“You Look Horrible” is actually two extremely loosely connected stories occupying space alongside each other, one of which is significantly more compelling than the other. The duller stuff concerns itself with the wider Viltrumite War, a conflict whose lack of stakes is matched only by its lack of meaning, which is in turn in conflict for “most boring element” with its overall lack of visual spectacle. The problem here is that, other than proving that even Lee Pace should be hesitant before getting into a “sounding badass while giving an inspirational battle speech” fight with Peter “Optimus Prime” Cullen, the war isn’t actually about anything. And that’s because the Viltrumites aren’t about anything, a point I know I’ve hammered on in this space before. It’s wild to me that an “army” that the show keeps reminding us only has less than 50 members is so lacking in even a spark of individual appeal. I like Clancy Brown and weird Dragon Ball Z eye pieces as much as the next nerd, but none of these guys, up to Pace’s Emperor Thragg himself, have even a hint of personality. (It’s enough to make me think Conquest wasn’t ostracized because of his genocidal tendencies but because the dude actually knew how to party.) It drains the entire conflict of any kind of metaphorical or narrative weight: They want to kill everybody because they’re fascist maniacs, the other people fight back because they don’t want to die, and nuance becomes one of the first casualties on the battlefield.
Stripped of any storytelling hooks, the war instead boils down to an abundance of scenes of our various space heroes (Allen, Tech Jacket, and Battle Beast, mostly) throwing lasers and punches at anonymous mooks (or not-much-less-anonymous Bad Mustache Supermans) while watching a map steadily turn from red to blue. If any of these fights had real energy to them, I could forgive the listlessness of it all, but the greatest sin of this whole space-war plotline is that it can’t even be bothered to look like anything. Other than Space Racer’s “blast through anything” gun—a genuinely cool effect every time it pops up—Invincible continues its weird obsession with being a superhero show where everybody’s powers are either “shoot” or “punch.” A late-episode attack on Good Guy Headquarters attempts to spice things up with one of this show’s favorite tricks, grotesque shots of civilian casualties, but not even Invincible’s shock moments can shock here. A huge percentage of this episode is largely faceless heroes facing off against an even more faceless antagonist force, with the fighting taking place on an alien planet filled with characters we don’t care about. It’s absolutely wild to me that no one involved in its production turned to anyone else and said “Hey, is this kind of…boring?”
Luckily, our other story tonight at least has a basic human understanding of drama to it, even if it’s building that narrative from extremely stock parts. See, the male members of the Grayson family are still stuck on that ball of rock where Mark got himself near-fatally disemboweled last week. Invincible failing to live up to his name means there’s nothing for Nolan and Oliver to do but have a two-month bonding party while nursing him back to health. And, yes, the on-paper beats of this are so familiar as to border on parodic, as Omni-Man slowly wins over his second son by doing a tiny fraction of the work of performing genuine care for his family members instead of following his Viltrumite instincts to raise them entirely via, like, karate chop.
It’s the specifics here that manage to compel. Oliver reveals, for instance, that he heard Debbie and Nolan’s whole conversation last week—including the parts where Nolan referred to his relationship with Oliver’s mother, and by extension his whole existence, as a mistake. Invincible is a little too invested in Nolan’s redemption arc to really dig into this stuff for a second week running, but Omni-Man outright admitting he was lying to Debbie when he said that—while waxing nostalgic for the magical bug planet where everybody’s too busy living to worry about canceling someone over light mass murder—carries some emotional charge. (See also the brief moment where he tries to make a case that Conquest deserves memorializing, because there’s a part of Nolan that still believes that Viltrumites are the most important people in the universe by default.) Nolan is at his least compelling when he’s just a floating contrition machine, J.K. Simmons sullenly muttering “sorry” to everyone he can see. Hearing the different parts of his psyche grind together against his genuine desire to be better than he used to be is a lot more fascinating to watch.
