The Boys is a manic, crass, and gory TV show streaming on Amazon Prime. The first series, now about 18 months old, premiered in late 2019 or early 2020. Although I enjoy the show and recommend it with reservations, I suppose that it contributes to the general coarsening of sensibilities intrinsic to much pop culture. The program is reasonably well-written, certainly, exciting in a certain macabre way, and very de rigueur -- the plot glances at various trendy topics and, somehow, manages to besmirch everything that it touches. The chief victim of this vulgarization is the "Me Too" movement, a strain of feminism that weirdly conflates being sexually harassed with some kind of empowerment when the culprit inflicting injury is brought to justice. Not surprisingly, the program focuses on women who are the prey of powerful men -- the show wants us to simultaneously enjoy the objectification of its female characters and appreciate the revenge that these women wreak on their persecutors. Furthermore, it's all oddly retrograde and sentimental -- people are motivated by undying love and romantic betrayal is an important and thematic plot device. Like many shows that want to impress you with their fashionable and nihilistic cynicism, the program also indulges itself in a glimpse of its passionate, romantic, beating heart: sometimes, literally when that organ is snatched from the torso of a still-living character on his or her way out of the story.
Most critics have commented on The Boys over-the-top rendition of ultra-violence. People get reduced to clouds of whirling bone and ropy tissue; heads explode at intervals of about forty minutes and there are all sorts of eviscerations, disembowelments, and decapitations. It's all played for laughs but, ultimately, is deadening to the viewer. Many years ago, I attended a showing of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978). The movie began in media res with a SWAT team attacking some gunmen -- in the course of the firefight, someone's head gets literally blown off. I remember the palpable gasp that surged through the audience and my own reaction which was a combination of shock, repulsion, and some sort of ugly exhilaration. Around the same time, I saw David Cronenberg's Scanners, famous for an early scene in which one of the mutants engaged in a telepathy battle suddenly suffers the explosion of his head into a cloud of pulpy red goo. These sorts of effects were notorious and terrifying. Now, this sort of thing is so common that no one really pays it much attention -- the ante is now so ridiculously high on mayhem that scenes in which the protagonists are slimed with the internal organs of their victims are regarded, more or less, with complete indifference by the savvy viewers who realize that, after all, it's just a form of CGI representation and doesn't mean anything at all. I'm as guilty as the next guy in tuning into this sort of stuff, but, in reality, the level of violence in these shows desensitizes viewers in a way that is alarming and, also, not really esthetically viable -- you just can't keep upping the quotient of mayhem: there's only so many ways that people can be hacked, burned into glowing cinders, or reduced to clouds of bursting meat. Pretty soon you reach a point of diminishing returns where the violence really doesn't matter at all. The same analysis applies to the pervasive irony and cynicism in films like this -- if everyone is totally corrupt and vicious and everyone's motives are completely venal and wicked, then, why should we care about anything? It's all just a dispiriting spectacle that leads nowhere.
All of this said, perhaps to salve my own conscience, The Boys is fun to watch. It's best to ration your input of this stuff. I've found that one episode is never enough -- the show is very competently plotted to end most episodes on a cliff-hanger that compels you to keep watching. On the other hand, two episodes is a surfeit of gruesome violence and vicious snarky behavior -- at the end of two episodes of this show, I feel filthy and also somewhat bored. This is because the bad conduct and carnival of mutilations becomes, if not exactly dull, at least, a bit cloying at the ninety minute mark.
