Will Palmer ‘21
Special Projects Editor
In these uncertain times, it’s extremely important to maintain our mental health by distracting ourselves from the cascading mudslide of existential horrors going on literally right now. Don’t think about it. Find ways to ignore it as strenuously as possible. Ostriches live happy lives when they’re on the beach. How about wrapping yourself in the warm, snuggly comfort of superhero stories? Everybody likes those, except for Communists. The most dominant form of superhero media today—the Marvel Cinematic Universe—has crafted a recipe for superhero tales that is as wholesome, palatable, and mildly unfulfilling as Panera Bread.
Enter Jeff Bezos. Oh, Jeff. You twisted little minx. I should have known I was in for a wild ride when I found out the series my friends had recommended—The Boys—was on Prime Video. The sales pitch essentially went, “You like superheroes, right? What if they were f***** up? Like, really, really f***** up?”
“How bad could it be?” I thought. “I read the Wikipedia page for Brightburn.”
The Wikipedia page for Brightburn doesn’t have jack on The Boys. Good lord. This is not a show I would recommend to my parents. In fact, I specifically disrecommended it to my parents. Baby Boomers already think the entire world is out to get them; they don’t need to worry about an evil analogue of Superman shooting them with laser vision.
The Boys is my favorite new show of the past couple of years. Not just because it would horrify my folks, although that is clearly a bonus (the last time I talked to my parents about a TV show, I spent an hour explaining how the first episode of M*A*S*H is “somewhat problematic”). Spoiler alert for both seasons (of The Boys, not M*A*S*H) from here on out.
The Boys starts with the concept of “realistic” superheroes (what would happen if the Flash sprinted into someone at full speed?) and just runs with it. The show uses this framework to examine topics as wide-ranging as United States foreign policy, corporate greed, the dangers posed by neckbeards who spend too much time online, and the fact that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has the ability to make heads explode like the only memorable scene in Scanners. We even got a season-long subplot lampooning a religious collective that is 100% not representative of Scientology! It would take a long time to explain how the show ties these disparate threads together, but I found that it did so with a generally high rate of success (I should note that I found the not-Scientology plotline to be a bit overlong for what the payoff was).
Speaking of payoffs, I thought that the season-long series of jabs at the Marvel and DC Cinematic Universes—particularly the wince-inducing “girl power” moment in Avengers—wasn’t going anywhere past making fun. Leave it to The Boys to follow through and give female characters a chance to shine in a brutally righteous fight scene that didn’t come across (to me, a man) as pandering or inorganic. “Girls get it done,” indeed.
Strong performances abound in this show, particularly in Season Two—the biggest standouts to me have been Antony Starr (Homelander), Aya Cash (Stormfront), Dominique McElligott (Queen Maeve) and Shawn Ashmore (Lamplighter), but the casting choices and acting are, overall, very strong. I can nitpick some things—for example, the mediocre chemistry between Hughie (Jack Quaid) and Annie (Erin Moriarty) or the occasionally cartoonish aspects of Karl Urban’s performance as Billy Butcher—but that’s not to say that the acting is bad by any means. It is, after all, based on a darkly funny comic series; it should be cartoonish sometimes.
The show’s increased budget is apparent in some of the larger-scale fight scenes and sets. It wasn’t a huge problem in Season One, but the CGI was sometimes cheap-looking or distracting, and this season represents an improvement on that front.[1] Some of the fight scenes are still edited in a choppy, confusing manner, but, hey, not everything can be the hospital shootout from Hard Boiled.[2]
A couple of odds and ends:
● I absolutely loved the fact that Black Noir’s only weakness is a tree nut allergy. They even hinted at his aversion to Almond Joys earlier in the season!
● If you pay close attention, the compound that Black Noir assaults in the season premiere is pretty much an exact replica of Bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad.[3]
● I started being a huge fan of Ryan when it was revealed that he was making stop-motion Lego remakes of Dances with Wolves and The Blind Side. You can’t not root for a kid like that, especially when he turns a centenarian Nazi into Anakin Skywalker on the low ground.
● The leaked video of Homelander lasering a supervillain abroad is a pretty apt encapsulation of certain aspects of US foreign policy, right down to the civilian casualties and cheesy thumbs-up before he flies away to let the locals deal with the problems he exacerbated. Fantastic!
If I had to rate Season Two of The Boys on a scale of 1-10, I would give it an 8.33 (repeating, of course). A couple of episodes and side plots were on the slow side, the editing of the fight scenes could improve, and a few threads were left dangling in annoying fashion (what’s Cindy been up to since she escaped Sage Grove in Episode Six?). That said, Season Three could end up tying these side stories back into the main plotline in a rewarding way. I am more than willing to give the showrunners the benefit of the doubt when everything else has been so enjoyable thus far. If you’re looking for something new to watch that has a great cast, shocking and funny moments, and amusingly subversive takes on superheroes in modern culture (among other topics), you could do a lot worse than The Boys.
Oh, and one last thing: What’s up with all the Fresca? If you’ve got theories, get in touch.
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wtp7bq@virginia.edu
[1] They definitely didn’t skimp on the gore budget, either. In Episode 5, Kimiko grabbed that one guy and took his face…off.
[2] If you haven’t seen it, look up the single-take shot from Hard Boiled online. That’s how you shoot an action scene.
[3] I still find it hilarious that we killed Bin Laden and then released his porn search history. Chalk another one up for the good guys.