The first half of “You Look Horrible” focuses on the Coalition of Planets, which is in the midst of a war with the Viltrum Empire, with various planets being enslaved and liberated throughout. The first half of this episode spans two months and focuses primarily on Mark’s recovery. While Conquest is buried and Mark is comatose, Nolan bonds and trains with Oliver. Before the big second-half reunion, Allen and Tech Jacket are saved by Space Racer and find safety on Talescria. As Oliver and Nolan’s relationship grows more tender, Mark wakes up as Thragg plans to directly attack Talescria. With the help of a mole, a Viltrumite ship is able to start attacking the planet, with Allen, Tech Jacket, and Thaedus struggling at first. Luckily, the Graysons show up and manage to fight the Viltrumites off enough to get them to retreat. The episode concludes with a final tease about the next major battle taking place on Viltrum. 

While the passage of time was well explored, the reliance on montage to show scenes from various battles was interesting, as some of these details would have been exciting to explore further. The second half of the episode stands out, particularly for its action, but it had a strange lack of physical consequences. Additionally, Oliver and Mark deal with the Viltrumite ship shockingly quickly. Thragg, in particular, is in a very strange space narratively. His scenes are filled with intimidating dialogue, with monologues to a cracked skull that almost play like parody. Thragg’s hilarious villainy is particularly confounding, as his lack of visualized feats of strength makes him seem almost like a poser. To be clear, the choice to build up to Thragg only for him to turn out to be some sort of poser is an incredible choice; it is just confusing at the moment whether the audience should be intimidated by him. 

The highlight of this episode, beyond the final fight, was the relationship between Oliver and Nolan. Of their whole plotline, the scene in which they steal the alien’s eggs was compelling, as Oliver stands up to Nolan about sparing the mother creature. Still, their dynamic was most effectively explored visually rather than through dialogue. Throughout Invincible, many interactions play out very generally, leaning towards one-size-fits-all dynamics rather than specific observations about the show’s characters. This clash was at its clearest when Oliver talks about some infatuation he had with a restaurant lobster. A scene that started out with the extremely compelling observation that Oliver wouldn’t be attracted to human women wound up becoming an ordinary scene of puberty awkwardness, adding insult to the injury of the lost complexity by ending the scene with a joke about Oliver having eaten the lobster. Additionally, the episode cuts away from a climactic discussion in which Nolan talks about Oliver’s mom. This choice reads as clever, allowing Nolan and Oliver to share a private moment away from the audience. However, given the show’s previous writing and creative capabilities, the choice reads much more like the show had no clue what specific observations Nolan would make about her. Overall, this was an above-average episode of Invincible, yet it exhibited symptoms of the disease that’s been inherent to the show since the beginning.

Rating: 5/10