Secret Invasion recap: Nobody here is very good at being a spy
The Skrulls apparently have such a fine plan that they throw away another perfectly fine plan just to get there
TV Reviews Secret Invasion
Since its premiere, Secret Invasion has been insisting that Nick Fury isn’t the man he used to be. That never landed in that first episode, because he still seemed like the same old Nick Fury who was 10 steps ahead of everyone in the MCU movies, but as time has gone on—especially after last week’s revelation that the ending of Captain Marvel was a big whiff and that not only did he fail to find the Skrulls a new home but they all just moved to Earth without him noticing—it has become more and more clear that, yeah, Fury has been kind of screwing up a lot. But maybe he deserves some slack from everyone, because he’s not the only one.
As it turns out, not one of the Good Guys seems to have any idea of what the hell they’re doing at any point in the day, which is how we get into situations where Nick Fury makes all of his friends hate him, where Talos can get triggered into making stupid mistakes as easily as calling Marty McFly a chicken, and G’iah is a trained covert operative who can’t see when someone is very obviously playing her.
I should say that I don’t necessarily think any of this is a failure of the writing or the acting. I don’t agree with how readily internet critics throw around terms like “plot hole” because something isn’t spoon-fed to viewers, but I do think it’s weird that everyone in Secret Invasion has been on a high-horse telling Nick Fury that he’s a bad spy or a bad friend or a bad husband(!) when not a single one of them has a perfect record in any of those categories.
Let’s start with Talos’ daughter G’iah, since her mistakes carry the whole episode: Gravik very much doesn’t trust her anymore and blames her for leaking some of their plans for the bombing in the premiere. She plays it off, poorly, but Gravik lets her think he buys it and tells her that she’s coming with him to a meeting with her father. The stuff happening in this scene isn’t super engaging, because we all know Gravik doesn’t trust her, but there was something about the lighting (or maybe some CG trickery) that gave her eyes a very Skrull-y pop. These Marvel shows don’t tend to have a lot of visual panache, so when they do, even if it’s maybe on accident, it’s relatively exciting.
On the way to the meeting, Gravik takes a phone call where he very clearly sets an obvious trap for G’iah, naming the time and place of his next terrorist scheme, and she stupidly takes the bait and hands off the info to her father. Talos and Fury figure out that Gravik is planning to use a British nuclear sub to attack a United Nations flight (which, somehow, will bring the Avengers into the fight and set off World War III), so the two of them track down the Royal Navy officer in charge of ordering nuclear strikes, who has been replaced with a Skrull, and try to get him to call off the attack.
Which means it’s time for Talos to be called in front of the class to have his flaws exposed: You’re in the middle of a secret invasion, guy. This is a covert, black-ops spy war, and your daughter is deeply involved. You can’t kill everyone who vaguely threatens her and depend on her to do dangerous spy stuff.
Talos first loses his cool on Gravik during their meeting, stabbing the new Skrull general in the hand when Gravik makes a snide comment about G’iah (prompting Gravik to just rip his hand out like the dude in John Wick: Chapter 4 before watching it heal with what may be Super Skrull powers), and then he almost lets World War III happen when he shoots the guy that he and Fury need to stop the submarine attack—again, because he made a snide comment about G’iah.
I’ll excuse a lot of Talos’ shenanigans, because Ben Mendelsohn seems to be having a lot of fun here in a way that Captain Marvel only briefly gave him the freedom to do (Talos being a little catty and flippant was a high point there just as it is here), but his plan to prevent the attack then moves to putting his daughter in danger to find out the abort code for the sub. But she never would have been in danger if he hadn’t killed the guy!
Well, actually she would, because the submarine attack was an obvious fake plan to expose her as a traitor to the other Skrull rebels…an obvious fake plan that resulted in a bunch of Skrulls getting killed and what would’ve been valuable assets in the British navy getting exposed. So Gravik’s not totally on the ball either, even if he does try to play it off like he was half-hoping that the submarine plan would work anyway. (That’s some Loki shit, Gravik, and you’re no Loki.) Either way, the plan behind the plan works, and G’iah is exposed as the traitor, so Gravik shoots her—and that, apparently, is a wrap on Emilia Clarke, who turns back into a Skrull as she’s laying on the ground, which is usually proof that a Skrull is dead.
Finally, we have Fury’s wife, played by Charlayne Woodard and going by Varra in Skrull form and Priscilla in human form. She’s justifiably angry at Fury, revealing in this episode that they haven’t seen each other in years and that she mourned his apparent death during the Snap and then had to mourn him again when he came back to life and immediately abandoned Earth for his space vacation.
