Intriguing and delightful, Fox’s The Gifted draws new wealth from old ground.
Confession: I wasn’t looking forward to The Gifted.
Fox’s new X-Men-in-the-cold-hard-world family series was a hard sell to begin with, at least for me. It’s a crowded field out there for superhero television, and the cute blonde teenagers playing with superpowers in early previews didn’t give me much beyond the CGI.
I’ve been there for X-Men. I’ve been there for Logan. Aside from the suggestions of family drama, I had no idea what might entice me to stay in a world of marginalized heroes that I’ve visited so many times before.
Therefore, consider this the word of a skeptic converted: Superheroes or no superheroes, The Gifted is one of the best network pilots of the season.
It’s cool. It’s grounded. It’s touching. It just works.
It is still true that many of the series’ opening movements will be familiar to fans of the X-Men (and the seemingly bottomless well of superhero television in general.) Powered people flee in desperation from shady authorities, while mutants cluster in secret bunker-colonies. Families are forced to confront their children’s unexpected identities, and there’s even one of those nifty anti-mutant prison cells.
There are no great surprises or subversions of genre at work in “eXposed,” the premiere episode. As established, this is all well-trod territory. And yet, The Gifted manages to march its way to an appealingly self-assured pilot that promises much greater developments to come.
The Gifted does its best and most appealing work in the arena of character, a welcome shift from this season’s other new Marvel series that I shall not name. With a nicely balanced blend of new faces and established characters from the X-Men universe, the series wastes no time in drawing a clean, no-nonsense cast coded with DNA that feels familiar, but not repetitive.
It also helps that each character comes with enough sharp edges to draw dramatic blood for a good long while.
The series’ riveting opening sequence introduces viewers to the mutant side of the equation — or most of it, anyway. Businesslike and wry, leader John Proudstar and lovers Marcos and Lorna are on the hunt for a green-eyed, portal-spawning mutant named Clarice (yes, that’s Blink from Days of Future Past.) Lorna, utterly at ease amidst the violence, is apprehended due to being — pardon my colloquialism — fierce AF, as her fellow mutants reluctantly flee without her.
This brings Lorna into the sphere of one Reed Strucker (True Blood‘s Stephen Moyer), who is The Gifted‘s least interesting character by a considerable distance. Part loving family man, part anti-mutant prosecutor, Reed is the closest thing the show has to a strong-jawed everyman, though even that ordinary archetype begins to waver by the end of the pilot.
Reed’s family is the final piece of this powerful puzzle, a comfortable All-American bunch that The Gifted clearly holds at its heart. (I’m not yet convinced, but am open to further persuasion.) Mom Caitlin (Amy Acker) is a well-meaning nurse, daughter Lauren is a well-adjusted popular kid, and son Andy is a pubescent train wreck waiting to happen.
Spoiler alert: The train wreck happens.
Forced on the run by their children’s freshly and surprisingly unveiled mutant abilities, the Struckers very quickly become refugees in their own country. (Yes, given Reed’s job, it’s extremely ironic.) It’s here that the gears of The Gifted really start to run, as characters collide and facades collapse around everyone involved in this wild mutant chase.
It should be noted that this includes even the shadowy Sentinel Services officer hunting the Struckers, who has more than a little depth tucked into the painful twist of his mouth. It’s those little things, even more than the skillful set pieces, that really gives the flavor to The Gifted. Even over the space of the pilot, very little feels forgotten.
Both Marvel-inspired pilots of this season begin, literally and metaphorically, by tossing their characters from a great height into dark and unknown places. The team from ABC has their crew land with an uninspired thud, but perhaps they should have taken a cue from The Gifted.
Because The Strucker family and the mutant underground aren’t falling. They’re flying, even if the audience knows it long before they do.
The Gifted series premiere, “eXposed,” airs tonight at 9:00 p.m. on Fox.