Any good show or movie is one where you can rewatch it and find new meanings, see a different perspective of a character and still find it enjoyable. “Secret Invasion” is a show where you watch it for the first time and find absolute boredom as characters spout nonsense.
The fifth episode titled “Harvest” is a textbook example of what to not do with your show. That being introducing what the entire story has been about at the very end of the second to last episode, which of course is what happened in this week’s episode. Before tearing this show a new one, there’s the idea of replacing “and then” in a story with “because of this” and “so then” in writing.
For example, in “Iron Man,” Tony Stark is captured by a terrorist group and sustains a life-threatening injury. Because of this, he creates the first Iron Man suit to save his and another prisoner's life, but also because he is slowly dying from his injuries. In “Secret Invasion,” it goes from one scene to another in the laziest way possible. We don’t feel any danger from any situation in this show because we never see the overall threat of “World War III.”
In “Iron Man,” we see the threat of the terrorists, Stark slowly dying from his injury and trying to escape. In “Secret Invasion,” we jump from country to country with Nick Fury stopping a submarine from causing World War III, and then saving the president in London. There is no connection between these two important events in the story besides the “stopping a war” part. Due to this, we never feel the urgency the characters are going through, and therefore the writing and plot suffer because of that.
Now getting into the plot of this episode, it begins with Fury taking the president of the United States to a random hospital for his injuries. Some time later, Rhodey shows up and Fury throws him to a wall and puts a gun in his face while Rhodey taunts him with blackmail of a fake Fury killing Maria Hill, saying he will become the most wanted man in the world. This makes no sense because the public is finding out what skrulls are through the news footage that is shown in this episode, so Fury could say this is a skrull, and have an alibi. If there were cameras in the area, they would see one Fury shoot Hill and then another Fury run up from the opposite direction, something shown in the first episode to provide Fury an alibi and an explanation.
Moving forward, Gravik goes back to base with his soldiers and they are mad at him for being cowardly and not killing Fury when they had the chance, questioning Gravik about his big plan with the Harvest, which is quite literally brought up and explained in this same scene. This Harvest thing is the main motivation for our main antagonist.
What makes no sense is that Gravik has been trying to kill Fury this entire show, but now he randomly needs Fury alive for his plan of creating super skrulls with this harvest nonsense. If Fury is dead or in jail, he cannot tell you where the vials for the blood are or even where they are, you would have to bring Fury to your base and force him to give up the location. This entire plot keeps falling apart the more they add to it, and it is so ridiculous that it’s hard to put into writing. It’s something you need to see for yourself.
Going back to the plot, we get a bunch of conversations and action that makes no sense until we get to the 17:51 timecode in this episode. For people curious what that time is referring to, it is the worst example of ADR that has ever been used in any medium of entertainment. It goes past parody into being downright insulting. One character is speaking clearly in a wooded area, and then the other character responds by sounding like they are behind a metal mask or behind a bane mask, and speaking obviously in a studio due to the audio levels. It is so horrid that it will probably be up on YouTube and Twitter for the next week for people to laugh at. It is insulting how a billion dollar studio could be so uncaring of what they put out and expect people to flock to the show and praise it and give it money while the people making the product don’t even care about what they are making.
Onwards, we see Fury meet up with Sonya, grab the Harvest from a fake tomb and the episode ends with Fury calling Gravik and saying that he’s ready to take him on. Overall, this episode is insulting to people with intelligence, and rightfully deserves the level of hate it is receiving. From the first two episodes, it was clear this show could be good and there were snippets of good from this show. Looking back, it was naive to believe that. With the finale coming next week, the excitement couldn’t be any lower.
Rating: 1/5
