I don’t consider myself to be someone who shocks easily; I could give any number of examples of nasty-ass gross-out horror movies I’ve gotten through with no problem, but I’ll just say that I made it through Martyrs without vomiting more than twice and leave it at that. That said, this season of The Boys had me saying “oh, what the fuck,” to myself out loud more than anything else I’ve seen since The Sadness.
I guess The Boys really is back in town.[1]
With that appalling pun out of the way, let’s talk about the first three episodes. Spoilers below.
Let’s address the exploded dick in the room first: Definitely-not-Ant-Man’s[2] urethra-centric misadventure in the second (approximately) scene of the season premiere. That’s one way to set the tone. I can honestly say that I never expected to watch an extended shot of a tiny man crawling into a kaiju-sized urethra before sneezing and, well, you know. Hell, I didn’t even expect to watch a shot of a tiny man crawling into a kaiju-sized urethra until the next time I commissioned some art for “private viewing”. It was almost a relief when definitely-not-Ant-Man unintentionally returned to normal size and detonated his partner’s body dick-first.
That’s grody. That’s Adrien Grody. Someone on the production team should be tremendously ashamed of themselves for creating something so ingeniously disturbing that it makes the bomb-up-the-ass scene from the first season look like a Mr. Bean skit.
Dick explosion discussed, let’s move on…
I spent a while (three minutes) thinking over how to structure this article and settled on the ol’ Pro/Con breakdown.[3] Let’s start with the things I didn’t like…
CONS
-Here’s the biggest one: I found that many of the season’s plot points developed so quickly that some scenes came across as contrived, frustrating, or otherwise immersion-breaking. A couple of examples:
-Neuman leaving the office by herself and blowing some dude’s head up in an alleyway in the middle of a big city? I get that she has the resources on hand to get it cleaned/covered up, but the fact that only Hughie was aware of it happening was a bit of a stretch.
-Speaking of Neuman: her relationship with Stan Edgar, while well-acted, seemed to kind of come out of nowhere – and how would no one have noticed this? Victoria/Nadia’s plotline is the most obvious example of the story being rushed along at possibly a faster pace than it should (though this is through no fault of the actress, who adds some vulnerability to a character who’s growing increasingly complex as a villain).
-Hughie’s self-inflicted relationship woes go from zero to a hundred real quick and are honestly pretty boring to watch. Jack Quaid has a lot of range! Let the guy get a little nuts!
-Butcher’s treatment of Ryan going from nice to absolute monster happened in a flash – it would have been better, I think, to have a scene earlier on showing Butcher quietly struggling with his mixed feelings about the kid. It also came off as a bit of an obvious plot device for driving Ryan into Homelander’s orbit later in the season.
-MM’s obsessive studying of Soldier Boy comes across as a little half-baked from a show-construction standpoint. It seems like something we would have gotten hints about in previous seasons, and (unless I’m mistaken) that’s not the case.
-Thus far, some characters have been a bit shortchanged in terms of screen time (Queen Maeve, for example). This is a natural result of juggling a large cast and a lot of simultaneous stories, but still a bit disappointing, as I prefer seeing Maeve scheme against Homelander to, say, The Deep being suffering various humiliations.[4]
-The Deep’s storyline doesn’t seem to be going much of anywhere, but his position as Homelander’s whipping boy is amusing (albeit occasionally horrifying, as when he had to eat Timothy the Octopus).[5]
-On a semi-related note, I thought that Frenchie’s side story was very eh. I love the character, but when there are this many side stories going on at once, some of them just have you asking, “why is this here?” the whole time. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I felt it distracted from the show’s focus and kind of damaged the momentum. It may wind up tying into the Soldier Boy plot, but even if it does, I think the show could have taken a less roundabout way of getting there.
-Starlight acts uncharacteristically brash while interacting with Homelander – before, she’s been shown to be naïve but intelligent in dangerous situations, and the way she continually pushes her luck with someone she knows is a psychotic, near-invincible murderer is a bit perplexing. The flashback of her beauty pageant performance did a good job of reminding us, oh yeah this exists[6] and is also super fucked up, so that’s…nice, I guess?
