The Lizard of Oz” joke.

Low Point:

This episode didn’t have much action, and the slow pacing didn’t give me much to hold onto to find a low point.

The Scores:

Originality: 4/6 I didn’t see anything beyond typical ‘moving pieces around the board’ events, but I didn’t see anything that felt like a rip off, either.  Except for the possible exception of Andy ripping of Draco Malfoy.

Effects: 6/6 I was impressed with the effects this week, especially the transitions to and from a smoking lizard mutant.

Acting: 5/6 Everything was believable this week, though I think Sean Teale (Eclipse) may have overdone it a bit.

Production: 6/6 No complaints, especially as these were my high point.

Story: 2/6  For everything this show does right, the lack of story is all I can blame my lack of interest in this episode on.

Emotional Response: 5/6 The crying on a rooftop scene wasn’t bad enough to laugh at, but it was a difficult scene to act, and Sean’s performance didn’t make me want to give him an Emmy.  Even with that, I didn’t question any motivations this episode.

Overall: 3/6 There may be something I missed or something that will develop later to make this feel more interested in this episode, but it felt like a dud to me.

In total, “unMoored” receives 31/42

3 replies on “The Gifted – unMoored”

  1. I understand the filler feel. There was definitely an aspect of moving pieces around. However, it did feel like there was some progress toward some sort of goal. Given the precedent of the first season, there is plenty of room for doubt about whether that will pay off in a reasonable time frame, but I think much of what happened in this episode will turn out to be less filler-y than it seems.

    My big complaint is that nobody bloody talks to each other about anything, especially obviously important things like Reed’s situation. I’m not completely bashing the writers on this one, though, because people really do do stupid stuff like that in real life. It just gets annoying because it seems like it’s *always* a major plot point in television shows.

    • A recent Spidey comic had a comment how someone had hid a secret from her family, which was dumb, but then the fact that she’d hid it made it harder for her to tell them, then she’d hid it for too long and now it was much much harder to tell them…

      I get that concept, so I try to think that the characters are suffering from something similar. It’s not hard to answer “why didn’t you tell me” but really hard to answer “why didn’t you tell me before now?”

      • Yeah. The longer you don’t tell someone, the harder it gets to tell them. I’ve been there with things that, in hind sight, are completely trivial.

        Still, it’s not that it’s unbelievable on its own. It’s just that writers use it as a cheap device to increase tension so often that it’s just tedious now. Though it’s not nearly as annoying as “every time I try to say anything, something with perfect dramatic timing conspires to prevent it” or “I spent like 7 hours gibbering and failing to get three words out, thus giving something time to happen”. Bonus annoyance points for all three happening continually.

        I suppose I’m not so much against the particular behaviour from characters as against writers using it as the go to method of ramping up tension within a group. I mean, sure, it’s a thing that happens. But don’t have every character keeping every possible secret in every possible scenario every time. I mean, eventually one of them is going to learn from it if nothing else. And, for that matter, having them actually tell their secret and be a great source of tension on its own.

        At least in this case, I suspect Reed’s secret will have to come out sooner rather than later. And someone actually intervened usefully in Andy’s case. And they both have believable reasons for being afraid to share.

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