The Boys: We'll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here

June 15, 2024 1:32 PM - Season 4, Episode 3

The problems have started between Homelander and Starlight supporters; Hughie tries to figure out what's going on between Homelander and Victoria Neuman.
posted by porpoise (18 comments total)

I just caught up on the first three episodes of the season over the last couple of days.

I'm still enjoying it, but I'm glad this'll be the last season for a few reasons.

First, earlier seasons were effective at satirizing the Right because they'd jump out ahead by a couple of moves. They could take what the griftosphere was doing and amplify it to present a perfectly logical extension of what these ideas meant. But the terminal psychosis seems to have accelerated so much between seasons that there isn't really any way to parody it any more. No matter how extreme or loony a stance you take on this, somebody on the right wing is already there and already saying it. There's no way to out-loony the Trumpers any more. They're so far removed into their own reality that you can't really poke fun.

Second, and probably related to the first, the show feels tired. Maybe this is partly intentional, and reflects the exhaustion of good people fighting against what seems like an ever-mounting tide of lunatic evil, but the characters and even the stories all just seem exhausted. MM has lost a ton of weight, his beard, and his swagger. Butcher has brain cancer. Hughie seems to have regressed into largely ineffectual dithering. Annie vacillates wildly between courses of action. And I can't even really figure out what's going on with Frenchie and Kimiko at all.

And after three seasons of leaping from grey area to grey area, Jeffery Dean Morgan just feels like one grey area too many. The Boys are the grey area! That's what the whole show was!

Finally, Sage. Having somebody who is "the most intelligent person on the planet" is a terrible writing trap, because the writers usually aren't the most intelligent people on the planet (and I do think the Boys writers are very, very clever). So you either have an effectively dream-logic plot because one character can at any time say "I anticipated all of this and [unforeseen unresolvable plot issue is fixed]" or is... kind of dumb. Presently, Sage feels pretty stupid. The false flag murders were very easily disproven. She eats Bloomin' Onions and watches reality shows and has the hots for the Deep. Which... maybe six-dimensional chess, but it's not a fun watch.

So. Love the Boys for three seasons, I thought Generation V was good, but this season to date is a pretty rough ride. Ima stick with it, but I'm not feeling great about this one.
posted by Shepherd at 5:11 AM on June 16 [4 favorites]

This is the penultimate season - Eric Kripke says it will end with season 5. With Gen V and The Boys: Mexico spinoffs the cinematic universe could keep ticking for a while longer though.

Presently, Sage feels pretty stupid. The false flag murders were very easily disproven. She eats Bloomin' Onions and watches reality shows and has the hots for the Deep.

The bloody device on the table looks like it might be have been used for a self-lobotomy, presumably her way of getting high / relaxing - hence the reality shows and the Deep. An earlier clip mentioned she has a healing factor.
posted by simonw at 5:46 AM on June 16 [4 favorites]

Agreed about a slightly tired element—perhaps most striking to me during the Vought on Ice bit—though I like the new twists Sage brings to the table. Some puppetmastery is a breath of fresh air in a show with this many fucked-up fuck-ups.

The false flag murders were very easily disproven.

But the anti-Starlight mob won't care, which fits her plan if it is (or requires) some manner of accelerationism, which it seems like it might be.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 9:15 AM on June 16 [1 favorite]

You've got to figure that if she's so smart, then whatever her plan is, it has to include getting rid of Homelander. She can't possibly think he'd let her live once he was in control of everything.
posted by Tabitha Someday at 9:44 AM on June 16 [2 favorites]

The bloody device on the table looks like it might be have been used for a self-lobotomy, presumably her way of getting high / relaxing - hence the reality shows and the Deep. An earlier clip mentioned she has a healing factor.

Yeah, I saw that too and also assumed it was her way of temporarily turning her brain off for a bit.
posted by Pryde at 10:23 AM on June 16

So I definitely feel that tired element. Part of is it is feels like these huge story arcs are meaningless. Like you think a resolution is reached, but nope like with Kimiko and Frenchie. Hughie's family drama feels very tacked on to me, and I'm kinda pissed about being blindsided with it. This was the best they could do for a Hughie storyline? And to do it so poorly like rushing through confrontation and resolution with a parent who went missing for decades and just turned up in dad's hospital room with power of attorney? Sigh.

