So last night was the season two premiere of The Gifted. I thought it was pretty good…but some of the issues I had with season one are definitely still there. So what’s a girl to do but make a list?

The Good

1. Lorna was, as always, wonderful. Emma Dumont’s performance in the first season was better than anyone else’s; Lorna was the standout character; and it’s nice to see her continuing to be great. I may not be a fan of the baby storyline – and I’m kind of annoyed she didn’t name her Sonya – but this ep as it pertained to Lorna gave me a great performance, an awesome demonstration of powers, and was just all around fun to watch.
2. Reeva Payge! She’s got the charm, a great wardrobe, and right now, is the only thing keeping the new Inner Circle from being painfully white (Hahaha, White Queen, only one not white, sorry). I really liked watching her. I especially liked how she explicitly brought up the variety of other things she’d been hated for in her life aside from her powers – her poverty, the colour of her skin.
3. The Struckers may have all taken turns in being annoying in season one, but Andy’s really improved. There was no whining in 2×01, just him trying to help Lorna. I cracked up at his “she just needs to keep pushing” when she was in labour after he’d said earlier that if she got preeclampsia, he’d do his best. I mean…points for effort? Negative points for lack of helpfulness.

The Bad

1. The episode still felt kind of choppy and unbalanced. Sage was there, but not really doing anything. Pretty much everything involving Caitlin, Reed, and Lauren was clunky, awkward, and could have easily been excluded, or at least streamlined. I didn’t like how it kept cutting back to them when Lorna was in the middle of having a baby. The Cuckoos still haven’t gotten the chance to behave as individuals, rather than as a collective unit – and seeing as three in the show are Esme, Sophie, and Phoebe, who have the most similar personalities of the five Cuckoos in the comics, I’m questioning whether they’ll ever get nuanced and unique characterizations.
2. The Inner Circle isn’t behaving much like the comics Hellfire Club. It seems more Brotherhood than anything. Which isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s kind of disappointing.
3. John and Clarice as a romantic thing just doesn’t do it for me. In concept, it’s fine, but they were thrown together in such a clumsy way in season one, and now skip ahead six months and they’re happily living together, no issues? No Clarice still being a little uncertain as to what’s her and what was Sonya? No John being hesitant about jumping into another relationship so soon after Sonya, who he’d been with for a substantial amount of time? I don’t know. I don’t find it interesting or well written.
4. For fuck’s sake, why am I the only one that cares about Sonya?! A mention, please?!

The Ugly

1. Andy’s dye job. That is so bad.
2. I don’t know what Andy’s name suggestions were, but Lorna, I don’t think you have much room to judge when you named a kid Dawn Dane.

Overall, I quite liked the episode. It was entertaining. I didn’t love all of it – especially how the Strucker family still isn’t working for me and it was detracting a lot from Lorna and Reeva, the best parts of the episode – but it was good enough to keep me watching for now. Next week, we’re going to see the Morlocks, which really excites me. If handled well, they could really drive home the message that neither the underground nor the Inner Circle are actually helping mutants. It’s not ideal, seeing as that message was what the underground itself was supposed to be to conveying last season – the X-Men and the Brotherhood could have their ideological conflicts, but the underground had to actually do help people without those resources – but maybe it’ll actually come through this time.

…a girl can hope.