The Gifted – S02E04 – outMatched

Since we did not get a new episode this week1, I saved this review to help with the withdraw symptoms, at least until I wanted all of you Bureaucrats to read and comment and spend more time on the site, so I began flooding you with what you want.  For the proper review, read

Title: “outMatched”

Director: Deran Sarafian
Writer: Marta Gene Camps

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 (credit only)
Grace Byers as Reeva Payge (credit only)
Frances Turner as Paula Turner
Tom O’Keefe as Officer Wilson
Adam David Thompson as Graph
Aaron Beelner as Small Mutant
Spence Maughon as Hospital Administrator
William Mark McCullough as Michael
Noelle Messier as Screaming Mutant
Margo Moorer as OBGYN
Kevin Narwich as Large Flailing Mutant
Vince Pisani as Dr. Kelsey

Premise:

The Struckers, minus Andy, begin to rebuild their broken trust, while Thunderbird, Blink and Eclipse visit Wire, hoping to convince him to help again. The team discovers that the Inner Circle is on the way to raid a mutant detention facility, so they make moves to try to intercept them. Meanwhile, Jace is contacted by a member of the Purifiers. (From Trakt.)

High Point:

This might be a bit too meta, but I appreciated that they took a moment to remind us why the characters that we follow, who may be doing bad things, are the heroes and the characters who are doing bad things we  aren’t following are the villains.  The Heroes stop to save people, even when it lets the villains escape.

Low Point:

While I am sure the reason for it is the Stepford Frost triplets, it is troubling how evil our first season heroes seem in this episode.

The Scores:

Originality: 3/6 While not a direct rip-off of anything, I don’t think any part of this was a plot detail we haven’t seen one way or another in some show.

Effects: 5/6 Darkening your set in order to hide the effects is an acceptable trick, but you can’t get full credit for that.

Acting: 4/6 The episode relies very heavily on the cast’s internal conflict, which is a huge request from any actors.  If they don’t show how hard it is to perform actions they would rather not perform,   These actors do a great job, but since so much is riding on it, it seems to be at A-Level, but it needs A+ level.

Production: 5/6 This episode does bring everything together nicely.

Story: 5/6  I went back and forth on this because for such big moments such as the various factions finally meeting and the mysterious new character at the end, it doesn’t feel engaging enough for those events.  That said, the High Point was directly a result of the story.

Emotional Response: 3/6 The lack of engagement for the episode means a lack of emotional response.

Overall: 4/6 While not disappointing, I wanted it to be a bit stronger.

In total, “outMatched” receives 29/42.  (Quite the drop from last week.)

1This week is a by-week, with the next episode on October 30th, 2018.  The real reason for the delay was a laptop malfunction that, while corrected by the time we saw the episode, I was so engrossed into make it work correctly I didn’t pay attention to the episode enough so I wanted to rewatch it before reviewing it.