Invincible takes a turn into optimism, romance and undead existentialism in “You Look Kinda Dead.” Spoilers follow.
1. Damage sticks
As the series winds on, it really feels like we’re spending longer and longer inside superhero hospitals with our cast of punching bags. Just watching Monster Girl have blood seizures while Mark has his entire rib cage rebuilt in the room over makes all that freewheeling superhero fun feel so much more consequential. We understand that Mark is more than just someone joining the family business, he’s someone who voluntarily accepts incredible pain for others on a daily basis. These scenes are what helps sell the idea that Mark would want to quit violent heroism, but goddamn do they make me regret all the times I sneered at people for watching Grey’s Anatomy.
This sequence also gave us one of the best shots of the episodes with that silent frame within a frame of Nolan and Debbie crying over Mark through one-way glass, as Cecil and Donald sit silently behind them, protected by another layer of glass. This ends up feeling even more evocative when the final shot of the episode is another frame within a frame, this time of Nolan alone, shot from behind the jagged, broken wood of his failing home.
2. Cookie cutter coming of age
So, for a couple weeks now I’ve been complaining about how canned the high school aspects of this show felt. Turns out that would just get worse once Mark went to university. Our episode even starts with the most default Hollywood cut-and-paste sorority girls (albeit accompanied by a surprise Justin Roiland frat boy) and the education interpretation doesn’t really get any more nuanced from there.
That said, giving Mark’s personal cast of Amber, Eve and Will a little more aspiration detached from Mark’s life definitely benefits them all as characters. Will is still sort of two-dimensional, but he has this new kind of energetic passion to him. Eve is still a character precipeced on the patriarchal figures she has to defy, but her reinvention of self gives the show’s shoddy themes of voluntourism the most validity they’ve had. Plus “Knock Me Off My Feet” by Soak gives that treehouse scene infectiously good vibes.
Mark and Amber are definitely still the predominant character pairing of the series however, and their interplay is getting a lot more tolerable seeing as it’s properly built on a real history between them now. Obviously their woes and struggles still feel a little toothless, but I’m getting on board with what this show is trying to portray. That said, Amber is VERY harshly judging how people react to immediate life-threatening danger. Like even if Mark had just run off to save his own ass, I don’t think that would be a crime against humanity. Let people be cowards every once in a while.
3. Finding joy in the familiar
Every once in a while, I start feeling like I’m taking the show’s best aspects for granted simply because they’re familiar. This series is so consistently great in its delivery, that you forget how well handled the body of each episode is. Like Steven Yeun, he has made Invincible such an instantly definable protagonist who I am addicted to watching get pummelled.
Meanwhile we have JK Simmons’s constant fast talking rage just inhabiting the entire screen every moment he’s speaking. I’m just obsessed with it. There’s just this sense of overwhelming control in him that is so magnetising to watch. I didn’t even realise that he could be MORE scary with rigid, disciplined outbursts, than the haphazardly violent ones we could expect from him in a lesser show.
On the topic of voice actors, Jonathan Groff as seccy boy Rick Sheridan was fun. I’m still used to hearing that man drift closer to psychopathy as Holden Ford in Mindhunter, so having him just be a happy and wholesome guy here was fun. Plus he must have had the neuroplasticity of a CHAMP when he overrode that reaniman programming. The joys of youth.
4. The technical tricks of tasteful body horror
The reanimen arc of “Invincible” was probably one of the weakest stories for me, it felt more cliched, less inspired, and more sanitised than everything going on around it. Now this episode isn’t a perfect remake, but there’s just something else here that clicks where that initial story didn’t. I hate to admit it, but it probably has a lot to do with being able to watch a cyborg peel off its own skin in 24 fps. It takes a lot to make body horror work in a comic, it does not take much to make it work here, so consider me irked.
Continued belowThat said, DA Sinclair is the most canned caricature the show has had so far. There’s just not enough persona to justify his snivelling one-noteness and it makes him incredibly forgettable as a consequence. Still, his beatdown from Invincible includes such a perfect Ryan Ottley punch at its capstone, it feels like any character played by Ezra Miller has that coming.
God I can’t wait for Invincible to add Angstrom Levy so I can forget about this guy forever.
5. The simple heroism of one Art Rosenbaum
Art’s back!! I didn’t realise how much I even missed the guy until I felt myself sinking into the soft tones of Mark Hamill, who just welcomes in the viewer with this instant sincerity and transparency. It’s a sort of irony for a man who builds the identities of those who hide their faces from the world. I really love the candidness he and Debbie have, the show really works to accentuate that feeling of inviting acceptance from every pore of the character, even his office is crammed with comfortable mise en scene. It all just builds for a better tonal parallel when we see him using CSI skills to determine that Earth’s greatest hero is a calculated mass murderer.
Putting Art on a collision course with said mass murderer is the other great turning point for this episode. From beginning to end, the sequence is so intentionally playing with tension and expectation in a creative fashion. It begins with Nolan so abundantly superpowered and confrontational, leading us to expect another homicidal, heartbreaking cover-up. Instead we get two friends drinking beer on the roof. Nolan has that same style of material lies delivered through emotional truths that he has with Mark, and I love that characterisation. It shows that Nolan can genuinely grow admiration for human’s without a hint of Viltrumite spirit in them. It makes him almost more unnerving when we know he can be flicking off bottle caps with a regular human friend, and then sentence thousands of others to death without a hint of remorse.
I guess Art is just the perfect foil, a man made of compassion who literally outfits people in their best aspects.
Food for thought:
– We finally got that iconic shot of the Pentagon that the comic loved wheeling out every couple pages!
– Mark really just found every excuse to be as overtly selfish as possible around Will, didn’t he?
– Imagine taking your iPhone into a superhero fight
– Why did White House kid dig up perfect corners on the Immortal’s grave? That’s so much pointless effort for two kids with a shovel.
Next week is our penultimate episode of the season, who knows where episode 7 will take us on the way towards the wind down.
