The Boys, Season 1 Review
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It’s a bit of interesting kismet that The Boys, Amazon Prime’s new show with superheroes behaving badly, comes out the same year that HBO is tackling a spiritual successor to Watchmen. The Boys is definitely in the DNA, although Garth Ennis’ approach in the comics seems to be a bit more messed up than Alan Moore if this show is anything to go by.
The Boys is set in a world full of superheroes that only pretend to be as good as they are in the movies. Hughie (a wonderful Jack Quaid) finds this out when his girlfriend is run through by A-Train (Jessie T. Usher). This accident gets him in the crosshairs and under the guidance of Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), who is harboring a long standing grudge against the Seven and Vought, the employer of the superheroes. Together, they begin a perilous journey to uncover an ultimate conspiracy.
Honestly, I am really surprised by just how much I enjoyed the show because there are so many elements of The Boys that absolutely grate on the nerves. Perhaps because it has come in the same week as Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, I was hyper aware of how a male dominated project could treat its women. The Boys just barely gets by with its female characters (praise Jesus for Starlight), seeming to want to tie all of their storylines to violence or violation. One the one hand, it’s interesting to explore the idea that even super-powered women are not immune to misogyny, but if you don’t move that conversation forward then you’re just relying on female story tropes. The Boys is a show that feels aggressively heterosexual male from its framing to its plot ideas. The only significant queer characters we have are a Bible thumping phony and Queen Maeve, who is given the short end of the stick. Her interactions with Homelander would be more fascinating if they weren’t stand ins for two of the World’s Finest, cause I cannot imagine Wonder Woman handling Superman the way Maeve does here.
But despite these sometimes cringeworthy storylines, the show does a fascinating job of portraying the murky morality of its characters. Hughie’s seduction into the gang is fascinating and his tug of war with his actions is a true highlight of the show. The Machiavellian nature of all the players involved is so fascinating, especially with the threat of violence looming due to the powers of the superheroes. Every interaction is so tense.
It’s no surprise that the MVPs of this show reside amongst the heroes although they couldn’t be more different. While the way her story starts is utter mess, Erin Moriarty makes Starlight/Annie a force to be reckoned with. We want to root for her because she might be the only good person in the entire series, but Erin lets her be complicated, nuanced, and completely kickass. It’s a good thing we have her because literally everyone else is self serving and awful, maybe none more so than Homelander. Played with villainous relish by Antony Starr, Homelander is one of the most compelling characters I’ve ever had the pleasure of hating. There was not a moment where I watched this show that I did not want him to die and/or continue being intimidating and evil. Antony is brilliant here at letting you see how the character thinks and maneuvers in a world that has basically been given to him to rule. He thinks every decision he makes it right and even when it’s wrong (incredibly wrong), you’ll still want to watch him operate, a testament to how great of a performance it is.
The Boys has a lot of room to grow and topics to explore, especially given the way it brilliantly wraps uses its 8 episodes to tell the story. There’s a big need to make the problematic aspects work for the show rather than against it, but the first season is entertaining enough to get you past most, if any issues.
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