The Boys (Season 1)

Are you looking for subtlety? A world that isn't poking fun and itself and super hero fandom in almost every shot? Are you looking for something that is timeless and will age wonderfully? Are you looking for a world that makes you feel hopeful and one that isn't gratuitously violent? Well The Boys might not be the show for you.

Honestly, it makes sense that something like The Boys would come around sooner or later. With the over-saturation of super hero films in the zeitgeist, and the immense lucrative popularity of Deadpool poking fun at it, it makes sense that we would get a show that essentially has the tag line, Superheroes are bad and we're going to kill them in this show.

The Boys takes place in a world where not only do superheroes exist, they're mainstream celebrities with endorsement deals, sponsors, managers, and all the trimmings of celebrities you can think of.

Seriously, one of the truly impressive things about this show is how built out the world is. Vought, the corporation that sponsors the main Justice-League-like team in this world, The Seven, is a really well developed company whose sole business is the marketing and managing of super heroes, but it goes beyond that. Superheroes are integrated into politics, into religion, into culture. Superheroes not only fight crime but they star in their own superhero films. Vought is a not so heavy handed analogy for what Marvel, and in turn, what Disney would be if Iron Man and Captain America were real people. The company is figure headed in the show by the Vice President, Madelyn Stillwell (played by Elizabeth Shue)

I'm sure part of that is shown in the comics, but as per usual, I haven't read that so I wouldn't know. Overall, the attempt at realism is so succinct that its almost obnoxious, but it makes for a really funny and really dark scenario for the premise of the show. I'll get to the obnoxious part of this show in a little bit.

The show mainly centers on Hughie Campbell (played by Jack Quaid), who after a horrific tragedy involving his girlfriend and a Flash-like superhero named A-Train (played by Jessie T. Usher), he is recruited by a mysterious British rogue named Billy Butcher (played by Karl Urban) to take vengeance on A-Train and all the super heroes that have caused damage to both of them and others.

At the same time, a young woman named Annie (played by Erin Moriarty) lives in Iowa with her mother (played by Ann Cusack) and has been training to use her super powers of super light(?) to go to audition after audition with the hopes of joining The Seven. In the first episode, she gets her wish and is brought into the ranks of the elite superhero team. But she quickly figures out that superheroes are more celebrity than heroes and that unearths the dark underbelly of the super hero celebrity life style that happens to look a lot like the celebrity underbelly that exists today...

Yeah, within the first five minutes of meeting this character, probably within five minutes of starting this show, you can probably guess what kind of social commentary its trying to make on the world we live in and they are not subtle about it, AT ALL.

In fact nothing about this show is subtle. The show goes out of its way every episode to hold on the rating warning of the show because it has large amounts of blood, gore, violence, sex, nudity, etc. It's tackling some really mature subject matter and they don't hold back any punches.

The problem is, its kind of predictable because the show is almost trying too hard to be the darkest thing you can imagine.

If you heard that they were making a dark show about superheroes and how they're pretty much like celebrities, the first things that would pop in your mind are probably correct, and if they're not, they probably will be in season two. The first 10 minutes was me saying, WE GET IT YOUR DARK!

It's not all bad. The show is pretty funny, and I have a dark sense of humor so I didn't not have fun with it. I think one of the better comparisons would be with RoboCop. It's saying something about corporatism, greed, and too much power concentrated in one place. I suppose if you're going to make that message and you have no holds bar to go as gruesome and mature as you want, why not right? I just think there were a couple of times where somebody could have pumped the brakes and said, less is more.

But talking about the good things about the show is not hard because there is a lot this show does right. It's obvious that the superhero characters are parodies of the known superheroes like Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, The Flash, etc. And it would have been really easy to keep things surface level just for the laughs. I mean there is a Batman-like character named Black Noir which literally means black black and I find that hilarious.

But instead, the show does a pretty good job diving into the psychology of these heroes and why they ended up the way they are. Even the characters you find despicable, the show takes the time for the audience to get to know them a little bit better and at the very least, you can laugh at their pain.

I do think one of the real accomplishments of this show is how much the world feels lived in. For how much it is for sure a parody, it takes the time to develop a world where Superheroes exist and how they would affect culture.For example, the Superman analogy in this show is called Homelander (played by Antony Star) and he is probably what would happen if you bred Superman and Captain America together and he was an asshole. He becomes this symbol of the American way of life that is very comic book-y but still manages to be intimidating. When Homelander is on screen, its like Darth Vader with an Oedipus complex, but you can imagine what he would mean to America if this was the world we knew. The best example I can think of is if the movie Bright were turned into a TV series, but better. Again, nothing subtle about it, but I don't think its supposed to be.

The cast is great. The show doesn't feel overly star studded and they use that to their advantage. I think they casted a bunch of unknowns to prop them up as celebrities in this world in order to fill it out more.

The two people with the most real life clout are Karl Urban (who is just down right charming), and Elizabeth Shue, and even then, I don't think most people consider those two to be A-List celebrities.

