Hello you crazy Prime subscribers (and assumedly a couple no-good crooks), I hope you’ve been well. Mark and the gang are back, and there will be a few spoilers as we recount how they escape from their sticky Sequid situation.
1. Feeling pretty super
God this is just the most superhero-y superhero show on air right now. We literally have an X-Men Saturday morning cartoon back on the air, and Invincible still feels like it packs in more trope-y fun.
Having purged the mid-season break rage I came into this episode ready to have fun. And it absolutely was willing to supply! By virtue of last episode’s cliffhanger we don’t have to worry about all the lead-up to a big conflict, we can dive right in and it makes the whole episode a lot stronger. There’s such a formula forming to how one of these episodes culminates and the action here was better because it got to get off those rails.
The sequid fight was a joy with a real sports movie feel to it in that everyone has their differing heavy-hitter skillsets and they’re united by just moving one object from one end of a room to another. The last chunk of the Lizard League battle is a joy too. It really made me feel like Rex is a Kick-Ass character that’s been transplanted into the world of Invincible, he’s got the penchant for misogyny, the bare-knuckle brawling and CTE, it’s a natural fit.
2. Space is for flying, earth is for crying
After the free-wheeling beginning of this episode, the action does cool off pretty quickly. Even if we don’t get a usual lead-up to an action finish this episode, we definitely still feel that structural compromise of fifty percent punches and fifty percent feelings under the surface.
I like the fallout of the Lizard League fight. Having both Rex and Shrinking Rae live doesn’t even feel like a cop-out, because there’s still a phyrrhic victory feeling knowing that they all came this close to dying just from fighting the Lizard League. We see how these heroes are going to have to get better faster if they ever want to stand a chance against Viltrumites. We see how fragile this world Mark takes care of is. Putting the Immortal in the room full of Dupli-Kate corpses is a masterful shot too, just a great statement on the scale of loss.
It’s such a beautiful shorthand that it feels like a waste to follow it up with a generic superhero funeral scene. I felt like I was transported back to the cinema of 2004 when we had a superhero funeral back to back with a superhero talking with spouse about the great responsibility that comes with their great power. My eyes were glazed over for five minutes straight.
Mark and Amber’s relationship problems have just never been that inspired in their writing, even bringing Art isn’t enough to save it. Plus we don’t get a costume change out of it.
3. Rex’s homes and gardens
The Rex redemption train is running and it is hitting every station on the route. Obviously we’re all going to be rooting for him by halfway through the next season, and then he will die in the most Jaime Lannister fashion he can muster.
Speaking of killing Rex, Lizard King had a good go of it. I quite like how the creative team made a point of squeezing out this big point of time for someone to swoop in and save Rex at the episode’s start, then just putting a bullet in him after all the anticipation. Having him then just stand up and save himself is just as good a choice, there’s no winning strategy or deus ex machina, just a guy who was lucky his opposition forgot to double tap. It’s weird really, I imagine King Lizard being a real Zombieland fan.
4. Chekhkov’s space prison
When it comes to a bit of humour, this show can pull of a great classic sight gag. The cutaway from Shapesmith’s arrest to the spaceship escape is great. The soundtrack of Baby Drummer’s Bad Nerves fuels the frantic energy of it, and then we have Mark half-heartedly pinballing his way through spaceships to cap it off. There’s a great comedic energy at play. It feeds the show’s great expression of emotion through flight as well, when we see the Immortal rigidly float back to Earth after fighting Allen you can feel the rage steaming off him.
The cheeky little Walking Dead reference and the book narration are also great. It did make me wish they did a full Flash Gordon or early Star Trek style serial for the sequence though. Changing the style on a show up is the most textbook choice in modern animation, give it a go Invincible!
I’m a big fan of Nolan’s space prison too that’s just crammed with at least two cantinas worth of crazy weird guys. The inevitable riot prison break in the finale is going to be an incredible sight to see.
5. Learning to love these freaks
Sometimes it feels like every episode of Invincible endevours to do too much in that it bounces between so, so many characters and plots. That said, it gives a great sense of granular progression in our understanding of the cast. I know more about how Debbie approaches trusting a person after today’s episode, for example.
While some of these progressions can be so granular as to be exhausting (think Donald’s existential angst), it can be a real joy when Cecil drops a line like “reminds me where I grew up” at Eve’s treehouse and you just know that’s the end of the convo, we’re not getting a single other detail from him. Similarly, even in such a celebrity-crammed show, it will never not be funny when Seth Rogen shows up and does his Allen the Alien thing.
See you next week as we count down the episodes to a Space Racer debut and Battle Beast return.