So what is the premise of The Boys? A group of super-heroes in the Marvel/DC comics' mold are pawns of a big media and marketing corporation, Vought. The super-heroes ("Supes") who believe that they were born with special powers appear on reality TV shows and preside over maudlin patriotic spectacles sponsored by the Vought corporation -- each "Supe" has a trademarked-line of merch that that they flog mercilessly. Unfortunately, the Supes are vicious, venal, murderous, sexually perverse swine. Their bosses at the corporation, led by a nasty business woman named Stilwell, are even worse -- all of them appear ready and willing to sell their own mothers to the highest bidder. And the Supes have a nasty secret -- they are not born but created by injecting newborn infants with some kind of super-hero serum called Compound V. (This is not Roman numeral five, but "V" as in Vogelbaum, the scientist who perfected the super-hero infusion building on the research of a Nazi scientist employed at Dachau and, needless to say, not averse to experimenting on human subjects.) The show is so anxious to check all of the fashionable boxes that the program features sexual harassment, corporate greed modeled on big Pharma, and various kinds of substance abuse -- including a Black sprinter (like the Flash) called A-Train who is horribly addicted to Compound V. The Supes all think that have achieved their super powers on the basis of their own unique virtue -- but, in fact, they have been manufactured just like the superhero dolls and other merchandise that Vought produces for the adoring public. The general arc of the narrative in Series One involves three intersecting plots: first, a virginal young girl from Des Moines, Supe-name Starlight, becomes a member of the Seven, that is the elite among the elites with super powers -- she's a comely, petite lass whose eyes glow laser red when she has an orgasm. She's immediately subjected to vicious sexual harassment by the Deep, a sort of submariner figure, although basically nothing more than a lecherous gill-man with a oddly pathetic (if ineffectual) love for sea-creatures. (Every time he tries to bond with a lobster or dolphin, the poor critter gets slaughtered in a spectacular fashion.) Starlight is our point of access to the corrupt world of the Supes and we experience her despair and disillusion when she discovers how vicious they are. The second overarching narrative involves Vought corporation scheming to get its Supes recognized as members of the US military -- that is, as paid mercenary military contractors. This scheme involves an ultra-patriotic Supe named Homelander who fights terrorists. Homelander is handsome, a complete hypocrite, and wholly evil. He specializes in reducing people to puddles of sticky red goo with his laser eyes. The wicked corporate boss somehow controls him with sex -- he's completely infantile because he was snatched from his true parents when about six weeks old and raised in a lab like a rat or a test- monkey and, therefore, not properly socialized. Ultra-glib in public, he's a thumbsucking infant in bed, nuzzling Ms. Stilwell's breasts and prematurely ejaculating when he has sex with his boss. (Of course, his relationship with his corporate ersatz mama goes badly wrong when he trains his x-ray eyes on her face, melts her eyes, and, then, hollows out the inside of her skull with his laser vision.) The third plot interwoven with these narratives involves a handsome British lout called Billy Butcher whose wife was raped by Homelander and, apparently, murdered by him. Billy Butcher talks in florid cockney-inflected obscenities calling everyone "cunts" -- something that puzzles the Americans in the film. Butcher is a brute who spends the whole show scheming to murder Supes and who, in fact, slaughters several of them in spectacular ways in the course of the First Series. Butcher is, at first, fascinating -- resourceful, brutal, and funny -- but he quickly becomes a tedious bore since he just keeps repeating his baroque insults and obscenities tirelessly while maniacally pursuing revenge in a dull, single-minded way. Butcher's counterpart is the show's nominal hero, the only person who seems half-way sane in this carnival of evil; this is Hughie whose girlfriend, Robin, was reduced to a gory cloud when A-Train jonesing for some Compound V ran right through her on the sidewalk or, perhaps, a foot out in the street depending upon your perspective on things. Hughie, who works in a sort of Radio Shack business, wants revenge for the death of his girlfriend and, so, he allies