That said, I'm amused by Black Noir II and interested in Sister Sage (which I'm shocked Vought didn't go for Sistah Sage). I'm very curious how she plans deal with Homelander as there's no way she's about helping this dude out of the goodness of her heart. I'm far more interested in that the latest kimiko/frenchie retread.

I'm iffy on Firecracker, but also Starlight doesn't see the really obvious move here. Publicly apologize to Firecracker for what she did and create some anti bullying campaign where she regularly goes to schools and talks about what happened. She beats Firecracker to the reveal, owns her shit, and defangs any future attacks Firecracker has as sour grapes. Problem solved. She just needs to hire a competent pr person, and she'll be fine. Firecracker's plan seem as impressive as her powers.

I really hope this season picks up because it might be my last.
posted by miss-lapin at 10:52 AM on June 16

A comment on the Youtube excerpt of Sister Sage meeting Homelander points out that their plan for Homelander to swoop in when a Republic fails would make him "Like Caesar" carries the implication that Sage is thinking ahead to, like Caesar, a plot of his rivals to take him out.
posted by Schmucko at 12:46 PM on June 16 [3 favorites]

I'm loving Noir II and his pleas for direction. I'm a sucker for A-train getting a redemptive arc in the end, so I'm still engaged in his plot. I would also love to hear Tilda Swinton's recording session for Ambrosius. How much did they tell her? I hope it was everything.

Sister Sage doesn't make sense to me right now, so I'm hoping there's a retroactive explanation, but I like that actress. I was hoping there was more to her and MM's history, but it doesn't sound like there's more.

Our actual Boys storylines though? I'm not feeling much of it. Frenchie and Kimiko are losing me.

The Vought on Ice number was fantastic, and they got some very impressive Broadway voices to record it. The version on YT does not end in a bloodbath.
posted by gladly at 5:06 PM on June 16 [1 favorite]

Agreed, the general storyline of Homelander getting more power feels boring and most of the side plots feel tacked on. Is there any other major story besides HL getting more power?

Well, at least we got the clone orgy, right?!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:45 PM on June 16 [1 favorite]

Other major stories: Neumann is apparently invulnerable and about to become a heartbeat away from the Presidency.

From Gen V and only briefly alluded to: Butcher has access to a supe-killing virus.
posted by Schmucko at 7:58 PM on June 16 [1 favorite]

Does Butcher have access to the virus? I thought Neumann had the only existing dose of it, and all Butcher had was knowledge that something weird had been happening in a research lab at the university, but not necessarily what that something was.
posted by simonw at 8:15 PM on June 16 [1 favorite]

most of the side plots feel tacked on.

This.

The Vought on Ice and Splinter clones sequences seemed intriguing and clever but just seemed to be tossed off as background set decoration.
posted by fairmettle at 10:16 PM on June 17 [1 favorite]

I wonder if Marvel's stumbles make it less of an appealing target. I have the impression that Garth Ennis truly hates superheroes - the comic started in 2006, before the Iron Man movie, and it displays an encyclopedic knowledge of once-obscure superheroes like Dr. Strange. But the MCU's long run as an invincible juggernaut seems to be coming to an end.

If the first season was a savage attack on Superman (and superheroes in general), the second season imagined Thor as a gender-swapped Nazi, and the third season was an attack on Captain America, I'm not sure who's left to go after. Victoria Neumann seems too sympathetic ("Discount AOC") to be the equivalent of the brain-dead Vic the Veep.

One of the real highlights of the series is its dead-on parodies of pop culture. My favorite is probably the Seth Rogen promo.
posted by russilwvong at 9:10 PM on June 19 [4 favorites]

I don't think it's very useful to think of Homelander as an "attack on Superman." Superman is a power fantasy ("What if a really good person had power?" or "What if someone with power was actually good?" or "What kinds of good could I do if I had enormous power?") and Homelander is more of a horror story tapping into fears like "What if someone like Donald Trump had an enormous amount of power?"

