The Gifted Review: threat of eXtinction (Season 1 Episode 8)

The Gifted Season 1 Episode 8 “threat of eXtinction” is, by all accounts, a good episode. Why does it feel so meaningless, then?

We’ve been critical of The Gifted in the past, largely because it has rarely been good. The series has often felt lazy, hollow, and a general chore to watch week-after-week. What makes this week different is there is at least some effort to do something here.

While that is all technically true, it doesn’t change the fact that there is no emotional involvement in practically anything that happens. A lot of the episode hinges on the internal drama of the Strucker family and if there were ever characters on this show that we do feel an attachment to, it would be the Struckers, but just barely.

When it comes to this family, the only one of the bunch that we genuinely care about is Caitlin and a good portion of that is due to the casting of Amy Acker, who is great in everything and able to make something out of a character that the show doesn’t allow to do very much, aside from plot-necessity nurse duties.

Reed is the most well-drawn of the family and even with him you can feel the series straining to make him someone the audience has a connection to. Andy and Lauren are fine, but are, by leaps and bounds, the least interesting out of practically any character on the series.

The series, therefore, attempting to add in some tension on whether the siblings will one day go dark side lands with the weight of a feather.

There’s also a conversation of consent that the episode doesn’t address (but really should at some point), even though this was the perfect time for it to.

Reed discovers that his father Otto (played by Justified’s Raymond J. Barry) injected him with a serum as a young child that suppressed any mutant abilities he might have had, but also nearly killed him. The show wants that to exist, but also give Otto this heroic sacrifice to save Reed and Thunderbird from Sentinel Services.

The writers are trying to have their cake and eat it too, but it doesn’t work like that. The show doesn’t get to have that kind of send-off because, quite frankly, it hasn’t earned it. The two plot points are diametrically opposed and the show pretending they aren’t is disingenuous and willfully ignorant.

Of course, then there’s the matter of Blink and Dreamer.

When Dreamer manipulated Blink’s memories, it was a shocking and controversial moment in the show. It was a bad, wildly problematic move on the show’s part and it felt like it understood that as the weeks rolled by. Now, however, the series is trying to let itself and Dreamer off the hook.

It’s trying to say that anyone would have done what Dreamer did. It’s saying that there’s a moral imperative to sidelining consent – something that it’s implied that Blink has come around to by the end of the episode by having Dreamer erase memories from a little girl that Blink is responsible for.

It’s possible that’s not the case, considering we didn’t actually hear it in dialogue in that particular memory erasing scene, but it’s implied within the episode that neither Blink nor Dreamer is talking to the girl about this beforehand and, again, going around a sense of consent.

It would be one thing if we physically heard the little girl give permission, but we don’t and there’s probably a reason for that.

“threat of eXtinction” doesn’t exactly feel like a turning point where the show has finally figured itself out. It’s really more of the same. The main difference here is that there’s a better flow than we’ve seen previously on the show and that feels substantial in and of itself.

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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