The Gifted Review: boXed in (Season 1 Episode 5)
Let’s start off with a little thought exercise here: imagine that every week, you walk into your friend’s house and, every week, he punches you in the face. Now imagine that after a few weeks (four, maybe), you walk into the house and he doesn’t punch you in the face. It would be nice, right?
This friend, who you once thought sucked pretty hard, suddenly doesn’t seem as bad, because at least he’s not punching you in the face anymore. Sure, there’s the question of why you kept showing up if you knew you were going to get punched, but you stuck in there and now it’s somewhat better in comparison.
That’s the feeling we have this week with The Gifted Season 1 Episode 5 “boXed in.”
Before we start celebrating here, this is not to say that “boXed in” is good. It’s simply not aggressively terrible in the way that previous episodes have been up to this point.
The biggest thing working in The Gifted‘s favor now is that all of its moving parts are gelling together much nicer now than they have in the past. There’s a greater sense of the characters and the role they inhabit and in what lane they exist in. Gone, in this episode, are the plots where Caitlin is off doing something risky and dumb.
There are extraneous side plots, but they all have excellent cohesion and synchronicity. The best thing a show can give you sometimes is the notion that there’s a solid internal logic at work and that things make sense. For example, it makes sense that the Underground would not trust Reed given his job history and recent questionable actions.
The point is that The Gifted is making positive steps forward. It’s not perfect, or even particularly good, but the important thing is that it’s starting to recognize what does and doesn’t work about itself.
The decision to implant Blink with false memories of Thunderbird was bad and reprehensible on the writer’s part and they should not at all be let off the hook for that, but, to some small degree, they seem to recognize that that was indeed a poor decision and are attempting to course-correct, at least for now.
The anger that Blink feels towards Dreamer is almost therapeutic to a certain extent, given that we have all felt that way towards this plot line and, more than that, it all feels rather lived in. Blink’s reactions feels authentic, as do Dreamer’s, who becomes the mayor of Shrug City in that scene.
Even still, that original decision isn’t something anyone is going to forget or forgive you for, The Gifted.
What continues to not work is Jace, the Sentinel Services agent hunting the Struckers and the rest of the mutants on the show. His backstory is tragic and what he endures at the end of the episode is awful, but there’s not an awful lot there to care about.
The Gifted gives an admirable try in that department, but it’s not enough to get us there to feel a measurable amount of sympathy for him.
“boXed in” is arguably the strongest episode of the series thus far, and while that’s not saying a whole lot, at least we’re not getting punched anymore.
What did you think of this episode of The Gifted? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
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The Gifted airs Mondays at 9/8c on FOX.
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Drew Koenig
Drew has an ongoing, borderline unhealthy obsession with pop culture, but with television in particular. When he's not aggressively trying to get out of a perpetual state of catching up, he can be found passionately defending the ending of Lost. More of his online work can be found at The Lost Cause and he also co-hosts The Lost Cause Pod.