Why am I’m not especially excited when a new episode of The Gifted shows up in my queue? The muted beige color palette washes everything out making the show visually uninteresting. Maybe that’s the core of it. All the locations look like bland Los Angelas and the background/minor actors perform like stage hands roped in to fill negative space. Not every show has to be Mr Robot, but the directors stick to straightforward episodic-television camera angles, beats, and tight shots on sets: all the world’s a backlot.

The show is about a family making their way through the shadowy world of the ostracized, but there’s little for the kids to do except to be present in thematically appropriate ways. The family needs to build trust with the underground. How do we show that? Let’s have them give blood, or apply pressure to wounds via powers. Oh, that’s good! But there’s no real urgency between them underscored by the plot. No damned-if-we-do-or-don’t choices (so well exploited by The 100). The predictable plot machinery is dealt with efficiently in order to get to the meat of the show which is … what, exactly? Four or five episodes in, the show is all prologue.