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The Gifted Season 1, Episode 5 Review: Character Interactions Shine

Writer's Note: Apologies for this being late. Real life got in the way.

The Gifted season one, episode five expands on some character dynamics, moves some pieces of the plot around, and fills in some the gaps.

Writing Credits: Matt Nix (created by), Jim Campolongo (written by), Carly Soteras (story editor), and Brad Marques (staff writer)
Summary: Jace, motivated by a tragic event from his past, throws all the power of the Sentinel Services into finding the Mutant Underground Way Station; Blink's vivid dreams lead her to confront Dreamer.

It's becoming more and more apparent each week that The Gifted is a show that's going to live and die by its characters. Right now, those characters are proving to be quite interesting as we watch them all bounce off of each other.

Now that Lorna (Emma Dumont) and Reed (Stephen Moyer) are out of prison, we get some new drama. We get a really good idea of what kind of relationship Lorna and Marcos (Sean Teale) have, and it's pretty adorable. They seem pretty solid, which is something we don't get to see on television very often. They're clearly crazy about each other, but it's also pretty clear that they've been together for a decent amount of time. Lorna is clearly not great after her time in prison, either, and they are telegraphing that she's heading to the dark side.

As for the Strucker family, it's nice to see Reed's idiocy from the second episode come back to bite him in the ass. He nearly sold the Mutant Underground out, and no one trusts him for that. This means he has to put his life in the hands of a mutant that every reason to hate him, and it's a pretty tense scene.

No one really seems to trust the Strucker family, which is probably the right thing to do. Caitlin (Amy Acker), Lauren (Natalie Alyn Lind), and Andy (Percy Hynes White) all work together to save a life, though, and it looks like people are warming up to them. We also, finally, get someone addressing the abuse of powers thing that has been hovering over several characters for a few episodes. It feels a bit like manufactured drama.

The big thing that is finally revealed is what happened on July 15th and why Agent Jace (Coby Bell) hates mutants as much as he does. While the reason does make sense, if this was an attempt to try and make us sympathize with the character, it doesn't really work. The angle they take with him at the end is interesting even if it, again, feels a bit like manufactured drama for the sake of drama. There was quite a bit of exposition in this episode now that everyone is home, and it looks like the next episode will be the Lauren and Andy training montage.

The Gifted continues to work because of the world-building and the characters, but it seems like they might be showing their hand a bit too much for future episodes. We can hope they defy expectations for some of these characters, but despite the exposition, this was another solid episode in a show that is so much better than it has any right to be.

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