Critic Reviews

It’s a gripping and savvy series that carves out its own space in the cluttered comic-book TV landscape.

Although The Gifted lacks the tongue-in-cheek humor of Netflix’s Jessica Jones or The Defenders, it stays afloat with quality special effects and surprisingly excellent performances across the large ensemble cast.

Fox’s The Gifted is everything ABC’s “Marvel’s Inhumans” is not: exciting, suspenseful and brimming with interesting, smart characters.

The episode may bear Singer’s hallmarks, but Nix’s story provides a fresh take on teen angst, family tensions, and being feared for being different. The script is far from flawless; some of the dialogue is clunky, and Acker’s character is underdeveloped compared to the rest of the Strucker family. Good performances and respectable special effects help the pilot clear those hurdles, though, and set up a promising new drama.

Where the show goes will largely determine its ability to sustain itself as a weekly series, but “The Gifted” gets off to a smarter, more visually compelling start than the other new superhero show of the fall season that debuts tonight.

There are certainly plot points that seem insufficiently thought through. But the actors--including Sean Teale, Jamie Chung, Emma Dumont and Blair Redford as the mutant resistance--give a good account of themselves.

The Gifted pilot is all the things “Inhumans” isn’t: quick, tense, funny, occasionally moving. Exposition is at a minimum and the obligatory speeches about intolerance and conformity are kept short.

The Gifted does a better job at establishing its initial story arc than “Inhumans,” but that’s not exactly a high bar to clear, and it still has the look and feel of a series with a paltry budget. ... At times the pilot resembles a middling round of cosplay, complete with temporary tattoos, Halloween contact lenses and Manic Panic highlights.

The Gifted falls pretty squarely in the middle. Based on tonight’s pilot episode (the only one Fox screened for critics), it gets the basics down and doesn’t try to deliver more than what you might expect, for better or worse.

The thing The Gifted accomplishes that's most essential is that the Struckers work as a family.