Gen V recap: Welcome to The Whole Truth

A smash cut to black! And it comes just as you could feel our merry band of college supes finally forming the kind of X-Men: First Class team they’re bound to become as they face whatever forces have kept Luke’s brother, Sam, in custody.

Ballsy. But more on that in a second. Because first we have to contend with a threat more insidious and more pressing than Sam’s superstrength (and righteous anger over the loss of his brother). Yes, I’m talking about Tek Night (Derek Wilson), host of The Whole Truth. The famed Godolkin U alum is a kind of Cumberbatchian Sherlock who has made a career for himself keying into how his guests lie. (He can see heart rates go up, beads of sweat slink down foreheads, etc.) He’s arrived at God U to answer the number one trending question on all socials: Why did Golden Boy do it?

This puts him at odds with the God U kids on the one hand, who struggle, still, to keep their stories straight, and with Dean Shetty herself, who now has Sam’s disappearance to deal with and keep from the higher ups at Vought.

For yes, Sam and Emma made it out of the Woods—and killed pretty much everyone who got in their way and only left a tiny shoe to give Shetty enough of a lead to follow. The flirty couple (really, can this show stop shipping every one of its characters?) are in an abandoned drive-in theater where we learn Sam loves to make nipple jokes, which Emma finds quite charming. Less charming? The way Sam goes berserk first when hearing about his brother dying and then when he starts talking to the voices in his head—voices which, as we see, come from television personality Jason Ritter (yes, really) and a muppet the Deep, replete with foamy gills. It’s all very disorienting but it’s what eventually leads Sam to go after Brink’s No. 2, Dr. Cardosa (the hunky Marco Pigossi) at his home, which is where his Gen V brethren will successfully subdue him before the smash cut I outlined above happens.

In the lead up to that confrontation between all these superpowered college kids (which plays out exactly as you’d think, with Jordan yet again proving they’re the canniest and strongest of them all) what we get is an episode where Tek Night blows up everyone’s attempts at lying—to others and to themselves.

In successive interviews that are edited seamlessly to show Night’s ability to cut through everyone’s bullshit, he gets Andre to reveal he’s been sleeping with Cate and gets Cate to be nervous enough about her relationship with Luke to think about taking her gloves off. Only Jordan keeps their cool.

But Night wreaks more havoc in class where, with cameras in tow, he gets Marie to offer up information she’d been keeping all this time: her expulsion and Jordan’s involvement in the fight against Luke. She clearly breaks, unable to keep her wits about her as Jordan tells her, “You keep doing the dumb thing.”

Marie may think she’s doing the right thing (looking for Emma, giving Jordan the credit they deserve), but it’s always so carelessly done. It’d be endearing if it wasn’t so foolish. Oh wait, apparently everything Marie does is actually both given how Jordan reacts: Turning into boy Jordan, he goes ahead and kisses Marie. (Another ship! That’s six characters now neatly paired off into three couples!) As with a lot of the decisions these God U kids make, this is baffling. As baffling, really, as the fact that Marie would approach a complete stranger (a psychic, no less!) to help her find Emma…and in the process reveal inklings about her sister. (That he’s clearly a walking roofie who was all too happy to take advantage of her doesn’t help.)

Thankfully, Night’s chaos agent role is thwarted by the one character with no powers. Dean Shetty proves herself capable of handling the threat of being made to be the patsy who takes the fall for Brink and Golden Boy by blackmailing Night with compromising footage (of what the dean calls his “proclivities,” namely his inability to not fuck any inanimate hole he encounters.)

And so The Whole Truth comes to an end without any real consequence. Night leaves campus without besmirching the Dean nor any of her top five supes (which now includes Marie).

That leaves our young would-be heroes free to try to stop Sam from attacking (killing?) Dr. Cardosa at the behest of Jason Ritter (yes, really). Which they do to their best of their abilities—especially Emma, who gorges herself on Italian food, makes herself big, and subdues Sam with a tenderness that shows she’s gonna be there for him (even as she pins him to the ground).

Which brings us to that smash cut to black. No sooner has Marie told Sam that they’re all in this together than we’re offered an image of Marie waking up next to girl Jordan. What, uh, happened in between? Seems like crucial stuff, right?

Stray observations

• Would it have been too meta to have “The Whole Truth” be structured as an actual episode of Night’s The Whole Truth? (Or is this just me wishing shows like Gen V were as formally inventive as, say, 30 Rock when it came to spoofing the Queen Of Jordan shows it imagined in its own universe?)
• While we’re making wishes for the upcoming episodes of Gen V: When do we think Polarity will be fleshed out as a character that goes beyond “caring but domineering father”?
• “Tag-team cocksplosion” is now a phrase I wish I hadn’t heard (or, truly, seen illustrated). But I guess it now opens new possibilities for what Marie can do with her blood bending powers.
• See also: “What if I had fifty nipples under my shirt?”
• A+ usage of Maggie Rogers’ “Want Want” (during Jordan/Marie’s kiss).
• I keep looking at a sentence like “I’m gonna Johnny Depp someone so hard they’re gonna want to crawl into a hole and die” and I’m still unsure what Night means.
• I love me a good Broadway shoutout, and Avenue V is pretty solid.
• Okay, but why is Gen V making me wonder whether fucking a hand dryer would feel good?

Stream Gen V now on Amazon Prime Video.