So he’s not a great husband, but in his defense…she’s working with Gravik! His plan is to exterminate all of humanity! Married readers: How would you feel if your spouse was turned into dust for a few years and then came back and went on a years-long space vacation? Or how would you feel if you found out that your spouse was part of a plan to wipe out an entire species that you happened to be part of? Tsk tsk, Fury family. Tsk tsk.
Stray observations
- I am once again dropping the episode down a full letter grade over the A.I. intro. I know it’s an effectively meaningless and performative “punishment,” but replacing work that could be done by a person with an A.I. is a terrible, terrible trend, and if we allow it to continue then it’s just a matter of time before artists and writers start being replaced. If we value TV and movies at all, if we value thoughtful criticism of TV and movies at all, then we cannot allow it ever.
- This episode pointedly brings back the Captain Marvel plot point that anyone who knows Fury would never call him anything but Fury, which is how he clocks that a Skrull got the drop on Talos. But, as sharp-eared viewers noticed in the last episode, Rhodey called him “Nick” in the scene where he gets fired from whatever his job was. It could’ve been a flub, but keep an eye out for War Machine turning green at some point.
- Sonya putting a little eyepatch on the owl that Fury bugged was very cute. I hope that comes back for some reason. Also, I guess she is a bigshot at MI6? I still don’t know what to make of her.
- Seriously, Gravik lets so many Skrulls get killed over a fake plan. Wouldn’t it have been better if he lied about the whole thing and tricked Talos and Fury into thinking they were stopping a Skrull attack, when in fact there was no attack, making it look like they were terrorists? Remember when that was part of his scheme in the last episode? But whatever, everyone is intermittently a little stupid here. It’s fine.
- That being said, if it turns out that this is all part of Fury’s plan and nobody is being stupid at all, then I’ll take back everything about everyone being a little stupid. It would be just like Nick Fury to pull one over on us.
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I would also accept if this is all part of Maria Hill’s plan, she faked her own death, and is drawing the Skrulls out before exiling them all to … somewhere. I don’t have it worked out yet obviously
I don’t have it worked out yet obviously
Now I actually liked this episode a bit more, mostly just off the Talos/Fury banter—there was actually some banter!—and I dunno, it felt like there was some tension at some point briefly? But oh god the spy plot stuff is just so dumb. Everything is teased and explained and finished within minutes, it doesn’t even rise to the level of having enough “plot” to complain about the “holes” wherein.
So Gravik wants to start WW3 because Skrulls can survive the radioactive fallout. Can they survive EVERYTHING ELSE that goes along with that scenario?
Yeah, this is Ben Mendelsohn’s show. Ben-Adir has been good increasingly each ep, and Jackson is fine – a little too reliant on his overall career persona (Jules, Snakes on a Plane, etc) – or the writing and direction is feeding him a few too many Tarantino-isms, but he plays off Mendelsohn pretty well.Come to think of it, imagine if Tarantino had written him a page of dialogue – Hard “R” – about what it was like being married to a Skrull – Wedding Honeymoon Night (!) – that would be some fantastic stuff.
The one particular thing I liked from Jackson was how Fury gets a little goofy when romance is involved. At the diner in the flashback, and with his wife at the beginning (breakfast), he’s kinda being romantic and silly.
Was it actually banter, or was it just Fury being an abusive asshole?
But, as sharp-eared viewers noticed in the last episode, Rhodey called him “Nick” in the scene where he gets fired from whatever his job was. It could’ve been a flub, but keep an eye out for War Machine turning green at some point.Wasn’t that Rhodey talking with Varra on the phone at the end?
No, that was Pagon, one of Gravik’s men. Who, sure, might also be Rhodey, who knows.
It was absolutely Don Cheadle on the phone at the end.
I thought it was Cheadle’s voice too.
That was definetely Cheadle’s voice on the phone. Rhodey is the high level US government agent Fury was talking about this episode.
I did find it strange that Cheadle was in the opening credits but did not appear onscreen in this episode. I didn’t catch that it was his voice on that phone call though.
Yes, it was clearly the voice of Don Cheadle on the phone. It feels like some people are watching a different show.
I’m thinking it wasn’t G’iah who died, it was the other female Skrull who saw the “Comms Breach” screen and went to sub in. A contingency plan, if you will.And yeah, “Rhodey” is definitely a Skrull.
Yep, he’s the one talking to Nick’s wife when she gets the gun, sorry if you knew that already.
Or Rhodey thinks it’s impossible for the Skrulls to infiltrate because he’s infiltrated.
