Nolan Grayson ran into exactly the right person, at the right time, when it came to taking his guilt-ridden sense of martyrdom and turning it into something that might actually be useful to other people. I might not have enjoyed all of Omni-Man’s interactions with Allen The Alien (in both this, and the previous season, of Invincible)—both because I increasingly find Seth Rogen’s voice performance as the latter a distraction, and because it felt like he was letting Nolan off the hook way too easily. But it’s also precisely what the disgraced superhero needed at the time: A voice telling him that his life wasn’t over, delivered by someone who could see the good in him without it being complicated by any massive, horrifying harm that Nolan had done to him, personally. But it was never entirely clear whether that “don’t dwell on the past, do good in the present” approach was the stance of Allen (and the wider galactic community, which desperately needs a “good” Viltrumite on its side), or of Invincible the show itself—until tonight, when the series released the first really great episode of its fourth season, by making it clear that his actual victims have no especial interest in participating in the redemption of Nolan Grayson.
Said victims being, essentially, the entire population of the planet Earth, represented in “Give Us A Moment” by his two closest points of purely human contact during his time here: His ex-wife Debbie, and his old tailor buddy Art. As he lays out (with genuine, but myopic, contrition), these are the people who most made him feel like a human being while he was hiding in plain sight, waiting for the day his son would develop superpowers so that they could bloodily conquer Earth’s population together. I’ve had some issues with J.K. Simmons’ usually great voice performance on this show this season, in part because he seems more uncomfortable voicing a contrite Nolan than a raging one. But here, at least, you get the sense that that discomfort is working as intended: Nolan sounds unconvincing in part because he’s trapped on the wrong side of the metaphor the show is using for his various misdeeds. Which is to say, he’s acting like a bad husband who cheated on his wife, when what he actually is is an only semi-repentant mass murderer. (I genuinely believe Nolan is sorry he hurt Mark and Debbie; I don’t think he thinks about the people he tore apart in Chicago basically ever.)
That contrast comes into focus early on in “A Moment,” as Nolan—who’s on Earth with Allen to recruit Mark for their forthcoming war against the Viltrumites—ignores the objections of everyone not trapped in his personal narrative field and decides he simply needs to give Debbie an obviously rehearsed apology. The ensuing conversation is some of Invincible’s best writing in recent memory, adroitly laying out the fractures under the supposed hero’s redemptive façade, as it quickly becomes clear that Nolan views his efforts to turn over a new leaf as a way to get back all the things he previously squandered, when he murdered several thousand people while calling his wife of 20 years his “pet.” He doesn’t put it in quite those terms, of course—which makes it all the more satisfying when Debbie herself does.
Of the ways Invincible the show has improved on Invincible the comic series, its treatment of Debbie Grayson has always been near the forefront. From the casting of Sandra Oh—who’s even more fantastic here than usual—forward, the show has consistently treated Debbie as a main character, not just an adjunct to the superpowered men in her life, and watching her lay in to Nolan, literally punching her knuckles bloody on his impenetrable chest, is immensely satisfying to watch. Slapping down his explanation that the alien woman he fathered a child with (and then abandoned) less than a year after flying out on her was a “mistake,” reminding him of the sheer amount of blood he has on his hands, and the horrible personal betrayals intertwined with all that killing, she rakes him over the coals. It might be dangerous to tell a man who can kill the entire population of your planet that his quest for redemption is a fiction, but it’s also exhilarating to see someone finally lay it out for him on a level of something like equals: “You killed the man I loved,” she tells him, sobs and rage in her throat. “If I was supposed to change you, I failed.”
Nolan’s confrontation with Art is more surface-level amiable, if ultimately just as fraught. (Does he even remember that the last time he brought this guy beers for a quick rooftop hangout, it was so he could tacitly threaten to murder him if he tried to rat him out for the death of the Guardians?) Mark Hamill gets to have some fun here as he plays at geniality, fending off a too-casual Nolan’s questions about Debbie’s new guy Paul, and cutting off the hang as soon as is reasonably polite. But he still manages to get in a devastating cut when Nolan suggests he might come back for a new suit someday: “I dress heroes, Nolan.” Jumping ahead a bit, it’s actually probably lucky that the starship Venture’s adventure back into galactic space got interrupted by a Viltrumite attack before this episode ends. Because with these two sharp reminders that he’s never getting his old life back festering in his head—and the sinking realization that the only thing he’s getting out of his quest to improve himself is the improvement itself—it’s easy to imagine Nolan taking another very dark turn. It’s to Invincible’s credit that it takes the ugliness of this spiritual turmoil seriously.
Meanwhile, though, we have some setup to do, some of it more satisfying than others. A set of needle drops helps introduce us to the heroic Tech Jacket, a.k.a. a teenage girl named Zoe (Zoey Deutch) who fights crime with an alien suit of armor, the dulcet tones of LeVar Burton whispering in her ear, and a swearing-intolerant dad voiced by Bobby Moynihan watching over her. Recruited for the war because her suit might be able to hurt Viltrumites, Zoe’s a minor breath of fresh amid all the angst—to say nothing of the pleasure of having someone on this big mission whose power is not just “punch other people as hard as you can.” On a more reflective note, I also really enjoyed the montage of Debbie insisting her family give her one last dinner together before her sons both fly off into space to get themselves killed. (Oliver’s also going, a plot beat that everyone seems to give into out of exhaustion from trying to fight the narrative, rather than genuine feeling.) Set to “Clementine” by Sarah Jaffe, it’s the most affecting of the episode’s multiple musical sequences, catching a moment of genuine peace and love before the fray to come. It’s certainly more welcome than the final night’s talk between Mark and Eve, which is sweet in a “Teenagers lie to each other that love can conquer all” sense, but which is marred by my growing irritation at Eve’s inability to tell Mark about the pregnancy. “Character won’t tell other character important thing” is one of my least favorite TV storytelling tropes, because it so frequently feels like the writers imposing their own desire for pacing and drama over what the characters would actually do. This particular instance is really starting to grate.
