The Boys

The first (and only so far) season of this series consists of eight episodes. In episodes 4 and 5 we get the pro-homosexual message loud and clear. I’ll give away a few spoilers in this post but none of them particularly matter.

We learn that the hot chick superhero, Queen Mauve (played by the hot chick Dominique McElligott), has an old girlfriend that she set aside to have a more acceptible romance with head superhero, Homelander (this series' version of Captain America).


Queen Mauve and Homelander

We also get the message loud and clear the that religious are all a bunch of rubes, their leaders snakes and con-men. Given that this is often the case, I don’t object to it as a storyline, per se. But it is a bit much.

What’s funny about the anti-establishment, trust-none-of-the-bigshots message in this is that Democrat voters do not apply this to their own con-men and con-women.

Still, the series flows rather well until it hits the last episode. I think they simply ran out of money because in this episode not much happens. Most of the time is spent having long conversations that aren’t particularly interesting. Thus I really do think they ran out of budget and were trying to stretch things out with cheaply-filmed filler.

Karl Urban’s character, Billy Butcher, who was initially interesting because of his edginess, soon becomes tiring. He’s nothing but a scowl and weighs down the series. But most of the other characters (even in their intentional stereotypes such as Homelander) are more interesting.

There’s a clear restriction put on the moral transformation of the characters. And I think this is completely a factor of trying to stretch things out into multiple seasons. Where there should be character development (such as with Annie/Starlight) we see her obliviously sitting on the fence taking much abuse even though she is the one superhero in the bunch who means to do well. The assumption very weakly put forward is that she burns so much for the notoriety and fame of being a superhero that she simply gets sucked into the corrupt system. But there is little evidence of this kind of naked ambition from her. (The naked ambition exists in her mother). She wants to do right….but just never gets around to it for some reason.

And that’s the frustrating part of this first season. Like most streaming series, things are intentionally strung out, thus the stories and characters get stuck in a sort of stasis, the plot points left on hold in order to milk more episodes out of them.

But there is some good shtick along the way. They learn (spoiler…but, again, I can’t see how this makes any difference in watching the series) that these superheroes are not “made by god,” as was the claim. Instead, they are made at birth by injecting them with a blue chemical called Compound V. The anti-hero A-Team-like unit learns this when they break into a secret facility where they see a nursery. One of the baby’s eyes they see laying in an incubator burn like lasers, just as Homelanders do.

Suddenly the group is accosted by machine gun wielding guards who let go (in a nursery, mind you) with a spray of bullets. Billy Butcher and his unit are unarmed, but Billy thinks fast. He grabs the baby with the laser eyes and induces (by squeezing him, I guess) the baby to shoot lasers out of his eyes which Billy uses effectively as a weapon against the guards. This is actually very funny and the series does have some good shtick like this here and there.

Any kind of drama needs good bad guys. They do fairly well in this regard with Homelander and the corporate head, Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue). I suppose because Homelander’s cape is an American flag that he represents the anti-American component of this as well. He’s more of a corporate shill. But at one point (after a terrorist attack) he gives a speech almost word for word the one that George W. gave in New York on top of the rubble. This was eye-rollinging stupid but effective as parody.

Girl-power is on show. What makes it less obnoxious is that these are superhero girls. They have extraordinary powers thus if they can bend steel, it’s less due to the phony strength of having a vagina and completely a factor of having special superhero powers. There are other elements that are common to these types of series or that are topical. For example, the Aquaman of this series (named “The Deep”) meets with a #metoo moment that is somewhat darkly funny as it plays out.

A-Train (the equivalent of The Flash), is obsessed with staying the fastest man on the planet and resorts to getting hooked on Compound V as a performance-enhancer. He’s a bad man. He’s a black man. And there are bad obviously Islamic (called by name) terrorists. And there are good black man. Good white men. Bad white men. But most are in between. This is another series where you’re not going to find a clear hero. But at least the stereotypes are not as rigid as most modern series of the type.

They have a cliffhanger revelation at the end of the last episode of season one. I’ll tell you what it is because, again, I don’t think it ruins anything to know one way or the other, which isn’t much credit to the writers.

The entire reason that Billy Butcher puts together his anti-hero squad is because apparently (and this issue remains fuzzy) his wife (who was in a high position at the Vought Corporation….the company of the superheroes) slept with Homelander. We learn she got pregnant from this. But because the child has superhero powers, there were complications. Both she and the baby died in childbirth.

But up to that point, for all that Billy Butcher knew, she had simply gone missing, presumed dead, for the past eight years. His motivation is to get Homelander, whatever the cost. But then at the very end (it’s an entirely gadgety plot element) it is revealed that his wife is still alive. She had the baby. The baby has superpowers and is the son of Homelander. And it’s Homelander at the very end who takes Butcher to where his wife (and Homelander’s son) are living comfortably.

There are some spoilers regarding this that you might not to read. We don’t know whether this will turn Butcher and Homelander into a more congenial relationship. Or if it simply means that Homelander won’t kill him now as one presumes he was going to. But on this way to this ending, Homelander apparently (it’s all a little fuzzy) learns that his boss, Madelyn Stillwell, was keeping the reality of his child away from him. When Homelander finds this out, the consequences for Stillwell are not good, thus we have some kind of shuffling of the power structure (and potential alliances) at the end of this episode.

None of this is Shakespeare but it is far better than the Marvel and DC movies being put out. I mentioned earlier that this series has “adult content.” The word, adult, of course, is a euphemism. It means ugly, ghastly, and/or vulgar content. That said, many of the scenes, relationships, and dialogue are indeed adult-like, at least when compared to the juvenile slop of the Marvel and DC worlds. There is some very good stuff, for instance, between Frenchie (a member of the anti-hero team) and an Asian chick they meet along the way who has powers, is clearly a victim, but who is very dangerous.

There’s some hilarious dialogue by Mother’s Milk (the tough black guy on the anti-hero squad) as he talks to his wife on his cell phone, usually in mid-adventure. He quit his job but has to keep up the lie that he is still working as a prison counselor. So there’s enough in this here and there to keep it interesting.

Despite the muck of the typical virtue signaling in this series, it’s not quite a sledgehammer over the head. The Deep (the equivalent of Aquaman) eventually plays a pathetic character. He’s looking for meaning outside the tightly choreographed public-relations shell woven around all of these top superheroes.

So one day he gets it into his head to free the dolphins as some large SeaWorld type of place. The Deep can talk to dolphins, fish, and even crustaceans, so he knows the dolphins are unhappy.

He goes against his bosses (he is, after all, currently a spokesman for these aquatic shows), steals a dolphin, and sets off at high speed for the ocean. Unfortunately he’s being followed. One of the black vans in pursuit cuts him off. The Deep is forced to hit his brakes hard, and the dolphin goes flying out the windshield. And if this wasn’t bad enough, just then a large truck goes by and squishes the dolphin flat.

I’m not sure if that was a commentary on supposed “do gooders” or just dark comedy for the sake of dark comedy. But it’s refreshing in the context of all the virtue-signaling, politically-correct junk typical of these series.