Spoilers The Gifted - Season 1

[JD]

Same here, I know the Stepford Cuckoos, but didn't realize she was one of them.
Lorna definitely has some anger and aggression issues.
The big reveal with Reed was a big surprise. I can't help but wonder if that will come into play somehow before the series is over, I can't see something this big never coming up again.

 

[Christopher]

Lorna definitely has some anger and aggression issues.

Between that and her hair and complexion, sometimes she reminds me of a female Joker. Is Polaris that pale-skinned in the comics?

 

[Greg Cox]

Between that and her hair and complexion, sometimes she reminds me of a female Joker. Is Polaris that pale-skinned in the comics?

Not traditionally, no. And, yeah, sometimes the TV version looks more like the Joker's daughter than Magneto's.

 

[JD]

I'm pretty sure that's just Emma Dumont's natural skin tone. I'm curious to see where they are going to bring her character's parentage and mental health issues into the story.

 

[JD]

It looks like we'll be getting to meet at least one more member of The Stepford Cuckoos in the fall finale.

 

[theenglish]

There was even an early issue where Professor X had an internal thought-balloon monologue about his unrequited love for his teenaged student Jean Grey. Mercifully, that was never followed up on.

That can be chalked up to the era though. There was an episode of Dick Van Dyke where we find out Laura was seventeen when they got married. The dilemma was that they weren't legally married because she lied on the marriage certificate not that she was a teenager at the time.

 

[Christopher]

That can be chalked up to the era though. There was an episode of Dick Van Dyke where we find out Laura was seventeen when they got married. The dilemma was that they weren't legally married because she lied on the marriage certificate not that she was a teenager at the time.

I looked it up, and it is still legal to get married at 17 in New York State, where the show was set (although it was only just raised this year from a minimum of 14 with parental and judicial consent). There are a number of US states where the age of consent is 16 or 17. So that's not really a good analogy. In the X-Men example, not only are we talking about a character who was supposed to be maybe 15 (at a guess), but we're talking about a professor desiring his own live-in student.

 

[theenglish]

I looked it up, and it is still legal to get married at 17 in New York State, where the show was set (although it was only just raised this year from a minimum of 14 with parental and judicial consent). There are a number of US states where the age of consent is 16 or 17. So that's not really a good analogy. In the X-Men example, not only are we talking about a character who was supposed to be maybe 15 (at a guess), but we're talking about a professor desiring his own live-in student.

It's probably been twenty years since I've seen that episode so I probably am remembering some details incorrectly, but I'm sure I can find other examples. What we think of us "creepy" today was not really considered that even only fifty years ago--

 

[Relayer1]

I was kinda ready to give up on the show due to its plodding dullness

Yeah, it's kind of unremittingly average. We're not quite as far through as America though. Maybe the cuckoos will help...

 

[Christopher]

What we think of us "creepy" today was not really considered that even only fifty years ago--

Yeah, but some things come off creepier in retrospect than others. As I said, it's for the best in the long term that the "Xavier secretly loves his underage student" plot point was abandoned after a single issue. (I gather that the Ultimate Universe did pick up on this plot point, but that was a continuity that tended to go to some pretty nasty places on purpose.)

 

[theenglish]

I agree that it is pretty average. It keeps my attention and is better than Inhumans but The Runaways has caught my attention much more quickly. The Gifted just doesn't have any really interesting characters so far and the story really hasn't moved forward very far eight episodes into the season.

 

[Christopher]

I like the twist at the end here -- they've been setting up the idea for weeks that Andy was the angry one who wanted to embrace his power and was perhaps less concerned about the harm he could do, and then when it came down to it and they were on the verge of destroying the whole building with their combined powers, it was Andy, not Lauren, who stopped them because he didn't want to kill anyone. That was a nice surprise.

On the other hand, I don't know what they're up to with Esme. They spent the whole episode making her look almost cartoonishly devious and manipulative, as if she were leading them into a trap, and I wondered if we'd get the surprise twist that she actually was just trying to save her family all along. But then the whole thing was aborted and we still don't know what the deal was with her. All that buildup and no payoff -- kinda weird. Okay, maybe they'll pay it off next week, but if they weren't going to pay it off here, why invest so much in setting it up here?

Agent Turner was very genre-savvy to figure out that the security guard had been compromised. I guess he saw X2: X-Men United.

Speaking of which, in that oddly clunky scene where Lauren & Andy just happened to find a book in the refugees' library that told them everything they needed to know about their evil ancestors even though nobody else ever seemed to have heard of them before, they mentioned that Fenris had disappeared after fighting the X-Men, or something. Wasn't that in the '50s? How long have the X-Men existed in this continuity?

 

[JD]

Yeah, it was surprising to hear that the X-Men had been around that long. I'm not quite sure what the point of that scene was since they had Reed telling them about Fenris just a few scenes later.
Esme screwing around in everybodies' heads was a bit unnerving.
I wonder if the fact that there are Stepford Cuckoos in this universe means that Emma Frost is, or was, around?
Have we gotten any namedrops of specific X-Men or Brotherhood members?
In all the mentions of the groups I don't remember hearing any specific names yet.

Agent Turner was very genre-savvy to figure out that the security guard had been compromised. I guess he saw X2: X-Men United.

I was a bit surprised that he figured things out so quickly, but I guess at this point they've been dealing with mutants long enough that they have a pretty good idea of what they're capable of.

 

[Christopher]

I'm not quite sure what the point of that scene was since they had Reed telling them about Fenris just a few scenes later.

Normally I'm in favor of any scene that gives Natalie Alyn Lind more screen time, but yeah, that scene was weird, clumsy, and a bit redundant, like it was put in as an afterthought.

I wonder if the fact that there are Stepford Cuckoos in this universe means that Emma Frost is, or was, around?
Have we gotten any namedrops of specific X-Men or Brotherhood members?

Aside from Thunderbird/John himself, no, I don't think so.

 

[JD]

I wonder if they're leaving things open in case they want to bring in some bigger characters, and don't want to limit things to much?
I still can't help but wonder if Stephen Moyer might eventually be to convince the Mrs. to make an appearance at some point.

 

[Christopher]

I wonder if they're leaving things open in case they want to bring in some bigger characters, and don't want to limit things to much?

Yeah, that stands to reason.

I still can't help but wonder if Stephen Moyer might eventually be to convince the Mrs. to make an appearance at some point.

I had to look up who that was. Are you imagining Anna Paquin reprising Rogue?

 

[JD]

Yeah.

 

[Forbin]

I thought when they mentioned the Hellfire club while reading that book, there was briefly a woman's picture shown in the book. Was it Emma Frost? Or just something random.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Nice little twist at the end with Andy deescalating their joined powers and not Lauren, but the rest is still pretty rudimentary with bad dialogue (although it is getting slightly better). I keep hoping for more and last week's episode was a tick up, but then it fell right back into the same old dumb stuff.

I thought when they mentioned the Hellfire club while reading that book, there was briefly a woman's picture shown in the book. Was it Emma Frost? Or just something random.

I took a look back. On the left page, it's all photos of the twins, but on the right page, there's a small portion shown from a group photo where a different man and woman are visible, but the woman is a brunette.

 

[Christopher]

Nice little twist at the end with Andy deescalating their joined powers and not Ashley

You mean Lauren.