Review: Invincible “You Look Horrible”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Nolan and Oliver watch over Mark as he recovers, while Allen and Zoe meet back up with the Coalition, and the mole for the Viltrumites makes their move.
OUR TAKE
It’s time for another nearly Invincible-less episode of Invincible as Mark spends the majority of this one comatose and getting his organs to stay in his body, which also means this is a chance for all the other characters to get more focus, like Allen and Zoe. Not a lot of heavy character stuff happening with them, but we do get some significant updates on the opening battles of the war with the Viltrumites, as well as learning who the dreaded mole within their ranks is, AND…it’s just some guy without a name who gave up on the cause and lowered the defenses so Thragg, the leader of what’s left of them, could invade the main world of the Coalition. I guess it’s good that we didn’t have to end up sullying one of the named characters for the sake of a twist, and it’s plenty realistic to have people within resistance movements who start worrying about their own skin and betray their comrades, but this seems like a bit of a wet fart after all the build up made about who the mole was for the past few episodes. I get that we only have two more episodes in the season after this so maybe there wasn’t much time to give this “Data Clone” guy much of a nuanced motivation, but still. We at least get a damn good speech from legendary veteran voice actor Peter Cullen as Thaddeus out of it all, and I don’t wanna jinx anything, but the guy IS in his mid-80’s, so we should probably savor the performances he’s still willing and able to give us.
As for keeping up with the Graysons, it looks like Nolan just can’t stop putting his foot in his mouth, as his brief line about not loving Oliver’s mother comes back to bite him when he’s finally alone with his second son for a little while. Being stuck on a barren planet with one of your children you barely got to spend time with is kind of a double edged sword, especially when said child ages fast and basically went through his whole childhood without you. That said, the bonding between the two was long overdue, and given a lot more weight than in the comic, where they’re basically just on a makeshift vacation while Allen is on the front lines. This also gives us some more thorough acknowledgement that Oliver’s life as a half-bug man, half-long lived humanoid alien is a complicated one enough on its own, only made more so confronting that his idealized version of his father is nothing like the messy and flawed version in reality. Still, we’re also seeing that Nolan is committed to trying to do better, looking after his sons as best as he can and trying to be there for them both in protecting them from attacking aliens or just lending an ear about their problems. Oliver was probably the easiest of the Graysons to get to come around on him, but if he keeps this up, Mark will probably not be too far behind. Two more episodes left, let’s see how they land this plane.
