I have been on a bit of a TV watching spree in recent times. I covered Cobra-Kai a few weeks back, and now I’m focusing on Amazon Prime’s hit series The Boys. Similar to Cobra-Kai I probably wouldn’t have bothered checking out this show if it wasn’t for so many people online praising how great it was and also if I didn’t already have an Amazon Prime account thanks to my failed attempt at watching Star Trek: Picard. Finally, unlike Cobra-Kai, I actually like this show, so hip-hip-hooray a positive review is coming your way!
I’m just going to quickly fly through the first season, so we can move right along to Season 2, but not quite as fast as A-Train did when he disintegrated Hughie’s girlfriend. From the get-go The Boys has quite an intriguing concept: what if The Justice League were bought out by a big company, like Amazon for example, and all the heroes are egotistical jerks! Also Amazon will cover-up their bad behavior for the greater good of keeping a positive image for the company. That’s where The Boys come in, a small group of rebels fed up with these stupid superheroes who are now hell bent on bringing Amazon down!
The first season is a really solid starter to get you into the show. Even though it’s a more dark satirical look at the superhero genre it manages to easily flip between dramatic and comically ridiculous whenever needed. The characters are so well developed and understandable that it will make most superhero movies blush. Speaking of which, this show throws so many painfully on point jabs at the superhero genre and the culture surrounding it, that it’s priceless.
The story is also very good and nicely spread out over 8 one hour episodes. The highlights of the first season would include just about anything to do with the main superhero team, The Seven, as that mostly ties to the aforementioned jabs at the culture. The violent gory deaths, the show’s more disturbing moments, such as that plane scene and Homelander almost snapping at anybody, that stuff is tense. The downside is whenever the show is not about The Seven and is focusing on someone who isn’t Karl Urban. Lastly, where on Earth are they going with The Deep?
Thumbs up of approval, roll over to Season 2!
Since the last season of The Boys, things are getting pretty heated. Manufactured super-villains are popping up all over the world. Homelander had to kill Elisabeth Shue so she could appear in the next season of Cobra-Kai. Gus Fring had to take over the shop so he can closely examine the heroes. The Boys are now wanted criminals by the superhero company Vought and the government. Starlight is on A-Train’s hate list and Billy Butcher reunites with his recently confirmed no longer dead wife for five seconds before Homelander drops him off at Denny’s.
The show does take awhile to lift itself back up thanks to the absence of Butcher and the first few episodes kind of failing to live up to the ending of Season 1. I would say when the Boys crash through The Deep’s whale friend is when the show is officially back! From there we get some of the show’s best episodes such as the one where some of The Boys go on a nice Sunday drive while also bopping along to some Billy Joel. Then the episode where The Boys find a mental hospital where all the patients are drugged up on superpowers. Then the one with the court room of exploding heads! Then finally the season finale, where they nicely callback to a parody they did a few episodes earlier of The Avengers: Endgame’s “girl power moment”, but in this episode we see all of the main female superpowered characters kicking the ever living hell out of the superhero Nazi who is also a woman!
Other highlights of this season include once again anything to do with The Seven, especially when they’re in the middle of filming their new movie of the Vought Cinematic Universe, Dawn of the Seven. There are more messed up moments with Homelander like when he pushes his superhero son off a one story roof. The new character Stormfront definitely leaves an impression and her relationship with Homelander is probably the most fascinating on this show. Also there’s more of Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher, but each episode this season is making him less cool, so I’m not sure what to think of that. Downsides: Each season is improving the other members of The Boys, except Hughie, I continue to fail to get into this character. I’m just going to blame the fact he’s such a pathetic noodle head. A-Train is pushed to the sidelines, so he can then hang out with The Deep and his Scientology friends. Lastly, just when you think The Deep is going to affect the main story, he ends up not really doing anything and I still wonder where they are going with this character.
Overall another solid season. I like that it finishes with a happy optimistic ending, especially during this time of TV shows being cancelled all over the place and if this is the final season of The Boys I wouldn’t really mind it so much. I doubt that will happen, especially with the recent announcement of a spin-off show.
The Boys is a good show and I highly recommend checking it out if you already have an Amazon Prime account or if you can access it some other way. I have been The Blog Complainer, bye-bye!
