The Gifted (Fox X-Men universe TV series) [spoilers]

[Annara Snow]

On 11/22/2017 at 8:02 PM, Pliskin said:

Well, I was just praising The Gifted... so of course better.

Eh, no. 
I mean, they haven't had really bad shows like Inhumans or Iron Fist or a disappointing show like The Defenders, so their average score may be higher, but neither The Gifted (though I like it) nor Legion (which is original and interesting but a bit overrated) are anywhere as good as Jessica Jones, Daredevil, or Agents of SHIELD when it's at its best (which season 4 definitely was), and I also liked The Punisher better than either of the Marvel Fox shows.

So far I'd rank all Marvel shows like this: Jessica Jones > Daredevil (mostly due to S1 and the Punisher parts of season 2) > Agents of SHIELD > The Punisher > Legion > Agent Carter (would be ranked higher on the basis of S1 alone) > The Gifted > Luke Cage > Runaways > The Defenders > Iron Fist > Inhumans.

 

[williamjm]

15 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

Eh, no. 
I mean, they haven't had really bad shows like Inhumans or Iron Fist or a disappointing show like The Defenders, so their average score may be higher, but neither The Gifted (though I like it) nor Legion (which is original and interesting but a bit overrated) are anywhere as good as Jessica Jones, Daredevil, or Agents of SHIELD when it's at its best (which season 4 definitely was), and I also liked The Punisher better than either of the Marvel Fox shows.

So far I'd rank all Marvel shows like this: Jessica Jones > Daredevil (mostly due to S1 and the Punisher parts of season 2) > Agents of SHIELD > The Punisher > Legion > Agent Carter (would be ranked higher on the basis of S1 alone) > The Gifted > Luke Cage > Runaways > The Defenders > Iron Fist > Inhumans.

I think I'd mostly agree with that ranking, apart from Runaways which I haven't seen yet. I'm not really sure where I'd place Agents of Shield in it, there have been such big variations in quality that it's difficult to compare it to more consistent shows - although in most cases they may be more consistent primarily because they are shorter.

Probably all the DC shows would fit in somewhere between Defenders and Iron Fist.

[Martini Sigil]

15 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

Eh, no. 
I mean, they haven't had really bad shows like Inhumans or Iron Fist or a disappointing show like The Defenders, so their average score may be higher, but neither The Gifted (though I like it) nor Legion (which is original and interesting but a bit overrated) are anywhere as good as Jessica Jones, Daredevil, or Agents of SHIELD when it's at its best (which season 4 definitely was), and I also liked The Punisher better than either of the Marvel Fox shows.

So far I'd rank all Marvel shows like this: Jessica Jones > Daredevil (mostly due to S1 and the Punisher parts of season 2) > Agents of SHIELD > The Punisher > Legion > Agent Carter (would be ranked higher on the basis of S1 alone) > The Gifted > Luke Cage > Runaways > The Defenders > Iron Fist > Inhumans.

 

I almost completely agree with this... and any variation on my part would be so minute that its not even worth mentioning...

[Pliskin]

17 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

Eh, no. 
I mean, they haven't had really bad shows like Inhumans or Iron Fist or a disappointing show like The Defenders, so their average score may be higher, but neither The Gifted (though I like it) nor Legion (which is original and interesting but a bit overrated) are anywhere as good as Jessica Jones, Daredevil, or Agents of SHIELD when it's at its best (which season 4 definitely was), and I also liked The Punisher better than either of the Marvel Fox shows.

I can't really argue about Agents of SHIELD, it's the only one I haven't watched save the first episode. It was so bad I couldn't get past it. Funny btw how everyone immediately despised Inhumans, despite the fact that AoS started way way worse. Granted, Inhumans never really improved (at least for the first 7 episodes I could bring myself to watch).

But for Netflix shows, despite some high points (the Daredevil fight scenes for instance), they mostly just forget to be... you know, fun. Superhero shows. With super powers. Too long, too slow, with the same pointless drag as in TWD. You could say something similar for Legion, but at least Legion tries to be colourful and artsy. Not just plain boring.
The thing is they had a good atmosphere for the first show (Daredevil) and then they just applied it to all their shows, without once wondering does it work in that case? No, it doesn't always. One season like this is enough.