Rhodey is going to be a main character in Ironheart and Armor Wars. He’s not going to be a Skrull in those – that would be too much dip-shittery. If he’s a Skrull now, he’ll get rescued in the end from the “Tunnel of Extras Plugged in to a Purple Unconscious Mind Projector” or the TOE PITA PUMP. He’ll get rescued from the TOE PITA PUMP**it’s a work in progress
I regret that I have only one star to give for that acronym.
Is he confirmed for Ironheart? I didn’t get the impression that the MCU is connecting Riri to Stark Industries.
“He’ll get rescued from the TOE PITA PUMP**it’s a work in progress”You need to learn when to stop once you have reached perfection.
It could also be called the SHOE PITA P-ZUMP or the “Spooky Hallway of Extras Plugged in to a Purple Zapping Unconscious Mind Projector” so … you know … I don’t want to presume to be the final word on the subject.
G’iah isn’t dead and the trailer for the show has a sequence that explains why. I expect the next episode will open with that scene.
Trailer sleuths who feel the need to interject their “visions of the future” into weekly episodic discourse can burn in hell. Thanks for showing up.
I don’t think Capeo was being malicious. If it’s in the trailer it’s fair game for speculation when it pertains to the discussion.
‘No one calls me Nick, except for Maria Hill, who only calls me that”
Rewatched “Winter Soldier” last night and Captain calls him Nick when he finds him in the apartment.
Yeah, a bunch of people call him Nick throughout the movies, it was an odd thing to say.
I treat this the way I treat the whole “Vulcans don’t lie” belief. Of course Vulcans lie. Nick Fury lies as well. That’s the whole thing about liars (and lying is part of spying). Liars (good ones, at least) use their perceived honesty to their advantage.
lol D+.Haven’t seen that grade at avclub in a while. Can’t believe Disney is forcing Marvel Studios to waste money and time over these mostly crappy tv shows. There’s only been like 2 good shows since this shit started, none of them are great.Overall quality of the MCU has plummeted since this idiotic mandate to seriously produce tv content. It’s like the execs involved are willfully ignoring it’s called the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There’s no TV there. smh.
To be fair, it’s a C+ but Barsanti is sticking it to Marvel by lowering the grade a whole letter for the A.I. intro.
idk if it’s the “sticking it to Marvel” that he thinks it is. Seems more like he’s doing something unprofessional to me.
seems shockingly childish of Sam Barsanti
well i don’t think they’re ‘forcing’ anyone to do anything (except the VFX guys), but yeah, with 3 years of shows behind us it’s funny how quickly what seemed like such a slam dunk great idea at the time has basically turned into nothing at all.aside from wandavision, which almost certainly gets a bump in my mind for being the first MCU thing released in over a year at the time, there is nothing that wouldn’t have been better as a movie, or not made at all.
I really liked Moon Knight (except for the Khonshu Kaiju-fight), but I realize that’s probably a minority opinion.
I’d argue this is the correct opinion.
It’s not. The haters are just much more vocal.
Moon Knight succeeded because it wasn’t hamstrung by a mountain of MCU lore and was much more of a unique “super hero” show. Also Oscar Isaac’s performance is really top notch, most other MCU shows/movies don’t really ask for that level of acting. My wife, who has seen maybe two of the movies, really enjoyed Moon Knight and I think that says a lot about it. (I also enjoyed it as some who has seen all MCU offerings and has read comics for 30ish years).
A minority opinion for liking Moon Knight? With 86% critic rating and 89% audience rating? I think you’re safe there.But it makes you wonder if internet comment sections just crawl right up their own backsides and constantly smell their own farts when it comes to their opinions sometimes.
Or it makes you wonder if there’s a hivemind effect on MCU stans who are wowed by anything remotely resembling an unconventional superhero narrative. Personally I hated Moon Knight. Great performance by Handsome McUbiquitous but the storytelling was bunk.
or maybe he has friends IRL and they talk about it, and of those friends he’s the only one who likes it.
Loki , Moon Knight , WandV (mainly becuase Agnes), The MsMArvel one and SheHulk were ok .The Falcon/W.Soldier one had its moments. Thats the lot right?Oh yeah Hawkeye Thats the lot right?
you’re forgetting what if
i liked it fine, but i think it would have been better as a movie. there’s nothing that happened that couldn’t have been done in 2 and a half hours.
I gotta admit I didn’t make it all the way through the first episode. It’s the only Disney/Marvel show I didn’t finish.
