Review: Amazon’s “The Boys”
If you own a TV, or have been on the internet in the past 3 months, you have seen at least one promo for “The Boys” (Amazon Prime). A full court press of advertisements for the show piqued my own personal interest, but not enough to get it to jump to the top of the queue in my (probably unhealthily) long list of things to watch (which I have done a poor job of detailing on Flix & a Six). I finally got to it a couple weeks ago, but the spoiler free review I gave on that week’s episode didn’t fully satisfy my desire to talk about the show, so I’m gonna get into it a bit more here WITH SPOILERS. Light spoilers, but still.
So I’ll leave my score until the end of this, but I will say for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet it’s definitely worth checking out.
Concept and Plot
I really like the premise! I have to admit a bit of an eye roll when I first heard what it was about. A pivot to a gritty, ironic take on the super hero genre makes sense, especially after the success of the Deadpool franchise (and the financial, if not critical, success of the DCEU). That being said, the “gritty, ironic take” is no longer an original idea after a million other shows/movies/games/etc. have done it, so I wasn’t champing at the bit any longer. But the idea of a satirical look at the super hero genre from the perspective of the masses is something else.
If you’re reading this without having watched the show yet, the premise is this: in a world where super heroes are real, and they have immersed themselves into the very fabric of society, the world revolves around them. The vast majority of these heroes sign contracts to work for Vought International, a company that deploys them into the world to fight crime, as well as creating different merchandise and media depicting their heroic acts for entertainment purposes. Their heroes are assigned to tiers, dependent on their powers and popularity, with the highest level of heroes part of The Seven: the show equivalent of The Avengers or Justice League.
“The Boys” considers a world in which super heroes are… less super than you might imagine. Sure, they are faster, stronger, able to fly, and the average citizen can’t, but they have so saturated the media and entertainment world that they’re no longer QUITE the novelty they were; their pervasiveness is endemic to the relationship they have with the rest of the U.S.A.
More importantly, though, they consider the age old question: who watches the watchmen? A world in which super heroes are implicitly accepted is a world of complacency. A world in which a monolithic corporation profits off super heroes is a world ripe for corruption.
So when one of the main characters, Hugh “Hughie” Campbell (Jack Quaid), witnesses the brutal (but accidental) death of his girlfriend at the hands of one of The Seven, it’s hardly surprising that he doesn’t take this injustice lightly; an NDA and a $45,000 hush payment offends where mollification was intended.
What follows next is a story of “little people” fighting for justice against the powerful who think that they get to decide what justice means. The parallel arc to Hughie seeking answers is that of Annie January (Erin Moriarty), who seeks to join The Seven, taking her heroic powers as Starlight from street level crime in the Midwest to the big leagues. Of course, she finds out that it’s not quite what it’s cracked up to be.
While those personal struggles unfold, an overarching mystery is to be unraveled by the titular Boys, who Hughie joins when he finds out one regular guy out for answers will get swallowed up and silenced by a corporation of superheroes. Opposing their efforts are that very infrastructure, headline by The Seven themselves.
The Seven
While Hughie and Annie are the primary drivers of this story, there are ensembles built around each: The Boys and The Seven, respectively. The Boys receive a more even distribution of screen time and characterization; this is the right call, as they give the show real human stakes and emotions. The Seven — primarily the six incumbent members prior to Annie joining — have all been big shot heroes for too long. They have fully given into their basest instincts. They’re addicted to the high of their own press clippings, and the glamorous lifestyle that comes with being icons.
The Seven are lead by Homelander (Antony Starr), who is best described as Superman crossed with Captain America, but with the All-American, goody two shoes act turned up to 11. It seems unnatural (SPOILER ALERT: it is), but we don’t get to peer behind the curtain on that until later on in the season, as he gains greater prominence and importance to where the plot heads at the end.
The two members we spend the most time with early on are A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) and The Deep (Chace Crawford); they’re our entry point to the larger world of these so called heroes. They’re both straight rip-offs of heroes in other mediums — essentially filling the roles of The Flash and Aquaman, respectively. It’s A-Train’s carelessness that leads to the death of Hughie’s girlfriend, and starts him on a path of revenge. Meanwhile, when Annie first gets into the Vought headquarters, The Deep sexually manipulates her almost immediately, showing you A-Train’s malfeasance wasn’t a one-off situation. These characters have up and down usage as the season goes on — The Deep ultimately gets banished to Sandusky, Ohio for his crimes — while A-Train fades some before becoming more central to the real mystery at the heart of this story.
Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligot) is the only female member of The Seven prior to Annie’s arrival, and her character is something of a mixed bag. It’s not the actress’ fault; Maeve is simply underwritten, or at least not given enough time to shine. Around the midpoint of the season, some threads are revealed that could be interesting to follow, but they don’t quite flesh them out enough. There hasn’t been much in the way of resolution there, so it’s entirely possible they could be picked up and featured more prominently in the next season.
The final two members of The Seven barely register, for different reasons. Translucent (Alex Hassell) is… revealed… early on, and kick’s Hughie and The Boy’s plans into overdrive. He’s a pervert who uses his ability to turn invisible to maximum effect, but his diamond hard skin doesn’t save him from becoming the first Super casualty on the show, alerting The Seven to their hitherto ignored mortality. Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell), on the other hand, is just happy to be here. Mimicking Snake Eyes, of G.I. Joe fame, he has no lines and is barely present until the second half of the season, where he is essentially just a henchman.