Meanwhile, this is also a generally good episode for Christian Convery as Oliver. I’ve been hit-or-miss on the 16-year-old Convery since he took over the character of Mark’s little brother after his alien growth spurt last season. He generally sounds convincingly young and petulant, as one might hope, but his lack of polish is usually pretty evident when put up alongside Simmons, Steven Yeun, or Sandra Oh. But Convery manages to dig in pretty well to Oliver’s genuine and justified resentments against his old man here, while also getting some real fun out of the character’s weirder quirks. (This includes the best exchange of the whole episode, when he reveals to Nolan that he had his first sexual awakening from seeing a lobster in a seafood restaurant’s aquarium. The cheerful “Still ate it, though!” got a genuine snort from me.)
Sadly, no bottle episode can stay inside its bottle forever, and so father-son bonding moments must give way to the day when the pair find that Mark has woken up, free of his debilitating illness but now afflicted with some of the least flattering cartoon facial hair I’ve ever seen. (Also, am I wrong, or has the show taken this opportunity to swap out his face for one with more “adult” proportions? Maybe it’s just an optical illusion caused by that incredibly patchy beard, but it distracted me for the whole rest of the episode.) With Mark recovered and the bonds between the eldest and youngest Graysons roughly patched, these more interesting story threads get subsumed back into the wider war story, as the Invincible clan shows up to save the day from the Viltrumite attack. The final action set piece of the episode, with all our heroes working to stop a destroyed Viltrum war ship from slamming into the ground of Thedas, feels like a decent enough stand-in for these war sequences as a whole: a lot of yelling, a lot of grunting, but very little of note actually happening on the screen.
The thing about Invincible’s general inconsistency of late is that I never know if I can trust my instincts on where it’s going. The setup for next week’s episode—Thedas is sending all of the Good Guys’ heaviest hitters to Viltrum for a big, dramatic final battle—sounds like it’ll take the boring elements of this week’s episode and dial them up to eleven. But I also genuinely don’t know at this point: This show picks its moments to get emotionally intelligent at such odd intervals that there’s every chance a real scene of power might sneak through amid all the mustache-man punching. For now, though, we’re left with an episode stuck in a paradox: Its most ostensibly exciting sequences are its most deathly dull, while its more relaxed and reflective material are the parts that grab attention. It’s a mess, but at least a fitfully interesting one.
Stray observations
- • The Viltrumites don’t even have a neat motto, simply chanting “All is ours.”
- • As for Thragg, he continues to have no characterization, but he does get a skull who’s apparently his best friend. There’s something a little cute about him clutching it to his chest while flying away from the battle he attended in person for some reason at the end of the episode.
- • The credits cut this week is sweet. That space glass is looking mighty fragile though.
- • This week, from my notes: “Nolan bug monster vore—’Hope you’re hungry!’”
- • Interesting to see Nolan genuinely holding back his Viltrumite instincts when training Oliver. He’s even gentler here than he was with Mark back in the first season.
- • I’ve lodged my complaints about Seth Rogen’s Allen before, but his double act with Zoe/Tech Jacket—getting hooked on playing video games together, making goofy jokes about binocular vision—is a cute bit of levity
- • The Viltrumite costumes look so bad in motion. I think they’re meant to resemble togas, but half the time my brain codes them as diapers.
- • While I’m complaining about the visuals: The attempt they make to show the characters’ faces as lit from below during the war-room sequences is incredibly distracting.
- • For a teen superhero, Zoe is shown very casually killing a lot of Viltrum’s slave soldiers.
- • The image of Nolan and Oliver fishing together by floating above the water was a nice visual.
- • They attempt to get a tiny bit of drama at the end of the episode by having Allen get pissed off by Thedas not being very worried about casualties, but it feels like far too little, too late.
- • Oh, and that guy who was obviously the mole was the mole! Fun touch when it turns out that shooting him in the head was just an inconvenience though.
- • And I’ll admit it: The mid-credits Conquest fake-out made me laugh.
William Hughes is a staff writer at The A.V. Club.