The Gifted is what a Marvel TV show ought to be. Cool super powers, with an engaging enough story and characters. The only comparable show is Inhumans if it wasn't bad, and Heroes (if it didn't become bad).

[Corvinus85]

I wonder what the fate of this show will be as a result of the big Disney acquisition. As my mentioned in my OP, there seems to be a connection with the movie verse. Even though they keep repeating that the X-Men have disappeared, there is a mystery there that the show is itching to uncover. 

But to my knowledge, Fox the TV Network is not part of the deal with Disney, they'll go their separate ways.

[RumHam]

Huh, I thought this season already ended on a cliffhanger but apparently there was just a huge gap between the last two episodes. The finale apparently starts with a

Polaris

flashback.

[Annara Snow]

19 hours ago, Pliskin said:

I can't really argue about Agents of SHIELD, it's the only one I haven't watched save the first episode. It was so bad I couldn't get past it. Funny btw how everyone immediately despised Inhumans, despite the fact that AoS started way way worse. Granted, Inhumans never really improved (at least for the first 7 episodes I could bring myself to watch).

But for Netflix shows, despite some high points (the Daredevil fight scenes for instance), they mostly just forget to be... you know, fun. Superhero shows. With super powers. Too long, too slow, with the same pointless drag as in TWD. You could say something similar for Legion, but at least Legion tries to be colourful and artsy. Not just plain boring.
The thing is they had a good atmosphere for the first show (Daredevil) and then they just applied it to all their shows, without once wondering does it work in that case? No, it doesn't always. One season like this is enough.

The Gifted is what a Marvel TV show ought to be. Cool super powers, with an engaging enough story and characters. The only comparable show is Inhumans if it wasn't bad, and Heroes (if it didn't become bad).

I've seen all of Inhumans, purely for MCU completism, so I can tell you that it never got better.

The first few episodes of AoS really didn't give a very good impression of what the show was later going to be like. Although that pilot is kind of a strange animal though because it seemed much better when I rewatched the show than it did the first time, because, in retrospect, there are subtle clues and foreshadowing and you can see that there is so much more going on beneath the surface. Almost every character is engaging in some deceit and manipulation, and in some cases you can see it in the episode itself, but in others, not so much. For instance, there's a scene that is really stupid if you take it at face value, but really good if you assume it's staged by two characters to manipulate the third character in the scene (which I assumed, and the show pretty much confirms a couple of episodes later). And then there are some characters with separate secret agendas that you don't learn until the late in season 1, so on rewatch, you suddenly see everything about them differently. Still, as a pilot, it is a failure, as the point of a pilot is to give a taste of what the show would be like for people tuning in for the first time.

I'm not caught up on the DC shows, but I'm now trying to get through all of them chronologically. I'm now in season 4 of Arrow and season 2 of The Flash. And talk about inconsistency - the drop in quality of Arrow since the very start of season 3 is really shocking.

[Corvinus85]

I think there will be a new episode tonight, with a 2-hour finale schedule for Jan. 15. Really weird scheduling. And I find it surprising that a new show gets a 2-hour finale. 

[SpaceChampion]

Is this show any good?  I gave up i think after 5 minutes into the second episode.  If it's good, why?  I seen enough superheroes, don't really need to see more unless it actually tells a good story.

[williamjm]

2 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

Is this show any good?  I gave up i think after 5 minutes into the second episode.  If it's good, why?  I seen enough superheroes, don't really need to see more unless it actually tells a good story.

I think it does improve a bit after the first episode, although it's not doing anything particularly revolutionary, based on the previous discussion we mostly seem to think it's a mid-ranking show. I think what distinguishes it from most superhero adaptations is that it's really focusing on the mutants being an oppressed minority and they do usually seem genuinely outmatched (despite their abilities) and only barely managing to survive which I think gives it a different feel to most other shows.

[Annara Snow]

5 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

Is this show any good?  I gave up i think after 5 minutes into the second episode.  If it's good, why?  I seen enough superheroes, don't really need to see more unless it actually tells a good story.