The Boys
The Boys are much more interesting, at least once you get past the system shock of depraved super heroes who are ostensibly trusted to serve and protect the American public.
Their fearless leader is Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), a wise-cracking and ruthless… something. His origins are somewhat mysterious to Hughie — and by extension, the viewer — when first they meet. Is he an FBI agent, or something else? What he unquestionably is: a super hero skeptic. When Hughie is at his lowest point, after the death of his girlfriend, Butcher’s the lone option that isn’t for him to just sit down and take it.
Butcher offers him justice.
Butcher offers him vengeance.
So when it’s ultimately revealed that Billy Butcher is formerly a CIA Black Ops team leader, who wants to investigate and punish the members of The Seven that operate with no oversight, or even regard to human life, it makes Hughie ready to team up.
Billy’s motivations (of course) are later revealed to be deeply personal; it’s rare for a zealot to be motivated solely by the hypothetical. He’s teed up to be the DCEU equivalent of the skeptical Batman — an ordinary man of not so ordinary skills — suspicious of the intentions and actions of the God-like hero that others revere. In this world, he’s justified in his skepticism, as Homelander is revealed to be everything Snyder’s Batman feared of a worst case scenario Superman.
Butcher’s former compatriots in the CIA, who since the original group was disbanded have gone on to lead very different lives, are Frenchie (Tomer Capon) and Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso). Frenchie is recruited to deal with Hughie and Butcher’s Translucent problem from his humble life as an arms dealer. His outwardly harsh, and seemingly homicidal, introduction belies what is later revealed to be a troubled and much gentler soul, brought out by an unexpected connection he forms later on.
Mother’s Milk is first introduced as a stable family man who works in a juvenile detention center, seemingly having left the life of cloak and dagger, off-book assignments hunting super heroes behind. He’s loyal to Butcher, and to the cause once he’s back in the fold, but he isn’t necessarily the same zealot. He and Frenchie are also not on great terms, due to disagreements in their past, leading to a lack of trust between them.
The final member of the so called “Boys” is a late entrant. In the midst of their investigations into Vought and their mysterious dealings, they find a captive woman in a drug den who turns out to be super powered. While Mother’s Milk wants to leave her, Frenchie is moved by compassion and frees her; she subsequently goes on a killing spree. A good amount of the second half of the season is spent on understanding this seemingly mute Super — the first they, or anyone, have met outside Vought’s employ — who is sometimes swayed by Frenchie’s care and attention. Ultimately revealed to be a foreign “terrorist” who had been experimented on by Vought, Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) joins up for payback, and to find a new way out.
Hughie and Annie
Our main characters; I’ve saved them for last because so much of their journeys are shaped by the forces around them. Both are the classic outsider seeking entry into a group. Annie, a fledgling super hero, is selected to join The Seven. Hughie, an overlooked nobody, is cast further into darkness after the trauma of witnessing his girlfriend die, and is pulled up from his depression by Butcher and The Boys.
Each of them comes from different perspectives. Annie is awed by her new company, but has the baseline skills required to feel like one day she could fit in. Hughie is alone, and seemingly devoid of skills needed to hunt super heroes, but finds that he might have the right stuff when his mettle is tested. Their feelings on belonging within the structure of their groups from a skill stand point evolve over time, but that isn’t the most important shift they each endure.
Annie is an idealist, and jumps at the opportunity to join The Seven not for the glamour, but from the sincere desire to help. She truly revels in helping people — in part due to her fundamentalist Christian upbringing, which presents other story lines later in the show— and thinks that moving up from listening to police scanners in Iowa to the premier super group in New York City is the best way to share her gifts. But the world she finds inside the hallowed halls of Vought fall well short of the virtues she’s lived by. It’s corrupted immediately by The Deep and his sexual coercion of her. She has little reason to believe it’s otherwise with any of the others; right after her traumatic first meeting with The Deep she’s condescended to by Maeve, and spied on by an invisible (and nude) Translucent. The corporate leadership, represented by Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue) and Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie) further reinforces the cynical nature of what super heroes have become in this world. The final straw in all this is the revelation of what Vought has done to maintain its stranglehold on the supply of available super heroes, and where she fits in all this, leaving her jaded and completely lost by the end.
Conversely, Hughie is all too eager to try to fit in with those he feels he is not equal to, and finds that acceptance as time goes on. The longer he sticks around, the more he realizes he’s capable of more than anticipated. The others realize this too; certainly killing the supposedly invulnerable Translucent scored him some points with The Boys. But this new found competence and confidence comes at a cost: the more time he spends on the hunt, and especially the more time he spends with Butcher, begins to harden him. His battle with shady heroes becomes more about the battle for his soul, and how far might be too far. And a chance meeting between him and Annie (who’s incognito at the time) sets up another conflict for both, as they are forced to dance around the realities of each person’s associates.
Verdict
This was a show that, while intriguing to me, I wasn’t planning on taking all that seriously. Satire becomes snark all too easily in the current entertainment climate, and while “The Boys” is guilty of the latter some, it achieves the former very well. I was mostly struck by the quality and polish of the production though; too many super hero shows become laughable visually, but this show clearly had a budget. It was engaging start to finish, and was ably directed and performed though out. I loved the first season and look forward to what comes next.
Score: 8/10
For more from me and The Spinchoon, check out Flix and a Six, and follow us on Twitter @AlessandroB1187, @TheSpinchoon, & @SpinchoonSports.
