Tag: Sean Teale

The Gifted Season 1 Episode 10: eXploited Recap

~ Metacrone

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We lose some familiar faces on The Gifted this week, and gain some familiar faces as well. eXploited would have been the season finale under the original 10 episode order, and it feels very much like one. The stakes are high, loyalties are in question, and the game changes in the final act.

We start with a flashback to two months ago, when Esme was posing as a campaign aide to an antimutant senator, using the name Stacy. Or Stephanie, depending on who you ask. She’s just talked herself into a meeting between the senator and Trask Industries when she gets a telepathic distress call.

Her family has been discovered and captured. Sentinel Services knows where she is, and are on their way. Esme/Stacy scurries away from the Senator’s location as quickly as she can, while telepathic voices urge her to hurry and to find a way to rescue them.

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The Gifted Season 1 Episode 9: outfoX Recap

~ Metacrone

TG109DreamerBlinkFenris

This week, The Gifted continues to explore its central theme of family. The main theme of this season is the question of protection: How far is too far when it comes to protecting family? How much pain and suffering is it okay to cause others in your quest to save or avenge your own? How far can you go before you become the monster?

But there is also the question of who counts as family, and the necessity of making hard choices. Will you be able to live with yourself if you don’t go far enough to help someone, save someone, or catch someone? How do you find balance?

One of the best things about this show is that we’ve been given both sides of the conflict all along, and with extreme and reasonable characters on both sides. Jace’s need for revenge is very understandable, but now, after this episode, he’s faced with destroying a family that he knows, and a father who loves his children the way Jace loved Grace.

Except Andy and Lauren won’t die the quick, clean death that Grace did. They’ll be tortured and exploited for as long as Campbell wants to use them, then murdered, with their bodies left to rot somewhere.

You could see it in Jace’s face at the end of the episode, when he realized who he’d caught. He’d finally reached the point where he had to ask himself, “How far is too far?”

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The Gifted Season 1 Episode 8: threat of eXtinction Recap

~ Metacrone

TG108Reed&Johnny

This week is an exciting week for The Gifted, as we get a big mythology dump, including the answer to the question of how Lauren and Andy turned out to be mutants when there didn’t appear to be any other mutants in their family. The answers are game changing for the Struckers, the Underground, and Sentinel Services. Sentinel Services also tries its own game changing plays, with less success. Issues of trust and loyalty continue to be important.

The cold open takes place in London in 1952. We see newspaper reports of mutant siblings terrorizing countries around the world. The mutant brother, Andreas, is sitting at a desk, writing a note to tell someone that he and his sister are still in hiding. The phone rings, but no one except “the organization” should have their number. His sister, Andrea, runs into the room. We hear multiple vehicles speeding up to the building. They realize that they’ve been found. A large group of armed men break through the door. The siblings hold hands, and energy glows from their hands. The camera cuts away to the opening sequence as we hear screaming.

We jump to the Atlanta Underground way station and the present day. Reed is informing the rest of the family that the company his father worked at for 30 years, Trask Industries, seems to be the defense contractor that’s turning mutants into weapons that hurt other mutants.

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The Gifted Season 1 Episode 7: eXtreme measures Recap

~ Metacrone

TG107Carmen&Marco

This week on The Gifted, everyone follows a thread from their not so pleasant past. Carmen calls in the favor that Marcos owes her. Clarice discovers what happened to her foster family. Jace discovers the cost of doing business and getting revenge with someone even more unscrupulous than he is. And Reed is shocked, SHOCKED to discover that a homeless teen mutant had to turn to crime to survive. More classism and shaming ensues. I’m starting to wonder when they’re going to throw Reed out of the way station for harassment.

In an opening scene from 3 years ago, Marcos is meeting Johnny and Lorna in a rural diner to discuss the Mutant Underground. Marcos is dating Carmen and heavily involved with the Cartel, but he’s already smuggled a few truckloads of mutants across the border. Lorna and Johnny want him to come work with them full time in the Underground.

Marcos explains that he already has a job and a very demanding girlfriend. Lorna suggests that he get a new girlfriend. Sparks fly between Lorna and Marcos. Johnny reminds Marcos that the X-men are gone and it’s up to them to ensure that mutants survive.