I didn’t care for Moon Knight but I felt like I was in the minority for not liking it. A lot of people were amazed for some reason by a latino guy doing a british accent and thought he should get an Oscar? To me it seemed like the first male-lead MCU thing coming off a train of female stuff so it seemed like a bunch of toxic fans were raising it higher on a pedestal than it deserved.
I’ve never been on the bandwagon for dissing modern CGI in films but the CGI in Moon Knight was atrocious and completing took me out of the show everytime he transformed.
I was shocked to learn during the “Assembled” behind the scenes that some of the Moon Knight costume was practical. That thing looked fake in every context.
The first time the hippopotamus character spoke I almost gave up on the show entirely. The CGI was teeeeerrible.
This show isn’t a D+. That rating is extremely negative. Not saying the show is fantastic but it’s fine.
Yeah Barsanti went too far with his moody tirade against the AI credits. A D grade is stupid.
It’s actually a legitimate C+ grade which is common enough. Reviewer is as stated in the review purposely dropping it a grade for high horse moral reasons. Regardless, ANY critical grade is no way to judge a show, it’s literally another person’s opinion. There’s no special skill or insight involved. Literally anyone off the street has as much capability as your average critic, it’s all subjective.
Barsanti explicitly said he tanked the grade a whole letter over the AI opening credits, which means he actually thought it was a C+, but here you are taking the D+ seriously.
1) The Netflix shows were serious TV productions. If you’re going to bitch about an idiotic mandate, get “serious” and admit that the synergy of the whole enterprise is a fucking narrative boondoggle designed to print money in the form of IP homework.2) “Cinematic” is an adjective. There is no shortage of “cinematic” television, particularly in this day and age. That’s basic English. smh.
No need to be aggressive. I partially agree with your statement. The Netflix shows were far superior. Even the terrible Netflix shows were at least terrible in interesting ways. Since Disney mandated Marvel Studios produce content for Disney+ it’s easy tell that it’s just content fluff to bolster the family friendly pickings. There’s no passion there like when they went from Iron Man to Avengers 1 to Endgame. It wasn’t perfect but the energy was different. Sure some tv shows can look cinematic. It’s still a tv show tho. A completely different medium and format with different considerations and goals.
In the first review Sam Barsanti said he’ll be marking every episode of this a full letter grade lower because he’s pissed about the AI credits. Tbh I think they should fire Sam Barsanti.
Question: Given that MCU Earth has been invaded by aliens at least twice that people know of, and all the other wacky shit that’s happened, how hard should it really be to convince people that Gravik’s machinations to stir up global tension are an alien psy-op? Should that not be the default assumption at this point?
Well, there seems to be a lot of high level world government figures that are skrulls that would just deny it. Also, revealing an invasion of a million shapeshifters that can perfectly mimic anyone potentially would sow abject chaos as nobody would know who to trust. It’s a little different than an invasion of aliens that look like aliens. Paranoia would run wild.
Sure, if we actually had some decent worldbuilding that set things up well…which we haven’t. It is amusing that the cabal of world leaders includes 2 prime ministers, the head of NATO, and a Fox News host.
And Rhodey. That was definetely his voice on the phone at the end of the episode. I get the feeling Gravik isn’t even the real leader of the rebel skrulls.
Gravik isn’t the *real* leader of the bad skrulls; Talos is.
some context for the AI people are bitching about
I mean “journalists” making inaccurate reactionary comments about AI is basically all I see in the “news” these days. It’s usually the kind that AI will have the easiest time replacing ie stories sourced from other content whether that be other articles or original media and not stuff that requires real world investigation so it makes sense they’d be nervous.
“Company That Uses AI to Make Money Defends Use of AI in Making Money”
meanwhile:https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/io9-ai-generated-star-wars-article-errors-1235662194/Gizmodo’s io9 Published an AI-Generated Star Wars Article That Was Filled With Errors
I really don’t have a problem with this. It’s being used for effect. To make an analogy to the music industry, this isn’t the insidious kind of pitch correction that’s invisible and everyone uses. This is the exaggerated auto-tune that Celine Deon or T-Pain uses. This isn’t AI replacing artists, it’s artists using AI as a tool.
While I 100% agree that there are immoral ways to use the new tech, this isn’t it.
No idea why this episode got a D+ when it was much better than the previous ones. I don’t understand the reviewer’s problems with the Skrull plan either? Obviously a British sub attacking a UN plane would be a giant deal, especially when Skrull’s have people in power all throughout the world. And why do you keep calling it a fake plan? Were they not super clear that the plan was either going to go through or they were going to catch the rat? It wasn’t a fake plan at all, it was a real plan that they were willing to sell out.