 

2 hours ago, williamjm said:

I think it does improve a bit after the first episode, although it's not doing anything particularly revolutionary, based on the previous discussion we mostly seem to think it's a mid-ranking show. I think what distinguishes it from most superhero adaptations is that it's really focusing on the mutants being an oppressed minority and they do usually seem genuinely outmatched (despite their abilities) and only barely managing to survive which I think gives it a different feel to most other shows.

I think it has picked up, especially around episodes 7-8 when there are some big revelations, more comic book connections and big new threats are emerging on both sides. The latest episode ended on quite a cliffhanger.

Yeah, it is different because of just how oppressed and in a bad position the Mutants are. Sure, the oppressed minority theme has always been there with Mutants, but this show is set in a universe/timeline where the X-Men are gone, and the position of the Mutants, their lack of rights and the way the government treats them is probably harsher than anything we've seen, and the Mutant Underground (the good guys we are following) are labelled as a terrorist organizaton and hunted down.

[Martini Sigil]

Quote

 

Kind of dug the Purifiers showing up... and even the Hellfire Club , although the former seems like a better fit for the show, whereas they need to be careful implementing the latter .... dropping a big X-men name like this --which can lead to more name dropping-- might seem contrived... shoe-horning in X-folk (like they do with Batman villains on Gotham)  just might ruin an otherwise fun show...

[Corvinus85]

Besides putting the mutants in the case of an oppressed minority, this show also does a good job at showing the one truth about our society, that truth and right have become matters of perspective - the opening of last night's episode with the two funerals did this pretty well.

[Annara Snow]

On 1/2/2018 at 5:34 AM, Martini Sigil said:

Kind of dug the Purifiers showing up... and even the Hellfire Club , although the former seems like a better fit for the show, whereas they need to be careful implementing the latter .... dropping a big X-men name like this --which can lead to more name dropping-- might seem contrived... shoe-horning in X-folk (like they do with Batman villains on Gotham)  just might ruin an otherwise fun show...

There was certainly a lot of name-dropping in this episode, with the confirmation that the sisters' last name was Frost, and one of them all but namedropping Magneto to his daughter.

[Knight of Ashes]

I'm missing an episode or two since Blink and the Von Strucker siblings where still being held captive when last I saw them.

Anyway, I'm not so, um, enlightened as to completely disapprove of Lorna and Andy's decisions but that revelation that Lorna's bipolar comes close to being a cop-out.

Also, a studded leather jacket to denote she's the villain now? Come on, spikes would've worked better. 

I also hope Campbell's dead but since we didn't see a body...

[Corvinus85]

I liked how much the finale changed things for season 2. New lines form between the mutants, basically we're getting "amateur" X-Men vs. "amateur" Brotherhood. Campbell is in Schrodinger mode now, basically kill him off if the actor doesn't return for whatever reason, or bring him back if he does.

[Martini Sigil]

It is kind of cool that they didn't wimp out with Lorna bringing down the plane... that's some gangsta shit right there...lol

The X-men began as a metaphor for the civil rights movement... and its telling that after 50 years the brand remains a mirror to American sociology.... the Gifted comes at a good time ...with millennial angst on the rise, and immigration a hot button political item 

[Annara Snow]

On 1/16/2018 at 9:47 AM, Knight of Ashes said:

I'm missing an episode or two since Blink and the Von Strucker siblings where still being held captive when last I saw them.

Anyway, I'm not so, um, enlightened as to completely disapprove of Lorna and Andy's decisions but that revelation that Lorna's bipolar comes close to being a cop-out.

Also, a studded leather jacket to denote she's the villain now? Come on, spikes would've worked better. 

I also hope Campbell's dead but since we didn't see a body...

It's not a reveal, they've already mentioned that she's bipolar several episodes ago.(Well, I've also known before that because people on forums were mentioning it, as apparently her mental health issues are general knowledge from the comics. (I see what they did there when they created the character: she's Polaris, Magneto's daughter, has magnetic abilities and is bipolar...) 

[Knight of Ashes]

3 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

It's not a reveal, they've already mentioned that she's bipolar several episodes ago.(Well, I've also known before that because people on forums were mentioning it, as apparently her mental health issues are general knowledge from the comics. (I see what they did there when they created the character: she's Polaris, Magneto's daughter, has magnetic abilities and is bipolar...) 

Missed it then.