The Boys doesn't seem to be about how superheroes are dumb and bad but rather all the dumb and bad ways that people end up loving and fawning over powerful people who are more like Homelander than like Superman.

I guess it's also about how living among people fighting each other wielding more power than a tank or battleship would be more like living in a nightmarish warzone than in a Marvel movie. So more satirizing the genre of superhero stories rather than some particular character or story.
posted by straight at 2:04 AM on June 21 [2 favorites]

The Boys doesn't seem to be about how superheroes are dumb and bad but rather all the dumb and bad ways that people end up loving and fawning over powerful people who are more like Homelander than like Superman.

Sorry, maybe I should have been clearer. The first season is an attack on the Superman narrative, and on superhero narratives in general.

In the first-season world of "The Boys," what we have is a kind of backstage or sidestage view of Superman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Aquaman, and so on, except that they're given different names. Homelander is a narcissistic, murderous sociopath, but his public image is exactly that of Superman: a benevolent and beloved figure. His coworkers hate him, but in public they appear to be a team, almost a family. And we see the corporate publicity machine (Ashley, movie trailers, on-stage events, supposedly-backstage celebrity interviews) that maintains that public image and that narrative.

Of course one key point is that the publicity machine in the world of "The Boys" is simply a portrayal of a real publicity machine that exists in our real world, one that exists to present a public image of celebrities and movie stars. The public image bears very little resemblance to the real person. (Ironically, of course, "The Boys" has exactly the same kind of promotional celebrity interviews - it appears to be backstage, so you feel like you're really getting to know the actors, but in fact it's also onstage.)

By the fourth season, people know that Homelander is in fact a murderer. Half of them don't care. This makes the story about a very different form of hero worship than the first season - it's more about people's response to Trump specifically than their response to Superman and celebrities in general. To generalize a bit, you could say that it's about people's response to demagogues. It's personal rather than corporate or institutional:

(2) their politics depends on a powerful, visceral connection with the people that dramatically transcends ordinary political popularity

posted by russilwvong at 9:49 AM on June 22 [5 favorites]

I still think that's a misunderstanding of superhero narratives.

Captain America is not a fantasy about "What if the USA were powerful?" but "What if the USA were good?"

For Homelander to be a critique of The Superhero Narrative, it would have to be about how Superman, as depicted in stories that try to imagine a powerful person who is actually good, is not in those stories actually good.

But Homelander is about what if the powerful shitty evil people in our world were even more powerful. It's about how there are plenty of people who would rather worship power by calling it good than challenge power by demanding that it be good.

I guess you could say it's about how when people like Siegel & Shuster tell stories to say, "Look! Imagine power actually being used for good," powerful people will try to co-opt those stories and say, "Look! I'm being the powerful good guy!" when actually they are living Nietzsche's story of the Übermensch believing "I'm so superior that I'm in a different category—beyond "good" and "evil"—the standards used to judge lesser men don't apply to me."
posted by straight at 2:04 PM on June 22

I'm pretty meh on this season. But I've been meh on the whole show. Don't love the cartoonish violence, think the show has mostly been spinning on its one big idea too many seasons. I think Ryan is the most interesting part of the story now and the actor has really stepped up and is performing well. Couldn't care less about some of the other storylines.

I liked the villain(s) Splinter.

Did I imagine it or did they show Homelander shirtless in bed with a ridiculously hairy chest, like a thick pelt? I can't find it now.
posted by Nelson at 9:41 AM on June 30

This season feels like a remix of earlier seasons. The storylines for Hughie, Frenchie, and Kimiko are the weakest, as noted above. MM's storyline is... he's the boss. OK then. Butcher at least has a redemption story with Ryan, but adding Negan The Comedian Agent Kessler is a bit of a hat on a hat situation.

There's no way to out-loony the Trumpers any more.

I was thinking the exact same thing. Like, this season is actually way behind the real-life nutcases. War on Christmas, flat earthers, the guy trying to rescue kids from the basement of the Starlight house -- pfft, what is this, 2016?

Still, watching the show makes me actively anxious, which... is probably not a good thing, now that I think about it.
posted by Saxon Kane at 4:12 PM on July 1 [2 favorites]