I am once again dropping the episode down a full letter grade over the A.I. intro. Performative actions like this really work well when you state “my real grade is a C+” at the end of the review. Way to stick it to A.I., Barsanti!
It’s so weird how much I was looking forward to this and how much of a disappointment it is. I hope the remaining episodes pick things up but so far this is down there with Falcon and the Winter Soldier for me. Probably worse, since that show was occasionally fun.
I’m desperately trying to convince myself that there’s some kind of twist coming and they wouldn’t do a shameless, straight-faced fridging of THREE female characters in such quick succession. Giah seems to have the most wiggle room as she could have injected herself with Extremis after finding the lab, like this same episode made a very firm point to show us Gravik has done.
how many characters are allowed to die on a tv show?
For any of those HGTV shows, not e-fuckin’-nough.
if its GoT ..All of them I think?
It looked like a shoulder shot, so I’m betting she consciously shifted back to her Skrull form after the hit to sell that it was a killshot, but it’s not an immediately wound and she’ll be able to make her way to get help.
Totally agree. Even if it was a gut shot, she has on a vest, no?
It was lower than the shoulder, but I was hoping as he drove off, the camera would pan down and we’d see her starting to change back to Emilia form to indicate she was still alive and faking.
There’s a shot in the trailer for the show that confirms this actually. It shows G’iah in the super skrull machine and she’s wearing the same exact clothes. I assume the next episode will open with that scene before cutting to show her wound heal.
Fuck I hate trailers.
0% chance she’s actually dead
Emelia is a series regular so she will be back so either as an imposter Giah or the real Giah revealing Gravik killed an imposter. Who other than Maria is the third female character? I also don’t know if I would consider Maria a case of fridging though Fury seems fairly indifferent to her death and I think Colby probably just wanted to be done with the non-character of Maria.
Three? I know about Hill and Giah, but who else? Not a good sign for the show that I already forgot about the third.
I do not understand G’iah. If she was a double agent, working for her father, why didn’t she try to stop the Moscow bombing which reported caused the deaths of over two million people?
Two-thousand people.
Lol I thought you were trolling with 2 million.It seems like the idea that bombing was worse than 9/11 was made up after-the-fact, its impact is all told-not-shown, and not even referenced once it did its job of giving “Rhodey” the slimmest excuse to get mad at Fury.
The total lack of any explanation of G’iah & Talos’ recent history is a major problem with the writing for this series. They weren’t in communication when her mother died (based on the first episode), but suddenly she’s feeding him intel on Gravik’s plans? …and he trusts the intel, despite having been given bad info on the Russia bombing, with no explanation?
“That being said, if it turns out that this is all part of Fury’s plan and nobody is being stupid at all, then I’ll take back everything about everyone being a little stupid. It would be just like Nick Fury to pull one over on us.”
I look forward to the episode 6 review of this show, where you’re just listing everything you got wrong about the entire series, and have to give it an A+ rating.
I don’t think it’s an A+ series, but I think it’s leaning a lot more into spy/espionage tropes than you seem to realize, and that it’s emulating those pretty well. People who are bad at relationships criticizing others about being bad in relationships? Jesus, see ALL of the George Smiley stuff. Double/triple/countless loyalty flips? Again, see John Le Carre. Someone seeming to make a lot of mistakes only to see it was part of some particularly elaborate/twisty/labyrinthic plan? Read your Len Deighton.
At this point, I don’t trust any of the deaths I’ve seen, I don’t trust the motivations of anyone I’ve seen and I don’t think anyone really knows what’s going on, except maybe Fury (who has lost a step or two, but not the ten that everyone’s expecting he has) and Telos (who I think knows Fury well enough to know Fury’s always got a few extra decks up his sleeve, not to mind the missing aces…)
As not a single Disney+ Marvel show (Disney+ show period? Except for Andor, the exception that proves the rule) has stuck the landing, this is incredibly unlikely. They may try for some glorious 11-th hour twist, but there’s no way it will really feel earned.
Has to be a long con fake out. You don’t get an actress of Clarke’s visibility and kill her halfway through. Almost certainly Hill is also alive and working “behind the scenes” as well.
Not necessarily. TV production logic says “they’re too expensive to be on screen that much.”
I totally expected Clarke to get up and take off her bullet proof vest and transform back into her human visage. I STILL expect that next episode. Why would ANY of these agents walk about without a vest???