PROS
-The flashback sequences covering Grace Mallory’s experiences with Solider Boy (and the rest of Team Payback) are phenomenal. Sarah Swire does an outstanding job of inhabiting the character of a younger, slightly less icy Mallory– you can easily see her growing into Butcher’s bitter pseudo-mentor – and Jensen Ackles’ lunkheaded, casually misogynistic Soldier Boy is like a fratty Captain America, complete with a shield and unhelpful suggestions to smile more. We even get some backstory tidbits about Black Noir![7] I’m reasonably certain that the whole “Supe-killing weapon” thing will end up being a red herring, but that doesn’t mean I dislike the Mallory scenes – far from it. Excellent worldbuilding, humor, and action – when The Boys is firing on all cylinders, it really fucking goes.
-Antony Starr continues to rule the screen as Homelander, taking his terrifying-but-funny persona to new heights (and I thought wanking on top of a skyscraper was going to be hard to top). His interaction with his “birthday save” – a woman considering suicide – was chilling and, somehow, Starr manages to bring a certain twisted humor to a very grim situation. Homelander is getting closer and closer to snapping, and it’ll be wild to watch when it eventually happens.
-I like how Supersonic’s introduction and interactions with Starlight (his ex-girlfriend) don’t descend into cliché territory; Supersonic is conducting himself as much less of a prick than expected. I’ll be a bit disappointed if he returns to his douchebaggy ways and backstabs Starlight at some point (either metaphorically or literally), but we’ll see.
-The special effects are good. While there haven’t been any extended brawls between superheroes this season, I also haven’t seen any examples of distractingly bad CGI. Time will tell if the VFX budget was used effectively in the rest of the episodes.
-In contrast to The Deep’s subplot, I’m quite enjoying A-Train’s (mis)adventures. He’s less of a hapless, selfish dumbass than his aquatically-inclined teammate, which renders him a bit more sympathetic (even though, let us not forget, he absolutely pulped Hughie’s girlfriend in the very first episode of the series). While A-Train’s story doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of bearing on the larger story, I’m willing to give the show the benefit of the doubt on this one – he’s a more interesting character than The Deep and gives us an interesting perspective on The Seven (and life as a past-their-prime superhero).
-Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher is, as usual, a real scene stealer (unless he’s sharing the screen with Antony Starr, in which case it’s an even match). He’s a little less hypnotic to watch than Starr – something about Homelander’s frayed psyche is fascinatingly horrifying – but Urban does a great job of playing a character nearly as fucked-up as his nemesis. A real highlight of the season so far was his parking lot fight with Gunpowder; it was a nice, simple action scene that dealt with more mundane, grounded superpowers (until the laser vision came out). As with several other aspects of the plot, Butcher’s decision to use a temporary superpower injection came across as a little rushed,[8] but fuck if the payoff wasn’t fun.
So far, so good – not great, but good. If you enjoyed the previous two seasons, you’ll like what you see here (apart from the occasional exploding penis). The story is moving along at a fast clip – maybe too fast – and I think that’s contributed to my sense that the plot is more overtly contrived than in previous seasons. I worry, too, that several storylines are heading in disappointingly predictable directions, but The Boys has been good at subverting audience expectations (in a good way!) so far, and I’m hopeful that the trend will continue.
Rating: 7.5/10 (+.5/-.5)
[1] I hate myself for writing that.
[2] I think his name is the Termite, but I’m not 100% sure
[3] Followed, naturally, by a concluding paragraph. I learned that shit in elementary school.
[4] The Deep’s never-ending horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day is funny, but I don’t know if it’s funny enough to warrant this much screentime. Seeing shitheads get what’s coming to them is satisfying, but so is eating frosting, and you don’t take down a whole tub of that shit without getting sick as hell.
[5] Side note: Cephalopods are wild. You know squids have beaks? Fucking beaks, man. Why the shit does a fish need a beak?
[6] Like, in real life. The kids just don’t have superpowers. Which, honestly, might make it even more depressing.
[7] That’s him, right? That would make him pretty old for violent superheroics, but I shouldn’t be ageist.
[8] I dunno, I just feel like someone like Butcher would have spent a bit more time agonizing over whether to become what he hates the most (albeit only temporarily).