Alien Nation, FINAL

In thinking about last night's finale for Secret Invasion, I find myself reminded of Oscar Wilde's story "The Sphinx Without a Secret". It's about a mysterious woman who is observed visiting a house in secret only for it to turn out that her actions were done entirely to excite intrigue, that she in fact lacked any curious mystery in her life. At the bottom of Secret Invasion, likewise, there is nothing. The ruse doesn't seem to have worked so well as it did for Wilde's character.

There was a more or less decent fight scene between Gravik and G'iah of the variety She-Hulk recently told us we're not interested in seeing. G'iah and Gravik now channel all kinds of powers, mostly from the Guardians of the Galaxy, as evidenced by G'iah's unintentionally hilarious baby Drax arm.

I was reminded of an episode of Angel I watched recently in which Cordelia asked her hunky new alien boyfriend if his power, like Samson, was in his hair and the dumb lug innocently replied, "My power is in my muscles!" I guess dinky little Emilia Clarke is packing some, too, sort of.

Daenerys could crack a smile now and then, she could look angry. Clarke has chosen to play G'iah as someone who lacks personality, in seemingly inverse proportion to her newly acquired powers. It's hard to get excited for her. Grace Randolph argued that it should have been Talos who got the powers. Sure that would've been more satisfying.

Finally Fury, or G'iah in Fury's form, says no planet could be found for the Skrulls. Since this was the question on everyone's mind from the beginning, some attempt to answer it earlier would've been nice. I guess, since it doesn't make any sense, what with a whole universe of planets out there, the writers felt it best to let audiences fill in the blank.

Similarly, Varra wants to use her own name and shape, implying that Fury wouldn't tolerate them before, yet he accepts both right away, which makes sense since we'd had no indication before that he wouldn't. To paraphrase Tom Servo, "Ladies and gentlemen, we provide the scene, you provide the motivation."

And so another obscenely expensive Disney+ series slips quietly into the void. By the way, if you liked this premise, you might want to check out Rockne S. O'Bannon's Alien Nation.

Secret Invasion is available on Disney+.

Alien Nation, Episode 4

Last night's Secret Invasion had some decent action scenes and a few moments I found interesting or funny. It began and ended on disappointing notes, not the least because of how repetitive this note is getting.

So it looks like G'iah survived. It was so much more interesting thinking about what her death would mean to Talos than thinking about what Talos' death would mean to her. For the simple reason that Ben Mendelsohn has been giving a much better performance than Emilia Clarke. Well, also, Talos' motives are a little better defined.

But, yeah, this episode ended with Talos getting shot and apparently being killed. Which gives the next episode a no-win scenario. Either he stays dead, which means no more Ben Mendelsohn and diminished potential overall for the final two episodes, or it's another fake-out, which will be silly and exasperating. But this is three out of four episodes now that have ended with a major character apparently being killed. It's starting to feel really cheap.

Samuel L. Jackson and Charlayne Woodard give good performances but I'm really not feeling invested in their relationship. I still don't understand what brought them together and don't get any sense of chemistry between the two. They're just kind of cordial. And they like Raymond Carver, blech.

Surprisingly, the best part of the episode turned out to be Skrull Rhodey.

There's the kind of interesting reveal that it's a Skrull woman impersonating him for some reason. Then there's the nice scene over the bottle of bourbon, giving me the impression that this Skrull is not the sharpest tool in the shed. Don Cheadle seems to be having real fun with the role. I was amused when the president smelled bourbon on Skrull Rhodey's breath.

Secret Invasion is available on Disney+.

Alien Nation, Episode Three

Imagine my surprise to find last night's new Secret Invasion was pretty good. Suddenly, the tension was real, threats to characters' lives felt dire, and even some of the humour landed. What changed? There's a new screenwriter, Roxanne Paredes, who, like most writers for Disney+ shows, has a very short and undistinguished filmography. She did write five episodes of a series called FBI: International, which seems to have prepared her for this kind of material.

A lot of the dialogue still felt like it was running in circles. But in one such scene, the conversation between Nick Fury and Talos actually got a laugh out of me when Fury blew his top at the end after Talos' "We did this" rant. This is the value of having two actors of the calibre of Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn, particularly Jackson, who seems to be channelling Pulp Fiction more and more.

Mendelsohn isn't so good at action scenes, I noticed, which makes sense considering he's never been known for that kind of role. But he is really good at putting a lot of menace into his voice, which mostly makes up for it. I expect him to unleash hell next week when he finds out his daughter's dead.

