Duplicate method call or add logic to set local variables as parameters?

This is a fairly trivial example of a question I come up to often. In the example below I tend to think that allowing duplication sometimes results in clearer code.

Does anyone agree/disagree on this point?

First way: an additional local variable is used so method.Invoke is called just once on the last line. I think this has slightly more logic to decode than the second way.

private static void Invoke(string[] args, MethodInfo method) where T : new()
{
    T target = new T();
    target.InvokeMethod("Initialize", errorIfMethodDoesNotExist: false, accessNonPublic: true);
    string[] methodArgs = null;
    if (args.Length > 1)
    {
        methodArgs = args.Skip(1).ToArray();
    }
    method.Invoke(target, methodArgs);
}

Second way: No additional local variable but the call to method.Invoke is duplcated in both branches of the if statement. I think this is clearer even though logic was duplicated.

private static void Invoke(string[] args, MethodInfo method) where T : new()
    {
        T target = new T();
        target.InvokeMethod("Initialize", errorIfMethodDoesNotExist: false, accessNonPublic: true);
        if (args.Length > 1)
        {
            method.Invoke(target, args.Skip(1).ToArray());
        }
        else
        {
            method.Invoke(target, null);
        }
    }

I think this would be even better, in this case.

private static void Invoke(string[] args, MethodInfo method) where T : new()
{
    T target = new T();
    target.InvokeMethod(
        "Initialize", errorIfMethodDoesNotExist: false, accessNonPublic: true);
    string[] methodArgs = args.Skip(1).ToArray();
    method.Invoke(target, methodArgs);
}

Skip() on an empty collection returns an empty collection.

StackExchange Code Review Q#11753, answer score: 8