1x04 Beloved

[7.4/10] I’m sticking to my guns here. Secret Invasion works best as a “wind up the actors and watch them go” show. I can't pretend I’m super invested in the story or the major twists. But it’s hard not to enjoy this one for the sheer wealth of acting talent allowed to follow their talents wherever it can take them.

THe best example of that for me is Fury and priscilla. From an overall story perspective, I don’t love the development. Fury having a secret wife for all these years is a credulity-straining retcon. Even if you can justify it through Fury being a secret wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a trenchcoat, it’s hard to care deeply about a relationship the series effectively just plucked from thin air and has barely established.

But you know what Samuel L. Jackson and just kill it, to where I’m emotionally invested in their scenes even if I don’t really buy this as an extension of the characters or world that we knew. Their conversation about what was broken after Fury left, about Priscilla borrowing ehr form from a dying woman, about the recitation of the poem they shared a decade ago that has new meaning now, works like gangbusters. It’s the kind of slow, meditative, melancholy scene we don’t get enough of in the MCU, and I almost love it more as a standalone piece than a part of this continuing story.

The other material is solid, if not quite as good. But the showpiece here comes from plumbing the depths of this very unique marriage, and more importantly, letting two great actors cook. I've seen some commentary suggesting that Samuel L. Jackson is sleepwalking his way through this show, and I couldn’t disagree more. He’s definitely conveying the sense of someone ground down by what he’s been through. But in scenes like this one with Priscilla, or the one from the last episode with Talos, you get all the nuance and lived-in emotion you come to expect from such a superlative performer.

The rest of the episode is solid. Him toying around with Skrull Rhodey has a good vibe to it. Talos talking to G’iah is an interesting enough scene outlining the ideological differences between them when it comes to the Skrulls’ place on Earth. I appreciate the aspirational side of Talos’ pitch that, if they help stop Gravik, they’ll have a bargaining chip with the President and that “showing their heart” will get them acceptance, with the practicality of his plea that they’re refugees who depend on the kindness of others. And I’m equally sympathetic to G’iah’s rebuke that they have a right to exist in their own skins and not wanting the accommodationist approach anymore.

That said, I hate the fake-out with G’iah’s death. It’s so cheap to make the audience think she died and then flashback to her using the super Skrull chamber to boost her so she can survive it. I’ll cop to falling for the schmuck bait there, but it’s the type of thing that neuters the impact of the show’s other deaths when you know they can just undo them with ease. (Granted, you could say the same thing about Fury himself in The Winter Soldier, so fair play, I guess.)

To the point, I don’t really care about Talos’ apparent death in this one. Maybe it’ll stick. Maybe it won’t. It does come in the midst of him trying to do something noble. But it doesn't really amount to much beyond, “Yeah, Gravik’s a bad guy. He kills people we like.” I guess it gives Fury something to avenge in a “This time, it's personal” sort of way. But Gravik already killed Maria Hill, so this isn’t much bigger than that.

I also don’t come to Secret Invasion for grand guignol action scenes. The showdown between Fury and the Secret Service on the one hand, and Gravik’s forces posing as the Russians on the other is perfectly solid as those things go. There’s a clear goal -- kidnap and/or rescue the President, which helps motivate the action. And there’s individual parts of the set pieces. But aspects of it were still confusing, and I’m just not impressed by firefights and explosions anymore.

Overall, I’ll take the quiet fireworks between two great actors playing husband and wife working out their problems over the big fireworks of the smirking bad guy blowing crap up to kidnap a world leader. I expect more of the latter than the former in the final third of the show, so I’ll take these wins where I can get them.