Killing off G'iah in this episode was more effective than killing off Maria Hill in the first episode. She feels like she has a lot of unfinished business and one would assume Emilia Clarke would be sticking around a bit longer. I wonder if she feels cheated at all for cashing in her MCU card so fast. Not that I think she'd be right for Sue Storm or Rogue or whoever else she might've been. Maybe she could've been a good Emma Frost. But now I really want to see the fallout from G'iah's execution.

Secret Invasion is available on Disney+.

Alien Nation, Episode 2

I saw the new episode of Secret Invasion last night and, after some struggle this morning and checking with some reviews and synopses, I mostly remember what happened in it. I didn't fall asleep, though!

Characters spend time talking and brooding. Nick Fury reminisces about segregation (just how old is he?) before introducing an interesting game he learned from his mother, "Tell Me Something I Don't Know". So Talos tells him nearly all the Skrulls are on Earth. How fortunate Nick brought up that game!

What about the Skrulls on the space station Talos accuses Nick of hiding out on instead of helping the Skrulls? Seems like a continuity error. Also, what better place to look for a planet for the Skrulls than space? Have Fury and Captain Marvel really just made no effort in the past twenty five years? That seems very silly.

Now Skrulls have infiltrated positions of power. A secret council decides to make Gravik their official general. One council member threatens to use his authority in NATO to stop Gravik but a security guard chops him in the throat, apparently changing his mind. Why are we to assume he honours a vote made under duress? Why wasn't the one dissenting lady similarly threatened?

Why are all these supposedly important power players wandering around without their own retinues?

Looks like Rhodey's a Skrull. Anyone think he's not? Maybe he did just decide to fire Nick Fury for being in the vicinity of a terrorist attack. Yeah, I can't even type that with a straight face.

This show is like an idiot's impression of an intelligent series.

Secret Invasion is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1712

With ev'ry egg, the chicken takes a chance.
Reflections burned the future sailing trick.
A blazing light induced the shade to dance.
A cordite candle closed the devil wick.
Behind the morning's not an honest lie.
Between the hollow walls, I hear The Doors.
Perspective smashed the foreign language eye.
A soggy crust sufficed for cheaper floors.
Behind the eyes were hobblers held to see.
Surprising acid shines digestive blotch.
Resentful limbs contrive to sink the tree.
Above the slime, a pair of marbles watch.
Aggressive seeds advanced the plantly cause.
With alligator hands we chucked the paws.

Alien Nation

The latest MCU series premiered on Disney+ last night, Secret Invasion. Starring Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn, it can boast of some great acting talent, if nothing else. I'm sorry to say the episode was pretty bland.

It was written by series creator Kyle Bradstreet and co-written by Brian Tucker. Tucker's only previous credit is writing the 2013 film Broken City, which holds a 28% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Bradstreet has a little more cred, having worked in television since 2009, his most significant work being nine episodes he wrote for Mr. Robot. He wasn't the creator of Mr. Robot and he wrote only one episode in the series' first season. I've never seen Mr. Robot so, I don't know, maybe he wrote the show's best episodes. But considering how badly the Rick and Morty writers from later seasons worked out, I'm thinking this theory of apprenticeship, of supporting writers going on to be showrunners at Disney, isn't quite sound.

Other reviews have talked about plot holes and such, which are significant mistakes in a spy thriller, but I think finding the right tone is more important. The opening of the episode, which features Martin Freeman guest starring to meet with a stereotypical conspiracy theorist, should have established an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty. But since I doubt more than three or four viewers didn't guess that Freeman was a Skrull from the beginning, and the conspiracy guy was such a caricature, the whole section lacked impact. This show really needed to make us feel like the whole world could fall apart at any moment, that no-one is safe, but that never really happens.

Jackson and Mendelsohn are great and they both do their damnedest to make their scenes interesting. Jackson plays Fury as fairly laid back, as usual, and that works in a movie like Winter Soldier, which did build up that atmosphere of constant danger. Here, it's another thing that diminishes the sense of threat. Mendelsohn is a little better. He seems genuinely torn apart inside.

For those wondering why Emilia Clarke is a star, I've been watching Game of Thrones again lately and the answer is that she was really, really sexy on that show, at least in the first five seasons. And she was fun. So she's not really playing to her strengths here.

At least the show is so far avoiding the silly tone of Captain Marvel.

Secret Invasion is available on Disney+.