The Gifted Review: got your siX (Season 1 Episode 6)
The Gifted Season 1 Episode 6 “got your siX” is an episode that is most effective when it focuses on the Strucker family and mind-numblingly boring when it doesn’t.
At that, when it does have Strucker-centric scenes, it’s still remarkably boring. The only reason those rise to the top is the emotional connection that we have with that family that doesn’t exist with most (all) of the other characters.
At a certain point, you have to accept what a show is and The Gifted is boring. That’s it. No more, no less.
To its credit, it often tries to be exciting and thrilling, but it’s almost as if the writers read a textbook on the subject and now only have an intellectual understanding of what an energetic scene is and not what it actually looks like.
To a certain extent, it’s fine that it’s dull as a board. The problem the show runs into is that it wants to be this fun action show and it simply is not that at all. There’s no vibrancy to its action and, moreover, it feels like it has no stakes.
Too often on The Gifted, an episode will end with a character using their powers to save the day and works in this tension of whether that character will be able to pull it off, but there’s no tension. There’s no question that Lauren and newbie mutant Wes (Danny Ramirez) will be able to pull it off in the end.
The Gifted is going through so many motions and none of it feels authentic. It instead feels like this stale product that has been so manufactured and watered-down that it doesn’t feel like much of anything, having all of the flavor of a college-ruled piece of paper.
It’s unfair to even call it bad. To be bad, it would have to make a choice at any point and it doesn’t. To be bad, something of note would have to happen at all and it doesn’t. Instead, that unmistakable taste of fiber is stuck in your mouth for the duration. It’s not bad and that’s almost worse.
On top of that, “got your siX” could not complete an arc outside of the Strucker family if its very life depended on it. Andy and Reed go through a whole emotional journey throughout the episode and that’s very nice, but anyone other than that is left in the cold.
Caitlin’s disdain for Polaris is still pretty much the same throughout the episode with no real sign of progress shown, making it all feel like a waste of time and to give Amy Acker something to do. The episode ostensibly revolves around Thunderbird’s orbit and his need to protect people, but that also feels like nothing.
By the end of the episode, he has supposedly found some level of peace in that, because Dreamer, reigning Mayor of Shrug City, tells him it’s all okay. There’s just not a lot to that plot line, either.
Like we said at the top, The Gifted is what The Gifted is and that’s unlikely to change after six episodes.
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.