Invincible continues in fighting form with its fourth episode “ Neil Armstrong, Eat Your Heart Out.” Spoilers Ahead for anyone still hoping to surprise themself with what sweater Marc will wear this episode.
1. Conceited Patriarch
Despite his proclivity for skull squishing, the training sequence early in this episode really hammered home for me the fact that Omni-Man genuinely loves his son. He’s so excited for what Invincible could be, even if that’s more a celebration of Marc’s violence than the outcomes that violence provides. He’s just less guarded around his family in a really interesting way; when he’s around Marc he’s a bitter guy about the state of his world. He still embodies that Superman-esque rustic simplicity in his candidness despite the content of that sentiment being a lie. He’s the most genuine liar you could ever be.
Nolan’s attempts to get Debbie back also highlight some really well-illustrated aspects of his character. After episode three’s demonic home invasion, the creators do a great job of highlighting how sensitive Nolan can be to the imperceptible traces of subterfuge around him. He reacts to twitches with lunges and it’s probably the only thing about Omni-Man that actually scares Cecil. It’s a miracle he hasn’t somehow discovered the giant surveillance house next door to him. Although, it felt pretty flimsy to have Nolan just sitting back as people died around him. It was just contrived in how evil it is.
2. Demon Days on the Downfall
Episode 4 really was just a Damien Darkblood pilot in disguise, we spent so long with the guy and goddammit I started to love him! Absolutely nothing compared to the so-creepy-that-you-have-to-laugh line “Go Fuck Yourself Darkblood.” From there he just keeps rolling with the punches as the “Spy Vs. Spy” antics of Cecil and Damien hits the high gear, and it’s kind of great. Cecil’s exorcism really emphasises how there aren’t really segregated points between magic and technology in this world, there’s just power and scope and how you use that. Even the DCU and MU really struggle to have that sort of generic fluidity. Plus Chris Diamantopoulos and Walton Goggins probably have the best joke of the episode straight after with “He’s not dead he’s just back in hell” “isn’t that worse?”
3. Is this how people are supposed to date?
So romance is in the air like a respiratory illness this episode, we got love triangles, love hexagons, even love lines (love semicircles? There aren’t a lot of shapes with two corners). This episode does the most to sell Amber and Marc’s chemistry across their second date and more honest encounters. I really love how tongue in cheek the whole thing is about Marc hiding his double life with lines like “That is a strangely non-specific story,” the guy’s a bad liar and no one is pretending otherwise. Could absolutely do without the weird protracted voluntourism ad going on though.
Meanwhile there is the absolutely worst arc of the show which is the creepy slow burn romance between Robot and Monster Girl, which the show feels determined to throw Rex Splode in the middle of. Even in the comic, Monster Girl’s reverse aging is contrived in how creepy it is, that really doesn’t get any better here. Last episode I had to sit through the line “I’m sure your junk is awesome” from the voice of a twelve year old and the fact that this episode feels even WORSE is really certifying this whole plotline in the ‘never even try and think about this again’ section of my brain.
Meanwhile Debbie and Nolan continue to be the two-hit combo that breathes life into this show, I cannot get over their absolute RAPORT. The fact that Sandra Oh can still imbue such candidly spoken lines as ‘you’re mean’ and ‘you’re hiding something and it hurts’ with layers shows the real trust between writers, actors and animators in letting so much of their character interplay happen on the implicative layer. Their struggle really shows how unreal Nolan’s past is to Debbie, she has had to place so much trust in a story steeped in a grandiose world of grandiose morals. She loves a man larger than life, so when she starts seeing how small he really is, she feels that this whole grand narrative is starting to suffocatingly shrink around her.
Continued below4. Perspectives from the halfway mark
“ Neil Armstrong, Eat Your Heart Out,” like last episode, had a habit of slipping by for scenes at a time. It’s not boring, but it’s not engaging for a lot of it, so its forty minute runtime just feels filled but never really utilised. This is largely due to the fact that every major set piece in this episode just felt like a succession of something we had seen already, rather than something wholly new. Marc and Nolan’s training scene is one in a long line of them, the mission to Mars feels like a more nuanced version of the Flaxan narrative, even Marc and Amber’s second date is just a slightly more outdoorsy retread of their first. I really hope next episode will show us what Cecil’s next arc is now that he’s the sole actor against Omni-Man, otherwise this show is just going to feel like a flat wait for the inevitable conflict of the finale.
5. Martian Meandering
As harsh as I’m being, I actually really enjoyed Marc’s holiday to Mars. That first shot of him marvelling over the red planet is the best suture for the clash between the CG-animated spectacles and hand drawn characters, it’s a perfect injection of scale and fidelity. That said, the astronauts seem a lot less impressed than I was based on their mild-mannered Mars landing, no ‘one small step’ or anything, just straight into the schlub work of mineral samples.
As sparing as it was, I really like this portrait of Martian society too. Djimon Honsou packs so much fury into his role as the Martian Emperor, perfectly embodying this monolithic society in crisis. It really could have felt canned but instead it measures up to some of the best martian stories, definitely left me itching to reread Orlanda and Rossmo’s “Martian Manhunter.”
Also good on Marc for collecting rocks. We like a guy who appreciates his rocks.
Food for thought:
-Mauler is really just making his way down the RTJ discography
-Loved the morbid ‘when in doubt throw them into space’ callback
-I swear the opening minutes of this episode were a fever dream. Will this… Ever be referenced again?
Next week we will be back for the fifth episode of Invincible in which Omni-Man will definitely do nothing illegal or reprehensible.