All that, and we haven’t actually gotten to the big space battle that takes up the back third of this episode. (Is it just me, or are Invincible’s 50-minute run-times feeling more and more ill-at-ease with the actual lengths of the stories individual episodes are trying to tell? It frequently feels like we blow past multiple natural stopping points.) A sudden explosion on the Venture heralds not just the arrival of a Viltrumite battleship, but one crewed by three of the species’ last 50 members… most notably Conquest, who Mark was pretty damn sure he killed last season.
I might have rolled my eyes a bit during the season premiere, when this guy busted his way out of Cecil’s cardboard prison roughly six minutes after being placed in it, but I won’t lie and tell you now that I wasn’t excited to see Conquest back. Most Viltrumites—including the two other ones here—are so insanely boring, as characters, that getting to hang with the old psychopath again was a genuine thrill; Jeffrey Dean Morgan continues to get huge kicks out of underplaying the hamminess as he sells a portrait of a guy who really, genuinely enjoys these bloody life-or-death battles. And, while I’m eating crow, I’ll just go ahead and say I was wrong about Invincible running out of ways to make a Viltrumite-on-Viltrumite fight affecting, because holy shit is what happens here, uh, “affecting.”
The space stuff is fine—people slam into each other and say some quips, there are laser blasts and Star Wars references, you get it—but the real thrill comes when Mark decides he’s done with Conquest, for good. Director Sun Choi has helmed some of Invincible’s best episodes, including the finale last season, but outdoes herself here, as the final battle zeroes in on a fascinating hook: Mark’s efforts to put his hands around Conquest’s throat and throttle him to death, a rage-driven choice that means he’ll have to take every single blow the old bastard can throw at him from extremely close quarters for as long as it takes his Viltrumite lungs to give out. The stakes are instantly thrilling, but it’s in the aggregate that the sequence lands with literally gut-churning impact, Choi’s “camera” capturing every twitch and gurgle on both men’s faces as they make a mutual good-faith effort at murder. By the time Conquest is literally reaching into Mark’s impaled stomach to pull what seems like a medically implausible pile of intestines from his stomach, as the last of his breath fades away from his deoxygenated brain, I had achieved a state Invincible hasn’t been able to put me in for at least a year: Genuine, jaw-dropping shock.
“Give Us A Moment” isn’t a perfect episode of Invincible, with its margin material frustrating and meandering a bit too much to keep its middle act from dipping. But it’s an episode of exceptionally high highs, treating both its character beats, and its violence, with the seriousness and skill that they deserve. Based off the first few episodes of the season, I was going into this Viltrumite War arc genuinely dreading what was to come; by the time this episode was over, it was all I could do not to load up my next screener to see where the show is taking this material next.
Stray observations
- • Allen showing Eve his cat photos was genuinely cute. “Does he have… two buttholes?” “Oh, yeah, he’s full-grown.”
- • Nolan is really good here at saying stuff that feels gaslight-y without him actually understanding what he’s doing. “I can see now how it could be considered wrong,” he says, of his planet’s covert interstellar breed-and-conquer platform.
- • “I’m almost a thousand years old, but 20 years with you made me human.”
- • “Now get the fuck out of my house and never come back.”
- • I noted it specifically in regards to the Conquest fight, but this is a really good episode for “acting” overall; Invincible can get a little static with its faces sometimes, but both the blocking and the facial animation here do serious work to sell the emotions.
- • For the record, I am aware of where the Debbie-Nolan plotline ends up going in the comics; I’m really hoping that the rage Oh brings here is a bulwark against that particular bit of character assassination.
- • Tech Jacket briefly kicks the crap out of a hulking, electricity-powered dude called The Walking Dread in her intro. Deutch does a good job of making her sound like she’s having an actual good time doing the teen hero thing, and Moynihan’s brief presence here is a delight.
- • Oliver hugging Paul before leaving got an actual “Aw” out of me.
- • Cecil gets a brief scene where he reflects on the fact that “It’s the first time this planet has been Viltrumite-free in over 20 years.”
- • I continue to not find the joke of the Venture being a crapbucket very amusing; that goes double for any time its captain, still voiced by a quavering Scott Aukerman, is talking.
- • I love the way Morgan plays Conquest as a guy who finds himself genuinely funny. Reflecting on his loss last year, he notes, “Let’s be honest, that was mostly your magical girlfriend.”
- • I suspect Nolan will end up punching his way back into his son’s good graces; his reluctance to even engage with Oliver is one of the more understated through-lines of the episode. Mark, meanwhile, finds himself uncomfortable with continually being thrust into the position of lightly defending his dad from the people he’s hurt.
- • Verbatim from my notes, circa like the third extended shot of Conquest unspooling Mark’s intestines: “Hey, that’s pretty fucked up!”
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