The Gifted Review: eXit strategy (Season 1 Episode 4)
After Season1 Episode 4 “eXit strategy,” a few things start to make themselves clear about The Gifted. It is not only boring and lazy, but it’s also proving itself to be a rather dull show without much bite to it.
Granted, there are much worse things a series could be than dull. Being dull isn’t the same thing as being bad. It’s not a great case for a show’s defense, but, all the same, true. That being said, it’s certainly not working in The Gifted‘s favor here.
The real part where this becomes a problem for The Gifted is that the show is supposed to be, at least in some part, lively and exciting, full of cool action sequences. For crying out loud, this is created by Matt Nix, who also created Burn Notice, and, say what you will about that particular series, at least it was fun and had a propulsive energy to it.
The Gifted does not.
Even in an episode that is built around the idea of having a thrilling, exhilarating third act, it still doesn’t hit the mark. This comes mainly from the fact that, for a sequence like the one at the end of the episode to work, there needs to be more than three people that we somewhat care about.
Sure, it could work if you anchor Blink, Polaris, and Caitlin in three areas throughout the scene, but it doesn’t. That’s essentially one of The Gifted‘s biggest problems: This should be working, but it’s not.
Fine, The Gifted is underwhelming in the action department, but is it doing better as a thoughtful, political piece? The answer is a little, but not enough.
Whereas in previous episodes the politics of the series have felt rather heavy handed, without a delicate touch, the introspective interactions here have a bit more heft for the sole reason that they exist primarily to service the plot, not as something added in to blatantly drive home a theme with all of the eloquence of a cinder block crashing on your head.
A large component that The Gifted is missing right now is a concrete villain, someone to fight against in every episode. It’s trying that with Coby Bell, but that, like much in this series, isn’t working the way they’d like it to. Of course, the idea of the series is that you’re fighting a system rather than an individual, but that is only going to take the show so far.
What it needs, desperately so, is a figurehead that is compelling and, to a certain extent, fun to buck up against. Preferably one that isn’t Bell, who’s a fine actor, but not what this series requires.
In a conversation of things that The Gifted needs, the plot surrounding Blink, Dreamer, and Thunderbird comes up, which is to say that it doesn’t need this, at all. To be perfectly honest, it’s not entirely clear what the show is currently planning to do with it.
Is it a love triangle? Maybe. Is it setting up a potential psychological plot point? Also, maybe. Is this all a giant waste of our time? Almost certainly, and that’s The Gifted in a nutshell.
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 FXX.
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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.