Silo killed off Rashida Jones in episode 1, Daniel Oyelowo in episode 2, Geraldine James in episode 3, and Will Patton in episode 4.
bro c’mon. i’m not the spoiler police but this is pretty egregious
Genuine question. If you review the next Mission Impossible are you going to automatically downgrade it because Tom Cruise is in a cult? “Oh, Scientology is no worse than other so called religions and you can’t blame a parishioner for the problems at the top”. Except your average parishioner isn’t best friends in regular contact with the “leader” who likes to brag. Hasn’t offered the Pope to fly out and “beat the shit” out of people making 50 dollars a week (when they get paid at all) because they’re seen as slacking. Didn’t gather fellow cult celebrities and threaten their careers, (how’s that for putting people out of work?) Doesn’t staff his properties with said 50 dollar a week slaves, Don’t disown their preteen neices for kissing a boy. Haven’t avoided their daughter for years because their ex isn’t with the program. Haven’t made a deal with studios that their cut of their film profit goes directly to the cult. Etcetera, Etcetera, Etcetera literally ad nauseum. I mean, all that’s at least as bad as AI credits right Sam? Sam?
the AI is definitely worse you weird little worm
Tell me you don’t know of all the bad things Scientology does without telling me you don’t know of all the bad things Scientology does.
I had my doubts from the start since they took ‘expansionist empire infiltrating superheroes’ and turned it into ‘refugees turned terrorist spy fare’ but the worst thing is that it’s also boring and the spycraft is poorly done. It’s failing on all cylinders.
The nuke-a-UN-jumbo-jet plot was pretty idiotic, like it was thrown together as quickly as the CGI of the plane. What would be the point of England doing such a thing under any circumstances? It’s so over the top it’s obviously a plot by a 3rd party to sow chaos, if not some bizarre accident. Maybe if the worldbuilding was adequate it would have been plausible, and maybe they could have shown us something of the logistics of how one goes about ordering a nuclear strike, having some agents on the inside hardly being sufficient alone, not in a universe where all such processes would have been hardened post-Ultron.It’s as goofy and half-baked as the plot of an average issue of a comic book.
It’s… like a comic book, you say? Can’t have that.
When you’re making a six-episode prestige TV series with a budget of 8 or 9 figures, you kinda expect more effort to have been put into the plotting than my 1980s Transformers comics.
some comic books are bad and sometimes when tv feels like a comic book it feels bad.
Skip this POS show and watch the better version: Doctor Who – 3rd Doctor era. The Doctor did the same plotline just a whole lot better.
Well you would say that
Heck, if we’re going there, the new series did this whole show in, like, two episodes a few years back.
Yup, and did it better than MCU there as well.
Does it seem like they repeat dialog or say the same thing with slightly different wording a lot?
this is so the intended audience (12 year olds) can follow the plot
So, you tanked the grade over your speculation about future plot points that you admit you could be wrong about, & then tanked it again over the intro that you’ve already taken points off for previously, & you wonder why you’re the laughingstock of this website?
God Barsanti sucks. Why did he have to be THE one left after the Chicago purge?
Was the voice at the end of the episode different for screener copies vs. The actual episode?
The show is NOT great, the show is, at this point…just boring.And unless there’s some FANTASTIC (and likely unearned) turnaround at the end, the spy-craft on display has been stupefyingly dumb.But you know what my biggest gripe is?Every time a Skrull is (not) shown, just out of frame, just out of eyeshot of whomever’s point of view we’re following (Nick Fury, Gravik, etc), and that Skrull transforms…even though the character we’re following did not see them change, like a DOZEN OTHER PEOPLE DID, IN FACT, see them transform.Like, in this episode, when G’iah was literal SECONDS ahead of Gravik, coming out of the meeting with Talos, and she dashed ahead of him, behind that van in the street, and changed from old white man, and back into Emilia Clarke…there were literally DOZENS of bystanders on that side of the van watching her transform. Are you fucking kidding me?
*That’s* how I know this show is (incredibly) dumb.(But I will, of course, watch it through until the end, on the off-chance that they somehow salvage it…) /shrugs
And would it not be rather fucking obvious to another Skrull when someone is trying to throw them off by shapeshifting multiple times behind the cover of a passing bus or something?
I’m done. Awful. Just awful. A dull cliché filled mess that contradicts its own premises every episode. It was hard enough getting over the Skrulls being able to metamorph their own clothes… and notice they occasionally TAKE OFF COATS and shit? So is that flesh? What? Ok. Whatever.But usually Marvel gets at least the little design details right. But this one is clearly skimped on production design and research. So many bad choices and dull designs. But some really made me laugh. For one; why the fuck is a strategic missile sub launching a nuke AT AN AIRPLANE! Like. Whut? And in the world roomiest submarine they bafflingly place the two launch keys a foot apart? The entire point of a two man authentication launch is one person cannot physically be capable of turning the keys at the same time. That’s the whole point of it.