himself with Butcher (and a couple other colorful characters, a Black probation-cop and a cartoon Frenchman -- obviously imported into the show for the Parisian TV market) to hunt down and murder Supes. The show is just one bang-bang explosion and massacre after another and it's so glib and thoroughly entertaining (until it's not) that the viewer really doesn't have a chance to notice that none of it makes any sense. For instance, it seems odd that Homelander is both a Trump-style rapist and a mama's boy who has obviously problems with sexual congress -- how did he manage to have sex with Butcher's wife and bring her to screaming orgasms three times, as he boasts, when he can barely get it up for his boss, Ms. Stilwell, who is nursing her child, leaking milk all the time, and, therefore, erotic to the vicious man-child as a maternal figure. Why are the Supes sometimes readily injured and other times completely invulnerable? Hughie is pursuing a course of gruesome violence to avenge his dead girlfriend. But this doesn't deter him from falling in love with Starlight and having sex with her. Homelander is shown to have the powers of Superman but when called upon to rescue a jet that has been knocked off course and is falling into the ocean, he doesn't do anything to rescue the people, claiming rather comically that he doesn't have "any place to stand" to keep the plane from falling out of the sky. (We see A-Train dragging a whole railroad train, locomotive and about twenty cars, at one point -- so why can't Homelander stop the plane mid-air, hoist it on his shoulder and get it to safety; this would be no problem for Superman.) Probably Homelander lets the plane crash to further his scheme of terrorizing the craven adoring public into voting to allow the Supes to serve in military operations. But if this is his motive, it's not clear. Characters go from being completely and irredeemably vicious to seeming somewhat poignant in the course of a single episode -- for instance, the Deep is a savage sexual predator until suddenly he's demoted. a pathetic sad-sack who has to work at a water-park in Sandusky, Ohio; we actually come to sympathize with him -- probably, a neat plot development but surprising in light of what we have been shown about this character. The plot is contrived and opportunistic -- it seems more a skeleton on which to hang various horrific deaths than anything that makes any sense. And the show has a fundamental problem that afflicts all Superhero narratives -- ultimately, the Supes have to go mano y mano with opposing Supes. In this case, the Vought corporation has created terrorist Supes, Jihadists of course, to justify promoting the civilian Supes like Homelander and his cronies in The Seven into the military. But how do two invulnerable, all-powerful beings fight? And who can determine who wins when both of the Supes simply blaze fireballs at each other from their red laser eyes?
The show is worth watching because it is often funny in a grotesque sort of way. Translucent, an invisible man, has diamond-hard skin but he's soft inside and Butcher and his buddies kill him by jamming dynamite up his rectum and igniting it. (This is a clever idea but the execution is botched -- we should be given a shot of the dynamite being inserted in the invisible being and, then, lurking in his rectum, that is, dangling in mid-air but the show doesn't give us this pleasure.) Translucent's funeral is also hilarious featuring an empty glass casket and baby pictures of the Supe, showing mom and dad dandling on their knees an invisible toddler in diapers. (Translucent spent his life lurking in toilets and enjoying women and girls going about their business to his invisible satisfaction.) Some of Homelander's lines involving generals and immigrants align in a funny way with Trump's twitter-rants and more ridiculous declarations. When poor Deep has sex with a voracious female fan, she insists upon fingering his vaginal-looking gills and, even, penetrating them up to her wrist while he grunts in pain. Every episode has some wickedly funny parody-commercials and there's a lot of snappy, utterly obscene and funny dialogue. I admire the show for its antic energy and inventiveness but wish that someone had imposed slightly more discipline on this thing. The show seems to have a subtext -- the Supes are, I suppose, symbols for people entitled by beauty and cleverness to lord it over others and, even, exploit them; I suppose that the show is a grim picture of what it is like to live in Hollywood among stars in the entertainment business.
