The Gifted - rX

The second episode of The Gifted is mainly about Kate (Amy Acker) and her children finding a home with the mutant underground while helping the injured Blink (Jamie Chung). On the flip side, after being pressured for nearly the entire episode, the captured Reed (Stephen Moyer) makes a compromise that likely he and his whole family may regret by agreeing to help the government take down the mutants in return for his family's safety. When push comes to shove, whose trust will he betray? The other major storyline of the episode gives us Polaris' (Emma Dumont) early days in prison. Aside from the logistical issues of putting mutant prisoners in with humans rather than housing them in more secure facility, the mutant-dampening collars feel a bit too goofy (even for a show based on comic book characters) and it's all-too-obvious that they are a major weakness in the only thing keeping the character from her friends.

Acker is the real stand-out here, while Dumont has some nice moments even if the writing of the prison scenes feels far-less inspired. Two episodes in, here are some things that are already bugging me: I don't really understand what Lauren's (Natalie Alyn Lind) mutant ability is (and I get the feeling that the writers don't either). Rather than leave the cops as possibly good people doing questionable jobs out of fear, like Reed was prior to discovering the truth about his children, this episode goes full-in making the government the bad guys of the series both in the corrupt prison and in Turner's (Coby Bell) obsession with mutants over justice. While I understand the choice, the I think the show misses the boat in a big way choosing to paint the series in stark black and white and not dabbling more in shades of gray.