Actually the nuclear launch keys are to be just close enough together that if one operator “goes mad” the other can shoot him and operate both.But yes why is the world’s most luxurious submarine being used to nuke a plane? Why would England nuke a UN jumbo jet? The only reasonable explanation would be subterfuge.
Hahaha. No. Like it would take you five seconds of googling. There would be no point of two crewman if one could turn both keys. “Authentic to a real missile system, it takes two keys operated by two different people to initiate a launch. This two-person rule provides an extra level of security ensuring no one person can go rogue and launch a missile on their own.”https://www.nixonfoundation.org/2022/08/cold-war-close-launch-missile-nuclear-sub/#:~:text=Authentic%20to%20a%20real%20missile,a%20missile%20on%20their%20own.
Yeah for 15 years the launch codes were “0000000,” you don’t think it likely that other parts of that story are a lie? Read it from some grumpy former Minuteman silo operator ages ago, can’t find the link. Photos of consoles certainly don’t make it look physically impossible(which is silly anyway, that’s not the point.)
Hahaha, ok Trollflake. You know it’s okay to be wrong about something. I’m going back to ignoring you now.
Holy fuck asshole I know what I read, even if it might have been 20 years ago on CounterPunch or some such. And again, “launch codes” were complete bullshit for an extended period of time, WHAT ELSE IS/WAS? Why the fuck are you making such a deal about this, I was largely agreeing with you dipshit.
I’m not gonna lie, I kinda need a previous MCU character to be a secret Skrull really soon or I’m gonna lose interest.I like the show overall but it needs a bit more pop. Gravik is really well portrayed as a villain, though, but I was really hoping the tenor of this show would be “Fury secretly finds out about the Skrull rebel invasion and has to deal with it” rather than “Fury’s old pals tell him exactly what is going on from the jump.”
Since there will be a War Machine movie starring Cheadle, I’m guessing this will be a Skrull impersonating him in this show, but not for ALL the time we’ve been aware of Rhodes.
replacing work that could be done by a person with an A.I. is a terrible, terrible trend, and if we allow it to continue then it’s just a matter of time before artists and writers start being replaced. If we value TV and movies at all, if we value thoughtful criticism of TV and movies at all, then we cannot allow it ever.Fair enough, but the AV Club taking this stance can’t help but seem a little insincere given recent announcements.
I find their take misguided. AI taking over some jobs is an inevitability and in a vacuum shouldn’t be seen as a bad thing. Technology has always resulted in a shift of what is done by a person and what isn’t. The problem is that the lion’s share of the benefit from AI will go to a handful of people, most of whom are already super wealthy while people who are displaced from their work will be given scraps. But that has more to do with our current state of capitilism than it does with AI advancements.
Yeah my english teacher the other day was like “I read a poem by an AI over the weekend and now I dont know if Ill ever write a poem again” and we students be like “dude maybe you shouldn’t write poems”.
Like I’m sorry but you can’t close Pandora’s Box. Kick and scream all you want Sam Barsanti but AI is inevitable. Which means a good chunk of literary based jobs are going to go extinct. Which does mean that a large group of people above 30 who have dedicated the early portion of their life attaining those skills are shit out of luck.
It makes it almost a sad thing because Barsanti here is facing the unemployment curb once AI gets integrated.
I honestly think it’s going to change the school system in that certain things that were worth merit before wont be worth merit anymore. And that’s kind of fine the biggest issue with it is all these people (like Barsanti) who have dedicated their life to a skill they didn’t realize would go defunct within their lifetime.
I mean it sucks for the individual but yah all these scabby fluff piece blog writers are going to need to get real jobs soon.
This explains so much.
I get the idea that when automobiles were a new invention he would be giving them all failing grades and saying that they were taking jobs away from hard-working horses.
I pretty much stopped watching this : it’s like head injury theatre ..everyone is just acting so stupid they literally have been beaten into semiconscious submission with the idiot ball. That said , my wife was watching this episode and I ended up seeing some of it .If they scrapped all the skrull revolution rubbish , and just had several hours of Jackson and Mendelson chatting and bitching to each other in character driving somewhere , I’d much rather watch that instead.Its literally the only redeeming thing that comes from this.
Yeah wasn’t feeling this one. Felt more MCU than usual, and not in a good way. Really hope there is a winder soldier esque twist that we’re missing.