Series Two of The Boys is more of the same. as is customary on Cable, the show ups the ante, intensifying the quotient of violence, which is already pretty extreme, while keeping the sex component, also fairly explicit, about level with the first iteration. The Boys traffics in outrage and, so, the program has a lot more exploding heads and grotesque imagery -- one of the heroes is almost strangled to death by a 60 foot long prehensile penis, the submariner supe, trhe Deep, converses with his talking gills, dialogue is staged in the guts of a slaughtered sperm whale, people get burned alive and dismembered. The satire is obvious and snarky. Homelander, the crypto-fascist, ruler of the Seven, shouts Trump slogans -- "Make America Safe Again!" is his mantra and, whenever a crowd is gathered, he salutes them with the cry: "You're the real heroes?" He talks about taking a shit in the middle of Fifth Avenue and no one daring to criticize him -- a more vulgar, yet less terrifying, boast than Trump's infamous remark that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not suffer the loss of a single voter. There's a subplot involving the Deep's hapless attempts to earn his way back into the Seven with the encouragement of the Church of the Collective -- a reference to the creepy Scientology cult. The cult's idiotic teachings are parodied mercilessly, although this is, one must say, a pretty obvious and much-derided target. The narrative involves Vought Corporation creating legions of super-terrorists (or "super-villains" as Homelander demands that they be called) so that the evil company can consolidate its political influence. A new and nasty member of the Seven is recruited -- a bland, somewhat homely, woman who performs her exploits under the name Stormfront. (She seems to be able to harness lightning and wears a black-leather dominatrix costume; she reminds me of every female HR director that I've met.) Every show of this sort needs a Nazi and Stormfront turns out to be 100 years old, a buddy of Hitler, Goebbels and Goering and a racist who babbles about "the White genocide." Needless to say she gets up close and personal with Homelander. Homelander has been solacing himself with Doppelgaenger, a supe mutant who can shift shape -- having sex with Doppelgaenger who has melted himself into the form of the perversely maternal Ms. Stilwell whom Homelander lasered to death in the last episode of series one. This is ultimately unsatisfying, Doppelgaenger keeps reverting to his default form, a fat, ugly Jewish guy, and, finally, the disappointed Homelander snaps this neck. But by this time Homelander is involved in a torrid affair with the Nazi supe, Stormfront -- this features sado-masochistic sex in which Homelander uses his laser eyes to scorch into blisters Stormfront's breasts, activity that she encourages with the words "I'm not easily breakable." Billy Butcher is involved in an infernal child custody dispute with his wife Becca -- she's been spirited away and is living in a secret Vought compound with her son, a latent supe who is, of course, the spawn of Homelander. Butcher is so tedious with his repetitive British obscenities and brooding, wounded good looks that you want to turn to Seinfeld when he shows up. Another subplot involving Butcher's dying father and his mother turns out, somehow, to be both viciously cynical and wholly maudlin. The show's two nominal protagonists, Hughie, the normal lad who loves Billie Joel songs, and Butcher, the profane British killer with a concealed heart of gold, are both very dull, have embarrassingly trite and predictable dialogue, and tend to be a serious drag on the narrative. There's a complicated narrative arc for the ladies involving feminism and a lesbian relationship between Queen Maeve (Homelander's spurned girlfriend) and an ordinary mortal -- this goes nowhere and is mostly cringe-inducing. The Boys version of feminism is three female superheroes stomping on the lady-Nazi, Stormfront, suggesting that they will put their boots "up her Kraut kitty." So much for political correctness. The show makes no attempt to clarify the rules of engagement between superheroes -- are they invulnerable or not? To what extent are they invulnerable? Aren't the interminable battles between the superheroes pointless since no one can be injured and there is nothing at stake? -- except when the plot demands that Supe be injured or, even, killed. Stormfront ends up as a one-eyed, charred, torso missing arms and legs and muttering deliriously in German -- how did this happen? Did her super-powers suddenly fail her? The show seems to have been shot pre-Covid -- there's no reference to the virus. The series ends with Homelander masturbating grandiloquently over the skyline of Gotham City (New York). A liberal female congressman, someone like Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, has been investigating Vought and the supes from a progressive anti-corporate stance. The penultimate shot in the film reveals her to be malign Supe and the source of much of the head-exploding earlier in the show. With Donald Trump out of power, it seems that The Boys intends to turn its satirical derision onto liberals -- we'll see how well this plays out.
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