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The Gifted Season 1 Episode 6: got your siX Recap

~ Metacrone

TG106LornaLauren&NewGuy

This week on The Gifted, everyone is very aware of their connections and responsibilities to each other. With Reed back in his role of patriarch, the Struckers struggle to figure out who they are in their new lives as fugitives. Lorna and Marcos embrace their roles as future parents in their own unique ways. Jace renews his commitment to avenging his daughter’s death, taking his mission to an even greater extreme in the wake of Dreamer’s brain scramble. And Johnny questions whether he’s the right man to lead the Underground. The X-men said a war is coming, and he couldn’t even keep his best friend out of the clutches of Sentinel Services.

Clarice realizes that her connection to the others has never truly existed at all.

We begin with a flashback to four years ago. Johnny and other mutant military veterans are in Phoenix raising money to help victims of the Dallas 7/15 incident. That was the peaceful mutant rights march that spiraled out of control until at least one mutant released their powers, killing many people, mutant and human, including Jace’s daughter.

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The Gifted Season 1 Episode 5: boXed in Recap

~ Metacrone

TG105Lorna&Marco

It’s payback time. Jace does not take the mutants’ escape lightly, as promised last week. The search turns into a man mutanthunt with Sentinel Services throwing every resource possible at it. The Mutant Underground has to stretch its own resources to the limit in response, and put aside differences until a better time.

But first, we see how Javert Jace lost his daughter. He was working in Dallas, but had taken a day off to picnic with his family in a park. There was a Mutants’ Rights March on the other side of the park that got out of control. Before Jace could get his wife and young daughter out of range, a powerful mutant let off a blast that knocked out Jace and killed his daughter. Jace has had a vendetta against all mutants ever since.

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The Gifted Season 1 Episode 4: eXit Strategy Recap

~ Metacrone

TG104Marcos&John

This week on The Gifted, characters are faced with decisions that force them to cross lines they don’t want to cross, and work with people they don’t want to work with, in order to successfully rescue Lorna and Reed. Some are faced with the negative consequences in this episode, others will face continuing consequences down the road. Jace is just plain old screwed, and even more determined to screw everyone else in the future.

We begin with a flashback to a rescue op two years ago, at a mutant relocation facility, somewhere in Georgia. John and another mutant, Pulse, wait outside a security fence for the mutants who are inside.

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The Gifted Season 1 Episode 2: rX Recap

~ Metacrone

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In this episode, Amy Acker remembers she’s a badass, Vampire Bill remembers that he likes to play morally ambiguous characters, and Cagney Mama Novotny Mama Westen Sharon Gless stops by for some family bonding and interrogation. The Strucker kids continue to be awesome and take after their mother. Vampire Bill Reed must have spent most of his time at work.

The mutants are in constant jeopardy, but that goes without saying.

The episode opens with a flashback to the Struckers on a family bowling outing one year ago. This must be something they do frequently, because they’re all good at it. Reed’s mom, Ellen, has come along. They’re an ideal suburban family, other than Lauren’s pesky little cheat using her mutant powers.

A few lanes over, a young teen mutant girl is vibrating uncontrollably. Some older teenage guys in the next lane are laughing and jeering at her. Her dad becomes angry and yells at the guys, which upsets his daughter even further.

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The Gifted Season 1 Episode 1: eXposed Recap

~ Metacrone

TG101Struckers

Moving on to the second Marvel TV series premiere of the week, FOX was clearly more committed to its show than ABC was to Inhumans, despite the Inhumans IMAX premiere. While it’s not prestige TV, The Gifted is a solid outing, with a familiar, talented cast and crew. It gets its very own Stan Lee cameo as a stamp of approval, something notably missing from Inhumans.

The Gifted is set in the X-men universe, at a time when the X-men themselves have disappeared. Mutants are being hunted down, captured, imprisoned, and mistreated in a variety of ways. There are government agencies dedicated to finding mutants and putting them away. In other words, it’s a time of mutant holocaust and genocide, though the normals justify their actions as being necessary for public safety and good people go along with it out of fear for themselves and their families. Until someone they love turns out to be a mutant.

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