Sometimes when you binge enough teen shows in a short enough span of time, the storytelling rhythms all begin to feel the same. When I watched Gossip Girl in its entirety earlier in the pandemic, for example, every episode seemed to introduce several interpersonal conflicts (between friends, family, or romantic partners) only to resolve them with exchanged apologies following a climactic blowup. (The apology exchanges often felt even more stilted in the 2021 reboot.) Sometimes grudges last longer, but they inevitably end the same way, and it’s the writers’ responsibility to keep the formula entertaining.
I suppose that’s a framework that exists in plenty of genres — your traditional sitcom episode might begin with a miscommunication and end with a moment of shared understanding — but it feels especially common in a genre where young people regularly fuck up and then have to figure out how to hold themselves accountable. So when my roommate remarked, “They say ‘sorry’ a lot in this show,” during this episode of Gen V, it made me reflect. Going back, I counted at least 12 uses of the word sorry in “#ThinkBrink” — some in the context of an empathetic gesture (“I’m sorry for your loss”) and some as genuine apologies (“I’m sorry I hurt you”).
All of this is to say that the actual character stuff in Gen V can be a little predictable so far, but it also feels appropriate for a show like this. This wasn’t the first episode of the show that vaguely reminded me of Gossip Girl, and that’s not a bad thing. Take the classic Josh Schwartz plotting staple of bringing the whole cast together for an event (usually an expensive party) toward the end of every episode. Here, that means everyone converging at the memorial tribute gala (and silent auction) for the late Professor Brinkerhoff.
That event means something different for everybody. For Dean Shetty, it’s an opportunity to squeeze big donations out of wealthy donors after they’ve stalled. Despite her maternal shtick with Marie, it’s clear from the beginning of the episode that inviting her bright new student to the gala is self-serving. At first, Marie is all too willing to party with alumni, especially considering the possibility of being the first freshman ranked No. 1 in history. But she realizes before long that Shetty was using her to save her own ass.
As much as Marie insists she wants to stay out of the spotlight, a big aspect of her character is the desire to be widely perceived as a hero. Her goal, deep down, isn’t just to reunite with her sister but to prove herself to someone who thinks of her as a monster. Recently, Marie made the selfish choice of taking full credit for fighting Golden Boy, but it doesn’t truly gnaw at her until she experiences the scorn of her “friends” — and until she sees how much the dean used her. So when Jordan and Cate call her out at the gala, she blurts out the truth about her parents, finally giving them the full context of her story.
It’s a nice example of the scene I described earlier, especially because it allows Cate to share the truth of her own traumatic origin story: She discovered her mind-control powers when she was 9 years old and accidentally commanded her little brother to “go away and never come back.” Even more disturbingly, her parents never touched her again after that point, viewing her as a monster just like Marie’s sister sees her. Not everyone at Godolkin has a story quite this awful, but they’ve all seen the dark side of discovering superpowers.
One such person is Jordan, whose parents show up to honor Brink at the gala. Their father, Paul, quickly reveals that while he may not think of himself as intolerant, he’s still not accepting of their gender fluidity. At the gala, Jordan gets sick of staying in boy mode to appease their parents and switches to girl mode, reminding their dad that they’re only a boy half the time, if that. He argues that Jordan’s case is different from most queer kids; they don’t have a choice, but Jordan does.
The episode frames this as an ignorant comment, and Jordan gets a chance to remind their dad that they’ve always been the same person; they’ve always just been Jordan, no matter how they outwardly present. But it’s hard to know exactly how to write about Jordan’s gender at this point given the unprecedented nature of their situation: Is the implication that getting injected with Compound V as a child actually changed Jordan’s gender in addition to their physical manifestation, or were they always destined to have this dual identity?
The latter would make sense — Jordan’s new abilities were probably a helpful way of exploring and expressing two identities they already experienced — but the show is a little unclear about it. Regardless, I don’t have much of an issue with this yet. I’ll just be interested to hear more from Jordan about their experience as the show goes on. This story is an obvious metaphor for real-life genderqueer teens struggling to make their parents understand their identity, but it’s not quite a one-to-one comparison.
The real center of this episode, though, is Emma, who spends a lot of time denying to Marie and her mom that she needs help. The show is also playing a little bit coy about how seriously we should take both Marie’s cutting and Emma’s purging, but it’s clear that, much like Cate, Emma is overdoing it a little (if it’s healthy for her to do at all). But where there’s mess and trauma, Courtenay Fortney sees star potential. She and Emma’s momager have been discussing giving Emma her own reality show about battling her eating disorder. But when she makes just one suggestion — that the show be inspirational, not a cautionary tale — she gets immediate pushback.
After all the fakery and manipulation, it’s very satisfying to see Andre and Emma meet for the first time and share a joint. For one, Chance Perdomo and Lizze Broadway share a nice early platonic chemistry; we don’t spend too much time with them shooting the shit, but it feels like they’d get along naturally, and that’s always a relief amid all the violence and cynicism. But when Andre fills her in on the Woods, and Emma accepts the task of shrinking down to break Sam Riordan out of captivity, it’s a big moment. After being told constantly that Emma has to “work with what she has,” she’s crossing from the performing arts half of the show into the crime-fighting half.
We see the seeds of another interesting romantic pairing during the mission when Sam traps a shrunk-down Emma, thinking she’s a hallucination until her lack of knowledge about him assures him she isn’t a vision. Their flirting is a little cheesy, but there’s a lot of story potential to that unfortunate lie she tells in order to persuade him to escape. I don’t think he’ll be happy when he finds out that the brother who supposedly sent Emma to break him out is actually dead.
The episode ends with a cliffhanger as armed men flood into Sam’s cell, possibly catching Emma right after one of the gnarliest kills I’ve seen in this universe in a while: Emma crawling through one ear of a guard and out the other, leaving a trail of popped blood vessels in her wake. Welcome to the murder club, Emma! Come in, the water’s warm.
Extra Credit
• The opening flashback gives us the memorable image of Sam putting his fist through a man’s chest and out his mouth. Lovely.
• I’m not really cheering for Andre and Cate hooking up yet, and it might’ve been nice to let their sexual tension build up a little more first. I found Andre and Emma’s first meeting much more exciting in this episode.
• A solid one-liner that basically encapsulates Justine: “I want everyone to know how sorry I am.”
• “You look an inch or two shorter than usual, so you might need to add 50 calories.”
• Very icky (in a good way) moment when the dean receives this admiring comment about Marie: “She’s even more perfectly imperfect in person.” We never see any adult actually caring about her; she’s just their perfect protagonist, a tool to make them more money.
• Did I miss something, or how could Sam tell that Emma was pretty? That girl was half an inch tall! But I guess he probably has super-sight or something.
• Perhaps the best single moment in these first three episodes is the extreme close-up on Polarity’s face as he switches eerily from panicked (“You’re gonna get yourself killed. Drop it.”) to genial (“Hey, Kevin!”). What Sean Patrick Thomas does with his eyebrows in that moment is amazing, and kudos to director Phil Sgriccia for capturing it.
