Secret Invasion Starts By Hiding Any Greatness

Man, I wish I liked Secret Invasion better than I did — at least the first two episodes, which I got early access to for review purposes. It’s not bad, but at best it is (so far) about the equivalent of an average episode of an average network TV spy/conspiracy thriller. Think The Black List or Blindspot. It has none of the innovation of WandaVision or Loki. And little of the quality writing of spy/conspiracy thrillers like The Americans or Orphan Black.

Below, in a spoiler-free review, I will explain why I am underwhelmed by Secret Invasion. It may be a short review, because I really don’t want to spoil any of the reveals, as they are among the most engaging parts of the show’s first two episodes out of six.

The best part of Secret Invasion is the cast and the quality of the performances. Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn are excellent reprising their roles of Nick Fury and his Skrull bromance partner Talos. Kingsley Ben-Adir and Emilia Clark are solid in their roles, if a bit underbaked so far. Don Cheadle adds a maturity to Rhodey that has been mostly missing in his sidekick roles so far. But the show stealer is the wonderful Olivia Colman. She takes the charm she shows in the trailers and kicks it way up with a degree of sass and style that is a joy to watch.

Story-wise the show is solid, bringing in enough elements from the comic book series to make the story seem familiar to comic readers. The plot that drives that story is another thing altogether. Characters do things that contradict what they did just a few minutes earlier, in the very same scene. Vital things that are mentioned repeatedly as working one way, don’t when actually used and nobody mentions that aspect of it again. Skrulls sometimes use their abilities to great effect, and other times seem to forget they have abilities, and become generic spy-action-game NPCs.

Luckily, the dialogue is often better (OK, a bit better) than the plot. There is, so far, very little in the way of actual character development dialogue, but some moments shine, such as the long exposition dump at the beginning of Ep. 1 that shows just enough of a hint of Tarantinoesque two-person tense exchange to keep you invested in what amounts to “if you don’t remember, this stuff happened.”

All of the writing plusses and minuses are laid at the feet of show creator and writer Kyle Bradstreet and series writer Brian Tucker. Bradstreet is best known as being a producer at various levels on the amazing Mr. Robot and wrote nine of the 44 episodes. Tucker’s only writing credit is the 2013 movie Broken City with Mark Wahlberg and Russell Crowe. It has certainly happened that people without deep experience knock their latest effort out of the park. Alas, here it is more an example of “what did you expect?”

With just two episodes under my belt, I hope the show turns things around and becomes a higher quality series. However, there are also just four more episodes for the show to turn itself around, and with the seeming emphasis on spy/conspiracy thriller plot it doesn’t seem like we will ever find out why any of the characters are doing what they are doing, beyond a single line or short “because this happened back when” dialogue exchange.

And I haven’t settled on my opinion about how the details of the conspiracy plot are almost exactly what the Q-Anon morons believe, and how that may or may not be really irresponsible.

I give the first two episodes of Secret Invasion (Marvel Studios; TV-14) a 6 out of 10, with Colman’s sass and Jackson’s swagger being the only reasons it’s not just a 5.

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