K'sMIRT is Kent's Month in Reviewing Television, where each month(ish) I step through the TV series I completed watching each month in the 1 Great-1 Good-1 Bad format. However, this month's K'sMIRT is being separated into two posts, one with the 1-1-1 and the other in the unfinished TV format.
This month
Secret Invasion - 6 episodes, Disney+
Full Circle - 6 episodes, HBOMax
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Secret Invasion
1-1-1:
(1 Great) The acting in this is top notch, despite having scripts that often do not make a lot of sense in the context of the MCU as we know it, or suffer severely from pacing issues. We get scenes with Samuel L Jackson cracking wise with Olivia Coleman, or verbally sparring with Don Cheadle, or exchanging some buddy cop repartee with Ben Mendelsohn, pitching woo with Charlayne Woodward, or swapping threats with up-and-coming superstar Kingsley Ben Adir... these are top tier talents all showing exactly why they are top tier talents. They make even the clunkiest of dialogue sing. But that's the thing, not all the dialogue is clunky. In fact any time two characters need to have words with each other, the show really feels alive and vital and worthy. It's just everything else that really didn't work.
(1 Good) Olivia Coleman. That woman is an utter delight. It's just a shame her character has no development here and relies solely on her ample charisma to carry it across. I would hope we see her square off against Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Valentina, but only if it's, you know, written well.
(1 Bad) Secret Invasion, as a story, doesn't satisfy. It's six roughly 40-minute episodes that just blaze through its plot and situation and scenarios, never leaving enough time to live with the fallout of the events of the previous episode (or, sometimes, previous scene). What it needed was more time. This needed to be at least double the length and spend much, much, much more time with its characters as to build them into people (and Skrulls) that we care about and to establish meaningful relationships that pack a whollop when things happen between the characters. There was one character (Beto, played by Samuel Adewunmi) who is introduced as the new recruit to Gravik's terrorist squad, but we never spend any meaningful time with him. Yet the camera constantly focuses onBeto as if he's an important player in all this, yet that importance never materializes. It's just wasted effort, first draft kind of plotting that should be tightened up in rewrites.
Look at what Andor was able to do with world building, character building and intrigue and one has to wonder, with two hundred million dollars and all the might and brains behind this Marvel machine, why this wasn't even close to being as engaging or successful.
The build-up message was this was going to be Marvel's big espionage thriller, and while there was spying, it was pretty devoid of thrills.
Meta: The Marvel event comic book Secret Invasion (I haven't actually read it, but from what I understand) was built around revealing that Skrulls had infiltrated the superhero institutions of Earth and fundamentally undermined the security of the planet. It's well known for a few shocking revelations of heroes who it turns out had been Skrull spies for a long time. It's something that works in a comic book context, and, had each MCU feature been a season of television instead, it's something that could have worked for this mini-series. But big-budget blockbuster movies don't really avail themselves to retconning their history (it would have been the perfect way to get, say, Black Widow or Tony Stark back were there any desire from those actors to reprise their roles). Fan expectations for big blockbuster reveals were clearly unrealistic.
But beyond that, the Skrulls are a full-blown nefarious society in the comics, but they were presented as something far more benevolent in Captain Marvel and thus the series was kind of ham-strung before it even started.
As well, this is yet another Marvel series in which a group of refugees become terrorist. Not a good look Marvel, given the global refugee crisis and the right-wing-fuelled paranoia-by-way-of-nationalism leading to hate group offensives. It's just kind of ugly and unfortunate that they keep ringing this same bell.
Plus, so many characters and actors feel completely wasted in this, with Emilia Clarke topping the list. That role was meant for some unknown or up-and-coming actress, and putting a notable star in the role gave it more weight than the writers put into it.
Seriously, this feels like a series that was developed before the writers' strike, but then shot during the writer's strike without the ability to refine it as they went. But it wasn't. Marvel need to seriously rethink their strategy.
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Full Circle
1-1-1:
(1 Great) The first lure into Full Circle for me was it being Steven Soderbergh's latest venture. While I've never been a religious Soderbergh viewer, I do think he's got an amazing talent for identifying good story and telling it an intriguing fashion. But that's not the "great" I want to talk about. While Soderbergh drew me in, it's Ed Solomon's intricately layered plot that steadily reveals in the first episode that had me transfixed. The intricacy of the mini-series opener persists straight through to the end, as it sustains its exceptionally high level of intrigue and culminates in a satisfying but melancholy conclusion.
(1 Good) The cast is stacked with new faces and big name draws alike, and to Soderbergh's credit (or his casting agent's), the new talent like Jharrel Jerome (Moonlight), Sheyi Cole and Adia (The Midnight Club) are given equal, if not more time than the likes of Clare Danes, Timothy Olyphant and Dennis Quaid. The acting by all is superb, but it's clearly Zazie Beetz who steals the show. I've seen Beetz in more roles than I can count at this juncture, and she's always a welcome presence, but she is in premiere form here as a tenacious Postal Inspector who would likely be abrasive in others hands but comes off as sympathetic and charming, without ever excusing her flaws. It's a brilliant role, and wonderful performance that should get her an Emmy (a nomination at least).
(1 Bad) Soderbergh seems to be still in his "shooting films on iPhones" mode that screams Dogme '95. The lighting is all natural and everything seems to be shot using the exact same lens. The particularly egregious part is Soderbergh's choice to film frequently in "up shots" from about waist height which gives the impression of watching the events from a child's eye view (even though children are pretty uninvolved in the proceedings... the kidnapping is of a teenager). It takes some getting used to, like his experimentation with fisheye lenses with No Sudden Move. His filmic choices don't seem to distract him in his ability to tell the story, but it may distract the viewer detrimentally.
Meta: Soderbergh and Solomon collaborated previously on No Sudden Move and the experimental Mosaic. It seems to be an increasingly fruitful collaboration for the previously "retired" Soderbergh. Solomon provides a tight, gripping, twisty, frequently funny but mature script for Full Circle, and paired with No Sudden Move it may come as a surprise that he was a staff writer on Laverne & Shirley and It's Garry Shandling Show, as well as writer or co-writer of all the Bill & Ted movies, Men In Black, and the two Now You See Me movies. It's a shocking filmography in a way, yet, also makes kind of sense in a way. There's definitely an evolution happening there that makes Solomon's next project something to definitely keep an eye out for.
Yay! Something to add to my list.
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