I just binged through the first three episodes and it’s alright. Its placement in the MCU feels off – like there should have been another season ahead of this one that established what Fury was doing with the Skrulls, gave more of his backstory since Captain Marvel, and set up the threat and some of the smaller story points.Not exactly the same but I look at how Agents of SHIELD set up the LMD arc (which also featured characters being replaced) as the middle story in S4 so they could first establish Aida and how she becomes corrupted. That approach would have worked well here.But will see what they can do over last three episodes.
I am once again dropping the episode down a full letter grade over the A.I. intro. I know it’s an effectively meaningless and performative “punishment,” but replacing work that could be done by a person with an A.I. is a terrible, terrible trendYes, but according to the people that worked on the intro, multiple people worked on it. No one’s work was replaced.
If “Bob” the commodore was a Skrull, why did he care when Fury threatened the kid? It wasn’t his kid. He was ready to kill a thousand people and start a war after all.
They want a next level twist? Reveal that Rhodey has been a Skrull since Iron Man 2 and bring back Terrace Howard!
“They want a next level twist? Reveal that Rhodey has been a Skrull since Iron Man 2 and bring back Terrace Howard!”I don’t know how much coke snorting that took, but don’t let up.. I want more craziness like this.
It’s pretty unprofessional of Sam Barsanti to mark this entire series one letter grade lower cuz of the AI credits.
This has be seriously think it’s a small dick thing. I came here genuinely wondering how the shows trucking along and I see a “D” grade. Be professional Barsanti goddamn.
Can we replace Barsanti with an AI now and get it over with?
I came here genuinely wondering how the shows trucking alongHaving just caught up, it’s just OK IMO – I would say similar in quality to TFATWS so far. The bromance between Fury and Talos is the highlight as it has been consistently fun to see Sam Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn riff off of each other. On the negative side, the villain is incredibly dull and oddly very similar to Karli from TFATWS. Both are terrorists who justify their actions as a valid reaction to being displaced. Both are clearly meant to be at least a little bit sympathetic but are shown taking sadistic pleasure in hurting or killing people in their way so that you don’t feel any sympathy whatsoever for them.I hope it gets better from here but if Barsanti’s true score for this is a C+ so far, I would agree with it.
I don’t understand…. is Sam Barsanti trying to tempt his bosses to replace him with an AI by deliberately botching these reviews?
I have a feeling there are other Skrulls embedded in the British Navy so the ones who were killed (actually were there any other ones besides the guy Talos killed and possibly the one on the sub who tried to stop them from deactivating the missile?). Gravik was using them as pawns who were expendable. Hell, when you have the Prime Minister, it’s pretty easy to infiltrate plenty of other places.And was it really so hard to name the human form of Fury’s wife Vera?
‘But she never would have been in danger if he hadn’t killed the guy!’The problem isn’t that Talos killed Fake Bob, but rather he had no real means of getting Fake Bob to give up the code. The fallback was to burn Gi’ah to get the code out of the machine hooked up to Real Bob, regardless of whether Fake Bob was alive or dead.
A full letter grade for the same intro? Here’s the thing as I’m sure more people will inevitably remind you. There are still at least 3 more episodes to come. There aren’t however as many letters on a meaningful letter scale grading system.After D comes F, but then what are you going to do for the last two? Full letter degrading out of spite might feel good now? But after you hit the F, which I suspect at this rate will be… Next week’s episode; you won’t have anything left to contribute gradewise for the last 2.Think it through. Also this?‘”…and then had to mourn him again when he came back to life and immediately abandoned Earth for his space vacation.”’And this?‘”How would you feel if your spouse was turned into dust for a few years and then came back and went on a years-long space vacation?“’Were missed opportunities to use space-cation instead of space vacation.
On the one hand, I’m a little disappointed this show is The Bumbling Misadventures of Fury and Talos, rather than Fury and Talos Save The Day With Superior Spy Skills.But on the other hand, I doubt that latter show would be as interesting. The good guys currently have no idea what’s going on! If Fury pulls some magic spy bollocks and has somehow preempted Gravik, then I’ll probably riot.
“prompting Gravik to just rip his hand out like the dude in John Wick: Chapter 4 before watching it heal with what may be Super Skrull powers”That healing was the Extermis powers from Iron Man 3.
“I am once again dropping the episode down a full letter grade over the A.I. intro. I know it’s an effectively meaningless and performative ‘punishment,’”It was right of you to point this out and discuss this in the first episode review, but to continue to penalize each subsequent episode a letter grade just comes off as petty and childish.