The Gifted

The Gifted has come out of the gate with a solid first hour and memorable cast (something that’s hard when there are so many of them), and there are plenty of things that should make viewers optimistic--assuming it can cut through the noise and prove that it deserves to.

This latest Marvel concoction is better than ABC’s Marvel’s Inhumans, which launched on Friday of last week. Still, an overall weariness prevails, perhaps even among the most fanatical Marvel diehards.

Viewers have seen this all before so many times before that The Gifted feels just ordinary.

The show, created by Matt Nix, is hampered by a sometimes laughably bad script and second-rate special effects, not to mention the predictability of the story line. The actors playing the Strucker kids, played by Natalie Alyn Lind and Percy Hynes White, deliver decent performances, as do Acker and Moyer, but it all feels underwhelming.

The Gifted is driven by action, not character development, and it soon settles into a humdrum series of cheapjack versions of set pieces from Carrie. Don't get too excited; whether through budget shortfalls or fears of rousing the FCC programming police from their deathbed, there are no exploding heads or even a pig-blood shower. Such a pity.

The Gifted struggles to find any of the wonder in their gifts. In what seems to be a misguided attempt to look “serious,” “The Gifted” is a gray, humorless hour oriented towards cheap-looking action sequences. It could have withstood a bit of mutation of its own.