Let's talk about season four of The Boys. There are spoilers ahead.
I finished watching the fourth season of Amazon Prime's The Boys this week. First observation, if there are any conservatives out there who watch this show and don't get that this is blatantly about them...about the likes of Marjorie Taylor Green, Trump, and InfoWars...then they are utterly stupid. This show is about as subtle as a jackhammer outside your window in the middle of the night. I'm not completely certain, but I bet they used real quotes pulled from Alex Jones (and other folks) to write their script. It's a fascinating and terrifying tour de force of the fascism that is swamping the country.
But taking a step back from the fascist messaging of the show (and its obvious satire), I thought that this season stepped into the grossness a lot more than previous seasons did. Now, there was always blood and gore. That's just part of The Boys. But in this season we got farting on cakes, gross web hole pus, amputations, people being ripped apart, and obvious sexual things that devolved into some pretty disgusting stuff. In fact, every single person in The Boys seems to exhibit the worst kind of grossness that is common among the human condition. This show just puts it under a magnifying glass for all the world to see. And of course whenever Compound V is used to make a new superhero in this season, the body horror was on full display.
I also wasn't completely on board with Sister Sage's powers. I kept wanting her to impress me with her powers (she's the smartest person in the world), but the Machiavellian manipulations that she supposedly had a hand in all seemed coincidental. Like...I'm not sure that she could have controlled the outcome like she says she did. But whatever...it's a show. I did find her character entertaining even if she needed to literally lobotomize herself with a spike before she could have fun (again...this show is gross).
I'm not sure what to expect going forward with The Boys storyline. My roommate (who watched it with me) says that the character of Butcher is figuratively dead. If you've seen the season, then you know he isn't physically dead, but that he was fighting a part of himself that was really evil and just wanted to commit genocide on all of the Supes in the world. He was holding that part of himself back, putting faith in his stepson Ryan (Homelander's kid) to do the right thing. When it became apparent that Ryan didn't have it in him to do the right thing, Butcher made up his mind to accept that evil part of himself and go through with the plan. So that's what I think season five will be about: Butcher embracing total evil for the sake of a better world and killing every supe in the world including himself and Ryan (whom he obviously cared about).
Is The Boys a kind of modern Starship Troopers? That question pops into my mind a lot as I watch this show. I mean...obviously there are differences. But Starship Troopers was satire too. Anyone care to weigh in on this?
The grossness has been on full display since the beginning when they blew up an invisible supe by shoving an explosive up his ass. Since people got off on that, I think they've kept trying to push the envelope more and more.
ReplyDeleteAnd conservatives whining about this being "woke" was almost as stupid as Star Trek "fans" whining about "wokeness."
I don't think I can handle a show that gross. I am very squeamish. Very. I do find it funny that conservatives missed the point of much of this, but then again, Poe's Law.
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