I realized after I finished the show that it is produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and suddenly a lot makes sense. I did feel like the over the top gore and mature content reminded me a lot of one of their other projects Future Man and if I had known that Rogen and Goldberg were behind all this from the start I think I would have shifted my mindset instead of having it shifted for me.

On a side note, Hugie is the exact same character from Future Man, a nerdy 20 something white dude who never got out of his parents basement until the events of the show, but does he sure have a heart of gold.

For the most part, I enjoyed him and Annie's relationship. The show does a half way decent job providing a humble beginning for their relationship and there is a bit of chemistry between of two that makes it charming enough.

I don't think either Jack Quaid or Erin Moriarty are particularly strong actors, but I think the writing really helps them and they do a good job working with a script that is pretty clever.

The person who is clearly having the most fun is Karl Urban. I was worried he was just going to be the leader with the trench coat, but I often forget how talented that guy is.

I obviously can't speak to the accuracy of the characters or the story to the comic book because again, I have not read the comic books but I think they did a good job with everyone.

Other stand outs would be Elizabeth Shue who seems to be acting the hell out of this show, as well as Antony Star and Dominique McElligott who plays the Wonder-Woman analogy, Queen Maeve. They do a really good job establishing these characters relationships and how they've been members of this celebrity super hero community for a while. I imagine they'll explore that more in season 2, but they do a good job establishing relationships and building upon them throughout the vents of the season.

By the way, Simon Pegg is in the show but he's in a criminally underutilized role. You have Simon Pegg, you don't put him as the main characters dad who doesn't do anything, what're you doing Amazon?

When it comes to the downsides of this show, I've already mentioned a few times that the show lacks any kind of subtlety, and that makes for some pretty cringe worthy episodes, especially episode 5 where they delve into religion. Woof.

I think my main issue with the lack of subtlety in this show is how of the moment it feels. Yes, topics like Me Too, Superheroes, Corporate vertical integration, social media craze, even propaganda in the name of national security are all really good topics to talk about, but I get the feeling that this is all going to feel a little dated for anybody who watches this 20-30 years from now.

Yes, issues like sexual harassment/assault are probably (unfortunately) going to continue to be an issue in the future, but like a lot of parody, its parodying the trends and topics of the moment. It might seem relevant now, but I don't see it remaining timeless.

I'll probably mention one more compliment before I get to the closing because I've noticed that other shows on Amazon Prime have a problem of pacing but they're starting to understand which moments they can rest on and which ones they don't need to. I would say the only episode that had Amazon pacing was episode two. I imagine it was more background information, but after episode 2, the season really picks up.

I guess my overall thoughts on The Boys is that I was entertained by it. Its off kilter enough for me to feel like my viewing experience was very different than other shows I've seen in the past. Pretty sure I said the same thing about Future Man and it applies to the Boys. It's got protagonists and villains that are a little different than what you'd really expect, and they're playing around in a developed and funny world.

My biggest issue is that at the end of the day, the show just feels like its capitalizing on the trends and zeitgeist of the moment. I don't think its saying anything too profound, nor is it really saying anything that hasn't been said before.

Its true, we've been doing superheroes for a while. It is overplayed. There is a reason why movies like Deadpool, and even this show, are pretty popular. When we've been saturated with a certain zeitgeist for so long, I think we definitely need something off kilter to point and laugh at how seriously we've taken something like the MCU, or superheroes in general. I think Deadpool hit the iron when it was its hottest... in 2014. Since then the new thing is to combine this parody mentality of superheroes, something that's already starting to feel overplayed, and combine it with social commentary.

Are a lot of the criticisms and messages in The Boys timely and necessary? Yes. I think when you play through the thought exercise, corporatized superheroes can be a good parallel for a lot of things like sleazy Hollywood execs being at best creeps, and at worst rapists. And The Boys seemed to have the budget and latitude to take on these subjects with no holds bar.

But I think when people talk about about super hero fatigue, we all thought it was going to come in the form of people not going to super hero films anymore. Instead its just manifested into a self-hatred counter culture that shits anything good that has come out of properties like super heroes. It categorizes someone being passionate about their interests as being toxic, and while there is something to be said about toxic fandom, there is nothing wrong with people enjoying something pop culture that has wide spread appeal. Everything is so cynical now that even after watching this whole season and enjoying it, there's still something about it that turns me off because its so overt.

At this point I feel like I'm rambling so I'm going to wrap this up. The Boys has a lot of things going for it, while at the same time being about as subtle as a bull in a china shop. I enjoyed watching it and I'll probably watch the second season, but there is a little bit of a love hate relationship as I spent the majority of the show feeling like I was being knocked over the head with the messages and commentary on a lot of things that won't be as relevant in 20 years.

Its a good show for the moment and as it is still in "the moment" its worth checking out. But the more we move away from the topics this show is commenting on, the more its just going to feel dated.

But what did you think? Have you read the comics? How does the show compare? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as requests for other shows and movies I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading!