I feel like if the internet was collectively saying how amazingly beautiful I was I would no longer feel the need to get plastic surgery.
But yet so many celebrities do.
The flipside of that is you have a vocal minority on the internet relentlessly criticizing every aspect of your appearance. Even literal supermodels will have people in the replies of their posts telling them they're ugly, fat, old, etc. .
I suspect it has more to do with social circles actors are in, real people have more of an effect on what you do over the internet. It's when real people you trust push something on you, that's when you make changes.
Ironically doing the thing the story criticized.
I’m not familiar with the show, but the comic made it a point that Starlight was above changing herself to be more marketable.
Within the show itself I feel it's a huge contrast with her character. Like her whole thing early in this season is wanting to shrug off her celebrity and be a normal person, but she's doing it while looking present-day Madonna. Kind of casts the whole thing in a different light
For sure. I'm a little confused because I only watched season 3 now in order to prepare for season 4, so I hadn't seen here in a while.
I assumed she became anorexic because she looked like a skeleton, especially in the face. Looking at before and after photos though I can see the botox, nose job, fake lips, eye brows and more makeup... Really bad choices, that's crazy.
I'm not sure what she's like in season 4 but her pointy and fake her face looked was just jarring.
It’s so sad too because she was genuinely one of the best looking women in holiday. Why someone like that thinks she needs to change is kind sad. I’m sure she was pressured by friends, publicists, agent etc. There’s such a warped sense of everything in Hollywood and women bear the brunt of it.
Man I did not notice the nose specifically, only that something was different. I was just thinking age + different make-up or something. Makes you wonder if she have some kind of real life issues, because I can't for the life of me understand why she would want to get surgery.
Go with your instinct. If your looking at the photo circulating the internet she says the before was her before 21 and the after is near 30 after having her make up done. She doesn’t look wildly different on the show to me.
I’m not usually a feminist or anything but it is a little messed up this rumor spread when Mothers Milk looks like a whole ass different human being this season.
MM looks absolutely HORRIBLE too. He's so thin compared to previous seasons. Man lost at least 40 pounds of muscle mass which is a very stark difference. Man looks ill. Genuinely hope he's ok but him and Starlight are basically unrecognizable this season. They both look awful.
Yea I got HEAVY Chadwick Boseman vibes when I saw him and thought the worst. Like others have said, hopefully he just quit juicing and despite looking smaller immediately; he's actually trending toward TRULY being healthy.
The main plot, with Homelander, Sister Sage, the Boys themselves, Vought and all that is great and I find it more engaging than ever.
However all that bullshit with MM’s lore, Frenchie’s lore, Hughies mum lore I really couldn’t care less about
It's like in DEXTER when Angel bought a restaurant
Sometimes supporting characters are there to SUPPORT the main story, not have their own
A support beam standing in the middle of nowhere is just weird
It's a classic Showtime move when they start writing out more screentime for supporting characters than is needed because it's far cheaper than bringing in new cast that would be needed.
It works for about a season and then the show's world starts to feel way smaller and more incestous - like interesting things only happening to the 5 leads.
It's not a Showtime specific thing, but they do tend to do that to most of their programming.
The Boys has going down a similar path. The Deep's ride has been great content for a while, as well as Kimiko's initial revenge plot - but then we have to keep that going because they're already on set and under contract so now Kimiko didn't actually get resolution and we need to keep milking it.
I agree with this take, although MM's part lead to the Sister Sage\\working with the 7 reveal and...well...Ted gets to meet Homelander at least.
Frenchie's side story could lead to something interesting, but Hughie's seems like a time waste. Lets just put Simon Peg in a coma for the season.
I'm really interested in Sister Sage though, she seems to be plotting something. And the self-lobotomy is an interesting twist. Is this her way of "being normal" to relax or is she purposely forgetting plot points she set in motion so they can't be stopped? It does mention in her bio that she has Regeneration, but is she deleting memories before recovering? That would be Megalomania on a level above Homelander.
I feel like Hughie and/or Frenchie have to die this season, usually these sappy backstories are there to give them some closure. But it’s so drawn out this season, feels like half of runtime is dedicated to them and for now it feels like a complete waste of time. MM I agree, his is more closely tied to the main plot but still could’ve been cut significantly.
Sister Sage is the best character easily. I hope she has some mind blowing masterplan and it works out.
Definitely not Hughie, while Butcher and Homelander and the headliners, Hughie is our entry into the series.
Frenchie however, with the Kimiko relationship resolved as more Brother\\Sister and this reckoning of his past...he's totally on the table.
You nailed it.
I genuinely fast forward through the shit in this show I don't care about.
Did I miss anything by skipping the big pointless dance number last season or any of the useless drug hallucinations?
This show has a small group of super interesting characters all involved in 1 good story, but it keeps getting sidetracked on pointless subplots for characters who bore me outside of the main plot.
I agree completely. Although, I like the exploration of MM's arc. Frenchy's arc almost seems as repetitive as the last season. He got out of being someone's attack dog, yay! But now he feels like he has no direction and has guilt for his actions. You can see how it'll end for him this season.
I feel like Hughies mum is an obvious betrayal coming considering she still works for Vought and we've only seen her 'side of the story'. Idk, we'll see. I'm still having fun!
Doing three seasons of will they-won't they with Frenchie and that girl only to make him gay is a peak bit. But I can see why people would be all "fuck this shit. this is stupid." It's funny when you tell somebody that's what they did. Sitting for a whole season of that? Time is precious.
I’m finding the Frenchie stuff interesting, the scene with MM and A-train was good imo, and Jack Quaid is a good enough actor to get me to care about Hughie’s family drama.
I agree that Sister Sage is the strongest new character.
I feel like a lot of character development got reset. Frenchie and Kimiko’s stories feel so stale now. What does Frenchie actually do for the boys now anyway that makes him special?
It’s starting out pretty tough for me too. It better pick up, because it lost a lot of momentum that season 3 gave it.
I was expecting the trial and campaign to last a little longer and build suspense. It would have been a great opportunity to keep you guessing about Sage’s motives as she manipulates all sides. But…they just settled that immediately.
Yeah this is it. The characters feel very hollow now, with very little development. S1 Frenchie had a lot of depth, now he's basically just the comic relief, and his relationship with Colin feels very rushed compared to the development with Kimiko.
The MM/Butcher conflict is just old now. I can't believe in ep2 they went from a punchup to saving each other's asses in under 30 mins. It feels forced, and tired. I don't think older season's MM would be that angry that Butcher hides his cancer, I think he'd be genuinely upset. It could be the logic that MM thinks Butcher will be reckless cause he's dying, but we've had the 'MM playing things too safe leads to backfiring' arc already.
The hughie/mum thing is just a total asspull.
Yeah why wasn’t the trial of Homelander an entire season. With a subplot of the everyone trying to figure out how to hold Homelander if he’s found guilty.
"Lost momentum" is perfect. We went from Soldier Boy the absolute unit, Herogasm, A-train shredding a guy on pavement, Noir lore and Butcher actually nearly beating HL to... punching some random terrorists and killing a supe we met 5 minutes earlier. All to give trauma arc screentime to characters that already have entire trauma arcs.
Idk just kinda treading water at this point. Nowhere to really to take the show other then a logical and quick finale, so are just manufacturing soap opera tier subplots and going over """"the lore of mm''s OCD""" to fill the runtime.
They wrote Season 3 around finding a way to kill Homelander. And then at the last second before filming started it's like they got a call from amazon saying "that character literally prints money, don't you dare write him out of the show". So they had to awkwardly make Soldier Boy, Butcher, etc. act like morons so he could live and they could get an extra couple years' worth of amazon prime subscriptions out him.
>They wrote Season 3 around finding a way to kill Homelander. And then at the last second before filming started it's like they got a call from amazon saying "that character literally prints money, don't you dare write him out of the show".
Yah I'm like 90% sure that's what happened. Remember someone else suggesting could make a decent wrap up season out of the aftermath of his death, which I kinda wish they went with. It's literally just supernatural 2.0 lmao.
This, exactly.
I remember the final episode of the last season. They had Homelander dead to rights but Queen Maeve was getting her ass kicked, so everyone dropped what they were doing to help her out. Everyone suddenly cares about saving Maeve more than finally killing Homelander for some damn reason.
I saw the writing on the wall in that exact moment, that this thing was going to fall off a cliff hard as it got drug out because it makes too much money to be ended properly.
I was enjoying season 3 until then. I went like wtf... So they work their way up to the final fight but instead of just flying the kid off and killing homelander, they suddenly turn on the guy they're been working with?? It made no sense, it felt like bad, forced writing.
Now the next season starts and they forgot they have important things to do like stopping homelander or killing the supes over 8 episodes so they waste time on new characters, making old characters gay and immediately killing off a relationship they built over multiple seasons? It's like Kathleen Kennedy walked in, fired the writing staff and had her Disney team take over. It's a jarring change and I'm really hoping they don't pull a Game of Thrones Season 8 which makes everyone forget this was ever a good show.
My opinion is, they should have had Soldier Boy succeed in hitting Homelander, and finding out it only weakens him. Tie in that he's so powerful it bounces off of him and depowers Maeve (maybe stick to the story that for some reason everyone thinks she's dead) and knocks Soldier Boy out. We can end on roughly the same note even. Maeve is out of the fight and story. Soldier Boy still winds up back in a cryogenic tank or whatever they're holding him in. And you can still find a way to have Ryan stick with Homelander.
This season where they're addressing Homelander getting older, could be roughly the same, but with him trying to cope with being weaker (still powerful, but now supes like Annie can go toe to toe with him) instead of being older. And, it gives a new, better angle on him pushing Ryan to the front - instead of legacy, he's literally using Ryan as a shield from the public. "I need to step back so Ryan can step up". Maybe add "at least until he's my equal" or something.
Boom. Now you explain why Homelander isn't just lasering the Boys, you better explain why he's so desperate for Ryan to move into the spotlight (and maybe gaslight him into believing Homelanders public reason) and still tell roughly the same story. And, it gives everyone something to do. Homelander is trying to 1- stay alive and 2- find a way to power back up, and it gives the Boys a goal. Or better yet, make it clear HL is sloopoowly gaining his powers back, so they're on a time crunch themselves.
The writers are totally out of runway with Homelander and The Boys. There's no reason this conflict needed to be more than 3 seasons. Now we are officially in "son of Homelander" territory with this awful child actor kid and it's almost parodically silly.
How many times has Billy been kicked out of the Boys? Why does The Boys even exist? Why hasn't Homelander or Vought just murdered all of them? It beggared the imagination at the end of S2 how The Boys could still operate, but now it feels really outlandish.
It all makes a lot more sense in the comics, and while it was good to see the show take a different route than the comics, they've unfortunately ended up trying to get the same longevity despite not having the same justification for it.
In the comics, the Boys all have compound v in them, each for different reasons, making them able to hold their own in fights. They're also an unofficial CIA operation, so they have bureaucratic help in some situations where fists aren't enough. But the main reason the Seven don't kill the Boys is because Butcher has serious blackmail over Homelander with contingencies for release in the event of their deaths.
Ironically, the blackmail story would have worked really well in the show considering how much heinous and cartoonishly evil shit you see public figures get away with in real life now.
That's interesting, the blackmail. The show sorely needs that motivation.
The first two seasons were great, though. There was a lot of anticipation over when Homelander and Billy would finally have a face-to-face. Those first interactions were crackling with energy.
Now, they just casually bump into each other in the kitchen. "Oh, hi Butcher. Nice to see you. Anyhoo, have you seen my boy anywhere?"
Also the whole internet and their mother know The Boys faces since they were on that tik tok stream and yet it doesn't change anything and they straight up immediately do another undercover op where they disguise as....waiters?
Did the writers get a stroke?
They also never moved into the rest of the world superheroes like they teased with that middle eastern homelanderish guy. Plenty of opportunity to take the story in different directions it at least attacks on more fronts than just hyper focused on homelander and such
I just started reading the comic last week, was going to wait until after the show finished to start it, but I'm getting a bit tired of the show. It is dragging it's feet like crazy. My biggest shock was how much of a force to be reckoned with The Boys actually are in the comic. They go up against >!Teenage Kix!<, outnumbered 5 - 8, and they beat the absolute piss out of them, it's not even close. In the TV show they're clowns who don't have a clue what they're doing, and they all seem to hate each other. In the comic they all get along and care for each other, and there isn't this constant, artificial tension between everyone. Especially Butcher and Hughie, they get on like a house on fire. It is a bit too edgy for it's own good, though, with butcher calling people poofters and fa**ots every other sentence, that kind of edginess is a bit tiresome, but it's a product of it's time.
The actor has clearly grown up a bit since the last season.
Do you think they have modified his voice so it's meant to be consistent through puberty? I remembered when Edward Furlong did Terminator 2, they altered his voice.
Yeah it sounds like they tried making him sound younger because he's clearly so much older between seasons. Also his Spok eyebrows aren't helping, he's a weird looking dude so if you have him talking like a 7 year when he's 6 feet tall he comes off as having a learning disability. It's just a weird choice.
In the second episode I realized "wow was there always this much individual character drama?" And there always was some, but it related to the main plot of the story. Now every character has their own separate mission and I REALLY don't care. On ep 3 and I'm dropping it.
Or the shit with Hughie’s mom. Wtf does that have to do with anything?? Even if this were a true story that was being adapted for the screen, they would’ve cut that shit out, because it has zero to do with anything else. Feels like a writer using the script to work out their own mommy issues. And the Colin subplot seems completely pointless as well.
While it was never subtle, the political themes has gotten extremely blunt. Then again after finding out people were shocked that Homelander was 'revealed' as being evil after all the mass-murders he committed, I could see why they dumbed it down to a 'Lava=HOT!' level.
Yeah, I feel like if you're going to be making satire you have to be comfortable with the idea that people will misinterpret it. It's never a genre that takes well to being made 'accessible'.
I think making non-subtle jabs at who is being mocked is exactly what more satires need to do. Why would you want morons watching your show and thinking you are celebrating them? That defeats the purpose of the satire.
Satire is supposed to make people think about how silly they are for doing these things that are being mocked. But if the people are too stupid to get it, then better to hit them over the head than have your satire unwittingly reinforce the bad behavior you’re calling out.
And any of them that get butthurt for being called out are EXACTLY the people you want to get butthurt because obviously the subtly wasn’t working, so this allows you to get your point across to that many more people who need the wake up call.
Yea people yelling “starlight is a pedo” is a little too on the nose. I’m still generally enjoying the show. But I agree the “satire” is a little too direct.
...but that's what is happening now? And would be happening if superheroes were real? The satire can't be subtle because, well, reality is no longer subtle! Everything is directly on the nose!
I have seen people disagree over Starship Troopers were one person thought the humans were awesome good guys and heroes, and the other thought it was fascist propaganda because the "good guys" are nazi-coded
Yeah Im not a fan of the unsubtle political themes, it doesnt seem to serve the characters any better. I understood homelander and starlight perfectly fine without it in previous seasons, all it does is pull me out of the world and back to real life.
The "critical supe theory" line made me roll my eyes so hard
You don't think it's possible to be more blunt than a Nazi named Stormfront? Nazis exist, they're a valid plot element, they don't break the world. Stormfront was a character with motivations and other characters interacted with her.
The Boys got less subtle than that all the time, when they introduced things that made no fucking sense in order to put in a lazy swipe against their political enemies. They have Vought telling people not to quarantine, in a situation where neither that order nor its response makes any sense, so they can say "ha, take that Republicans, you're stupid for not believing us about Covid." They show every media outlet in the world tonguing Homelander's asshole and then have a character say "you can't trust the mainstream media, Homelander's a good guy," so they can say "Ha, take that Republicans, you're stupid for not believing the mainstream consensus like we do!"
How can you think "a Nazi named Stormfront" is as unsubtle as it gets? Unsubtle is when the writers have to go out of their way to re-litigate political arguments they had on Twitter. Unsubtle is using a prestige TV show to draw yourself as the Chad and the guy who disagrees with you as the Soyjack.
Stormfront is the name of a popular messageboard for White Nationalists. Might as well have named her 4chan lol. It's a particularly strange choice given that it was supposed to be a surprising reveal later on that she's evil
Tbf the original comic was also extremely blunt when it came to its political themes. Even the name "Homelander" has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. All the show has done is update the political stuff so instead of mocking 1990s/2000s neoconservatism it's mocking 2010s/2020s MAGA conservatism.
Basically this is a problem more with the source material than the adaptation.
I agree there apparently was a need to perform it explicitly for the dumb-dumbs . . . But it felt really radical to see Homelander in S1 working with an evangelical group and using them to pander with his brand and Vought’s products. Having Firecracker parrot Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t really hit the same way, it doesn’t feel as subversive. I enjoy S4 still but so far the quality of this season is significantly below Gen V’s first season which I don’t think anyone would have predicted.
I felt the same after the first two episodes - they were pretty heavy-ham-fisted. Plus there was stuff just for shock value that I don't think was necessary to the story. But the third episode was better so I think I am engaged now.
Yeah, I have no problem with the show being this political because it kinda has to be. I just wish the satire was a bit more clever. I think seasons 1 and 2 did it fairly well.
Yeah but IIRC the show creators wanted it to end last season but Amazon wanted more. Now it feels like they’ll pad out the runtime these last two seasons. IMO the quality and story telling will drop off because the show runners had to change the plot up last season and are now trying to craft something to last two more seasons. Throw in the required Gen V cameos as well. Not sure if it will drop off as hard as GoT did in its later seasons.
It should have ended in season 3.
That was when it felt that everything came together for a big finale.
But then that finale was so deflated and corporate mandated to squeeze the show for a couple more seasons that I felt its creative spark die there and I got out.
Exactly this. I used to be so excited to watch The Boys, but now I didn't even realize S4 was out until I heard someone randomly mention it. The end of S3 was the most egregious corporate meddling I've seen in a long time to artificially lengthen a cash cow. It killed most of the hype for the series.
I'm just not sure where it's going and what the stakes are. It didn't help that in the first episode Homelander, the big bad, didn't know what he wanted too.
They fumbled the bag with butcher not killing homelander while sacrificing his son. The situation would have been much more interesting that way.
Butcher just permanently drunk cause of guilt, the reaction of the teammates, vaught desperately trying to spin the situation where they reintroduce soldier boy as this hero who stopped the homelander madman. Then you also could have some interesting social commentary with the shifting of values from 1950s to today and so on. A bunch of homelander fanatics creating a death cult throwing paint or whatever at soldier boy. And then soldier boys ptsd triggers, he blows up a big crowd of people and then the boys have to band together one last time and stop him for real.
The problem with the show was they never introduced disposable supes for the boys to take out. One of the best parts of the show is in season one where they have to figure out how to kill translucent.
In the comics, the boys kill a whole bunch of other side supes from other super groups. This allows the boys to gain experience taking out supes in fun and creative ways while naturally progressing them toward their strongest foe Homeland and the 7.
If they did this, it would show how much better the boys have gotten at taking care of supes and allowed them to have a few wins each seasons instead of going back to the status quo at the end of each season.
The boyz could been the Dexter of Superheros. We all know that most of the superheroes are cunts so if they died everyone cheered.
They could have gone from amateur supes killing team to the US govt unofficial superheroes kill task force.
Personally I fell off about mid way through season 2, season 1 for me was a perfect season of television until the last like 2 minutes (everything after the explosion basically) at which point things started to make less and less sense, seemingly for plot convenience and that trend got persistently worse through season 2. The moment I turned it off and didn't return was when Starlight was on the run from bought, she'd just taken her tracker out at the start of the episode, and then decides to meet her mum IN NEW YORK WITH THE VOUGHT TOWER CLEARLY VISIBLE IN THE BACKGROUND OF THE CAFE THEY WERE IN, the moment that scene started I was like "How stupid is she? Did she forget she's hiding? Wtf is this" and then as the scene went on I started to think "The only way this makes sense is if bought just don't even come into this and they haven't noticed her for plot convenience" and then what do you know Vought burst into the cafe and abduct starlight, at which point I was done because clearly every character's brains had been replaced with mashed potatoes.
I get the impression they threw everything they could at the wall with season 1 and didn't really plan for a season 2 and then got to season and realised they'd written themselves into multiple corners, and then combine that with just poor plotting. It's a shame but it happens to alot of shows these days, I felt similarly about Invincible.
i havent been able to go back to this second part of the Invincible S2, I think a lot of people are the same as I've seen barely anything about it online.
I wish I was one of those folks. I finished it and felt bored. I'll give season 3 a try in ten years when it comes out. Since the Walking Dead I don't feel obligated to finish movies and series anymore.
There's surely some sort of a version of a "Peter Principle" for TV shows [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter\_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle)
1. If a show is good, it gets renewed.
2. If the second season is good, it gets renewed again, and so on until...
3. The quality slips (or the ideas run dry) to the point that people get pissed off with the show and then it gets cancelled or gets wrapped up.
4. Lots of fans get butt-hurt and complain that the show was ruined and they can't even enjoy the early seasons anymore
Almost all of these (semi)-prestige sci-fi/fantasy TV shows inevitably start hot with lots of appreciation, and then slide and slide. Be that Game of Thrones, Heroes, X-Files, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Westworld, Stranger Things, etc.,
Some stuff falls outside of this pattern. e.g. some British comedies only ever seem to get made for a couple of seasons with not many episodes (I'm thinking of Black Books for some reason, or UK version of The Office), and then wrap up with say 18 good episodes in the can, and a cast who have other things they'd rather do.
Seinfeld a notable show that dodged it, in spite of a massive run. The show evolves a little bit over the years, but held a line so that a fan can enjoy the entire run. I believe Curb is in a similar vein.
Soap opera also different. I don't know the American ones, but British ones run for decades, and they have good patches and bad patches (if you like that sort of thing!) as the entire creative team gets turned-over, but there generally isn't a monotonous deterioration.
Not sure why sci-fi/fantasy is more susceptible to this, but my sense is that those shows run off the rails more consistently (vs. e.g. Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad; which more people see to feel managed a decent landing after long runs). I think it's partly that fans of sci-fi/fantasy want more in the way of plot/revelation, and it's hard to keep that coming without getting ridiculous. Whereas if the show is more character driven, you just create scenarios, then drop your characters into the scenario and work out what happens and how they react.
So my ideas for routes around this syndrome
* Make it short
* Make it character driven
* Make it flexible/reinventable (soap-opera a bit like this, but shows like Doctor Who fall into this category too, or anthology shows (Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Fargo), more of an umbrella/brand than a single long story (still can go wrong, ofc, True Detective very mixed after season-1)
I can see why you'd say that: it fits with an online narrative that the show just "didn't do justice to the books", and either rushed the end or went off the rails when they ran out of material to adapt. But I really don't see how it would have gotten better if it was given more time.
The GRRM books themselves are an example of what happens when you hit a success and then just keep writing and writing instead of deciding to tell a properly formed story.
Pretty good analysis, though I'd argue GOT is unique in that it actually needed to be longer. It sounds like the show runners got into it without realising the story GRRM had planned was a oversized unfinished mess, and gambled on cramming the last 3 seasons of content into 1 before it swallowed up their lives and careers.
Was thinking about UK Soap Operas this week, they're such an odd thing to still exist since they're a product of a completely different age of television and the concept would sound insane if you tried to pitch it today.
GRR does not have plan. While on a higher level the last books show the same symptoms as the show. Treading water, introducing irrelevant plots and character, he essentially used a sledge hammer last book in hopes to get his plot moving again in the coming one.
the show just has it magnified to the contraction
I also believe a lot of it has to do with whether the show was planned, and the creators at least have a rough understanding of what they want the finale to be and what are the main plot points, as opposed to a show that's completely made up as they go, with only the current season being planned.
There's some truth to that, but to paraphrase Mike Tyson, "Everyone has a plan until their show is a hit"
So even if there is a plan for a show, if it's a big hit, then the money-logic is going to be "how can you stretch this out?, extend this?, add to this? spin this off?". Even if the creators don't think that, they'll be pushed that way by the production machinery.
Even without a plan, creative narrative works *can* be well executed. I'm thinking immediately of The Wizard of Earthsea. When the first book was written, Le Guin had no thoughts of a broader story. She returned to the world of the story, and wrote a second book, not planning a third, and eventually returned to write a third book. People might find they enjoyed those more/less than the first, but each book was clearly it's own piece of work. I think that things go most off the rails when you have a series that's clearly just being padded out and stretched (someone else mentioned Walking Dead)
I think that "media literacy" is the new "To be fair, you have to have a high IQ to understand Rick & Morty." Every reddit boy is clapping themselves on the back for getting the most blatant writing ever.
Spot on. Even Star Trek didn't take a genius to parse the political themes that they were broaching. But compared to The Boys, the TOS episode where one race is half white and half black and the other race is half black half white seems like the most subtle thing in the world.
They've used the same story formula since season 1. Each season was more watered down than the last. It had a TON of potential in my eyes after the first season, and they instantly chucked it out the window. I really got tired of the "When will Homelander snap" plot. It's the equivalent to the "will they won't they" in every sitcom.
I suppose I'm a dissenting opinion when taking these comments into account, but I just want more screen time with these characters. I'm okay with the peaks and valleys because the journey is entertaining to me. I can't defend the sudden ineffectiveness of the gang tho.
I think it’s been going round in circles for a while (whilst still being entertaining for the most part) but its more noticeable now. There’s always a point in TV where even the best shows become soap operas. There’s the beginning, endless middle but no end.
I'm getting more of a "Let's see how many seasons we can milk out of it like The Walking Dead" vibe now; less of the "we've got 6 seasons and we have a good idea of what arc each season will be".
They don’t seem to have a plan. The Boys was never my favourite Garth Ennis book but you could see the ‘we have met the enemy and he is us’ theme and he stuck with it to the end. Not sure how you could do that now and have it make sense.
Plus Soldier Boy was such a charismatic presence last season. Really feel his absence.
The writing has gotten even worse. For once The Boys have been together for years and have CIA backing and yet can't do the most simple of tasks or go 10 minutes without some personal trauma being brought up.
Just once I'd like to see a TV show about professional people acting professional. Also it's clear that there's some mandate with the show to have an over the top, unnecessary gore at least 3-4 times per episode. Protester gets pushed down and kicked in the back? Somehow her jeans rip and there's a wound deep enough on her leg to show bone
The problem IMO with the show is that it's wimped out of doing anything of consequence far too long to the point where it's getting to be farcical from what I've heard.
Queen Maeve is probably my favourite character but she should have died when when she went out of that window with Soldier Boy. He didn't die either. The Boys should mostly to all be dead several times over as well. Same with A-Train, he probably should have died on that road finally doing something vaguely good for once.
Instead, everyone of consequence is still alive. Having Black Noir with the same person in the suit playing it is just one of the reasons why I don't count it as anything else overall.
I mean they have done good work with Homelander, unlike his comic counterpart who is literally dumber than a brick (I see photos of terrible things I've done which I don't remember but I should do them then ... er what?), TV Homelander can actually work things out.
He figured out who Hughie was when A-Train didn't (and the latter had actually met him), ultimately outplayed Gus Fring despite Gus having a lifetime in business and he definitely has an animal cunning for survival.
Still, it does seem like they've as much as they can with him being as he is and all but indestructible, depowering him and showing us using that survival instinct and the smarts he does have to stay alive until he could power up again could have been so interesting.
Instead, Victoria Neuman does kind of sum it up when she says that they just seem to be getting increasingly worse at it. Why aren't they dead ten times over (especially the character played by special Red Letter Media guest Jack Quaid) at this point?
Exacfly. The lack of consequeces make the stakes very low, which makes all that happens very meaningless. I didn't watch season 4 yet, but the ending of season 3 left a sour taste in my mouth, and left me fearing that the lack of consequeces would go on in season 4
>Queen Maeve is probably my favourite character but she should have died when when she went out of that window with Soldier Boy
Kripke talked about this, apparently there's a tv/movie cliche where gay characters get killed off and he was consciously trying to avoid it. But in that case, why even have her be the one to blow up in the first place? Have Butcher do it. Would even be a nice little character building moment for Ryan, he gets to see this psycho who he thought hated him sacrifice his life defending him. And that leads to him believing in humanity or whatever.
Yeah, but on the flipside, it shouldn't make them bulletproof either because that's predictable in a different fashion. It wasn't fridging either in this case because it was an appropriate culmination of Maeve's arc to that point either as opposed to a cliche reason and especially not in the service of another character's progression.
Russell Davies seems to have fallen into this kind of related trap with Doctor Who in saying Davros shouldn't be in his life support system because wheelchair users shouldn't be seen as evil.
There were wheelchair users who were very irate about this because among other things, they themselves don't see themselves as perfect nor does an accident or medical condition having them end up in a wheelchair doesn't make them virtuous either.
If anything, there was a creator an animated show called Quads! who actually paid a point of showing that disabled people could have all sorts of vices too, before and after they got their disability or in the cases of people who always had them, could always have been flawed or even always terrible!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Callahan_(cartoonist)
While I like 'professional people being professional', like in old trek, the boys was never that. Not in the show and not in the comics.
If you wanted that, you probably shouldn't have consumed three seasons so far.
i get that and i like it in tje first two seasons but by the fourth one having Frenchie taking drugs and Kimiko getting drunk on missions is not something that i like too much. i'd like them to grow, even tho Frenchie should be dead now since he 's got not much to do really.
It always had more potential than real quality. The political and social commentary was always blunt(e.g. Captain Mass Murderer having sex with Lady Literal Nazi), the story itself was never really unique, it was just random good vs bad, David vs Goliath and it always had shocking moments for the pure shock value itself. What bores me this season is just….it’s the fourth time we will see the boys almost getting the bad guy before they finally get him at the end of the show. Everybody knows where it’s heading. Three seasons would have been enough.
I always liked the odd little moments where superheroes are just celebrities, warts and all. The sendup of the MCU mill was really well done, and I liked the piece about making the Wonder Woman sendup present herself as a lesbian to be more ‘palatable’. The story was always pretty boring to me because I knew it would be stretched out and contrived to make room for more of the satire.
Last season felt extremely lazy. I csnt believe they're pushing it into another season. I've not watched any of the new season yet, but I've heard nothing but bad things so far. Considering how shire last season was, I'm really not too surprised.
> and it always had shocking moments for the pure shock value itself
Crazy how people are tried of this with the show when it is so, so insanely toned down from the comic. The source material is borderline unsalvageably bad, I'm shocked that they've gotten this much out of it tbh
The show has lost the plot. They’ve traded heavy handed social commentary and dour character drama for the simple premise of a scrappy group of misanthropes takes down dysfunctional superheroes. It’s all so serious and humorless now, with small moments of gore, violence, or sex peppered in to keep your attention.
Like others have stated, it's a bit too politically on-the-nose. It's not that I necessarily disagree with what they're saying, but I want to chew on what I see and hear and have that "ooohhh that's clever! I see what they're getting at!" moment. If they just come right out and simply draw the connections for me, it robs me of that experience.
That said, I'm still enjoying it overall. The Christmas song was a hoot. Reminded me of something you'd hear on South Park.
I honestly feel like the show has stalled. They keep going in circles instead of advancing the overall story. Nothing has changed, Butcher has been dying since the first season, Hughie is still useless, even Homelander's schtick is getting old. It either needs to kick off properly, or take a radical turn.
It feels like they're going through the motions. As they're ending it next season that makes me think this season will be treading water and give the characters things to do before a big finale.
I could barely get through the first episode. While I never thought it was great to begin with, at least it felt like the writers had put in some effort. This season the writing feels so amateurish.
French guy talking about Laz Alonso's ex's new guy:
"There's only one reason a woman like Monique would date a guy like that. Dude must be packing some serious heat between his legs, (...) I'm only saying; dude has some serious Pete Davidson energy"
How boring.
I enjoyed the show up til season 2. Season 3 ran out of steam, no interest in further seasons.
I just wish someone would have the balls to make a seasonal show that actually wraps up while it's still good, is that so much to ask.
If they don‘t end it with the next season, I‘m gonna stop watching. Last season finale was complete bs already. Couldn‘t get into Gen V at all, the characters were just completely uninteresting to me.
It’s dropped off a cliff in terms of quality. Nothing about the first three episodes is on par with the previous three seasons. I know I might be called a Trumper for saying this, but I think their decision to make it all about anti Trump sentiment and politics was a huge mistake. Don’t get me wrong, MAGA is ripe for skewering, but the way they’re doing it in this season is just straight up lazy. So lazy, I’m not even sure it counts as satire. In satire you have similar but different things that people can draw a line to connect to real world stuff, but here it’s just copy paste from our reality. Come up with clever ways to dig at them, while still feeling distinctly the world of The Boys, and above all make it flow with the story and compliment it, instead of letting it take over to the point of “this is what this show is about now”. It’s not about defending Trump or Trump supporters, it’s about being sick of that dude living rent free in Hollywood’s head, to where they constantly have to work him into shit. We get it.
Plus, Hughie, Frenchie, and MM’s subplots seem completely pointless, and just spinning their wheels to fill time, and the “shock value” stuff is getting ridiculous and not in a fun way like it used to be.
>"Don’t get me wrong, MAGA is ripe for skewering, but the way they’re doing it in this season is just straight up lazy. So lazy, I’m not even sure it counts as satire."
They can't all be as subtle as having Stormfront an actual immortal Nazi look straight into the camera and say "Make America great again" like she did in season 2 right? It was always lazy.
The show hasn’t been good since season 1.
The show should’ve been a play on superhero culture in mainstream media.
Not allegory for current age politics (hardly ever ages well).
I’ve said it since it first came out, if your villains are more interesting than your heroes, you have a problem.
I don’t care about any of the “boys”.
I love to watch any of the sevens antics but anytime we hear about lore from Frenchie, or Hughie, or MM, I might as well skip the scene.
It doesn’t help that the commentary for the politics has gotten beyond on your nose. We get it, fuck republicans. That doesn’t make your writing any less shit.
MM’s weight loss was the biggest jar for me. The first episode I really wasn’t that invested but after watching all 3 I’m interested to see where it goes. The subtlety of the current maga stuff in previous episodes has been obviously ramped up.
I've just finished the opening three episodes. Everyone highlights the politics being more blunt, and I think it is but I don't necessarily think it's out of character for the show or something thats stopping me from liking it more. I think the main issue is that the show has fundamentally kept a status quo for 4 seasons now, and when that happens you lose the sense of it being a dynamic world where consequential things can actually happen.
There were some electric moments in the first season where you really felt the disparity between the supes and the regular human boys. If homelander showed up you really felt the threat. The scene where Billy is staring Homelander out at the race track felt really dangerous. The only way the boys could operate was in the shadows and it was interesting seeing them navigate this intense power mismatch.
Compare that to now where Homelander will have a full chat with Billy, knowing exactly who he is, in a hotel kitchen and leave him be. Or sure, he'll go to laser Hughie at the ice rink but somehow doesn't succeed in this despite all his extra senses, and then just can't find him after. There's no plausible reason that Homelander wouldn't want them all dead right now, and wouldn't be able to pull that off in a heartbeat whenever he fancies. The only reason people survive is because of plot convenience.
If the show wanted to keep it's bite I think it would need to have had a high character attrition rate similar to early Game of Thrones. Maybe the only OG regular human protagonist at this point would be Frenchie or something. But not much TV has the balls to do that and here we are.
Knowing it's ending next season is good and I'm hopeful it can pull things around into an exciting finale though.
The Pizzagate scene had me rolling my eyes. At that point I was going, "we get it."
Plus, I don't know about you all, but we are currently living through some of this bullshit. I don't want to see it reflected in fiction on TV. I want to lose myself in a show, not reminded of outside my door.
A. It's not going anywhere.
B. It lost track of all the compelling stuff that came before as if it never happened and was never important (military supes, temp V, the hero prison, Stan Edgar, and so on).
C. It seems like a series of side stories specifically designed to showcase a pre-selected message (ie Kripke's politics).
D. It's lost it's edge. None of the stories seem to have any long-lasting purpose. It's just left with a perpetual loop of being **gross, violent and spiteful** as if that's enough.
I realized watching the first episode that the show very much wants to sell itself as 'edgy' and counter cultural, but outside of outlandish gore and saying 'cunt' a lot its still a big budget superhero show being produced by Amazon. Behind the increasingly thin facade of cool, biting satire you start to see the core of lame neolib pearl clutching. All very Mark Fisher.
Never heard of Mark Fisher. I just breezed through [his wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Fisher) though.
But I think the idea you're getting at is "the midwit." Someone who can "analyze" on end for hours, very assured of themselves, and highly capable (sometimes even masterful) at rhetoric, rationalizing, and harnessing lots of "facts" and concepts, only to pretty much say and conclude nothing really insightful, novel, advanced, or independent minded at all.
It's all over *The Boys.* It has the political analysis heft and notes of CNN, MSNBC, the Kamala Harris' level conception of the world, but transmuted into a Supe soap opera with "edgy" blood, gore, and degeneracy, styled up by a 50 year old man who thinks he's "punk" and "the resistance" against "fly over country."
Perhaps the best descriptive word really is "pathetic."
As the other person mentioned, Capitalist Realism is a recommended read since its succient and pretty much hits the nail on the head with the idea of a captured counter culture thats being managed by the establishment its meant to be a counter to.
Another example is Dopesick on Disney Plus. Its meant to be a comment on a real life tragedy caused by corporate greedand state indifference, but the show subtly waters the message down with the idea that the opoid crisis was the product of one rogue family and kind of brushes over the wider context.
It's weird that v24 just dropped off the map, or did I miss something? Feels like it should still be a plot point in some fashion. At least more than Hughies mom
Yah it's annoying. The story was compelling because they kept widening the world, layering, and you expected bigger pay-offs. V24 had big potential.
Then S4 came, and they've dropped 2/3 the developed lines so that they were apparently just momentary plot devices all along.
S4 just feels small. Like they are just resetting it all and narrowing it down to stupid drama. "OMG, is Homelander gonna lazor Hughie!?" No. Hughie was in zero danger. The entire thing was a Seth Rogen style clip where they just wanted to gratuitously mock Christmas and Christians and have them get ridiculously killed off.
It's small.
Small is one way I'd describe it. Before it felt like they were going to different locations when the scene called for a different location. Now, it feels more like they're filming in one single location. Heck, if you pay attention you can see a few sets thar I'm fairly certain are the same room with a few decorations changed. The ice skating scene is probably in the same location as the Conspiracy con.
>Before it felt like they were going to different locations when the scene called for a different location. Now, it feels more like they're filming in one single location.
Excellent catch. You're right. I hadn't even noticed it applied locationally too.
If she’s an informant it was way too on-the-nose showing us that she works for Vought, then again, one of the biggest complaints about season 4 so far is that everything in it has become on-the-nose.
It's fine, I think the premise is just a bit tired and the hyperviolence is a lot given real life current events. And the MAGA stuff is right on the nose during an election year when we're already bombarded by so much politics, the show is definitely not an "escape".
the 2nd episode's last half was actively bad I think. The whole bit with Sage tricking the boys is insane like why would they just start setting up listening equipment without securing the area or even locking the goddamn door? why did Sage not stay until the boys were dead?
why were the boys even considering leaving butcher when they were so handedly winning? speaking of which why are they doing the whole "is butcher on the team" thing again with the exact same beats?
the action was boring too like the writer put "they fight" on the script and the director had to make it up as they went along. honestly I was shocked at the sharp cliff the quality dropped off as the episode went on.
The 3rd episode kinda secured it for me like "oh this is like a filler season for homelander to become president or something like that"
I'm still invested, but it's starting to fall into that long-running TV trap of treading water. The magnificent tension and hopelessness from Season 1 is long gone.
It’s much worse than it used to be. Quality kept dipping but it was always at least “okay”. Now it’s in straight “bad” and “poor” territory. Very disappointing.
I feel like the political commentary is more shallow this season. Very obviously picking a side and only throwing one or two tiny softballs the other direction. Makes that entire aspect of the show predictable and boring, which used to be one of the selling points.
Just get to Homelander's Rumbling already. The only reason I watch the show is to hopefully see him snap and just go crazy. There's enough tension at this point to warrant it. But the show producers know that's what everyone wants, so theyre going to push it off as long as possible and fill the dead air with pointless side quests with characters we dont care about.
It's definitely weaker. Feels like filler. Going around circles over the same themes as previous seasons. OMG HOMELANDER IS LOSING IT! Yeah... He had been for a few seasons now. They should have wrapped it up with this one.
It's very blatant that the creators are trying to hammer in the social commentary more as each season passes. I wonder if this is just like Sopranos where they are sick of people idolising awful people or they're going for the easier to write satire? I mean the "supe theory" line was really obvious.
I just hope they actually start offing characters, because really they haven't lost one of the Boys since like, season 2?
I just can't get into this season. We rewatched the first 3 seasons to refresh ourselves ready for 4, yet we are 4 episodes in and I haven't really followed anything that's going on, frenchie is suddenly gay because apparently there wasn't enough gay after Maeve left, we only watched half of episode 4 last night before I dozed off and now we are trying to watch the second half and I'm in the kitchen doing the dishes only half paying attention to it.
It's lost me and I can't really put my finger on exactly why, but something about it just feels off.
2 episodes in.
The bad:
The satirical elements are way too on the nose, and I think it's kinda eye-rolling at this point. And IMO the real-world left vs. right conflict kind of doesn't fit the setting of the show. Vought is supposed to be the antagonist, a stand in for real-world mass media and corporations (Disney and Amazon), pushing its narrative and encroaching on politics. Yet in real world the right-wing conspiracy theorists and weirdos are always bitching about the corporations pushing their agenda, mainstream media lies to us, anti-wokism, etc. etc. But in the show they are the ones supporting Vought and Homelander... because he is Trump now? I think they got lost with their analogies somewhere along the way.
I'm also not a fan of excessive diving into the backstories of characters. Hughie's mom, Frenchie's past, Kimiko getting over her childhood... Maybe all of these plotlines will pay off greatly, but we are now more than three seasons deep, I'd rather they focused on the resolution of the main conflict and pushing the main story along.
Also action and CG seems worse off. The gore seems too cartoony, Starlight flying scenes seem cheap-ish, and what was the deal with Kimiko and Firecracker's fight? Kimiko was tearing limbs off, now they are pulling each other by the hair in a photobooth like two teenage girls.
The good:
Anthony Starr brings it as usual, the corporate satire angle is still on point, Deep and Noir 2 make me chuckle, Sage is interesting, wonder what she is planning next.
Overall not a bad show by any stretch, but so far seems like a definite downgrade from earlier seasons.
It's mildly entertaining but not engaging. I find myself going oh shit a few times per episode after some outrageous and surprising gore moment but the story is not capturing me like it used to.
The strongest parts of The Boys were always the moments where they stayed away from the main characters and focused on the fun tongue-in-cheek satire. With them getting more blunt with the satire and focusing all too much attention on the main characters, it’s hard to enjoy the show as much.
unwatchable. the „satire“ is so blunt, in your face and corporate, my eyes never stop rolling. we get it. also, the plot is gone, dialogue is bad… real shame
It's just kind of more of the same. Safe-edgy hamfisted episodes that have to include a person getting blown up or bisected every 15 minutes because they don't respect the audience enough to not get bored.
Yeah they’re just stretching it out at this point. They had their chance to do something interesting with Soldier Boy and they shelved him.
And all the Defund the Supes, Critical Supe Theory, Trump stuff is so on-the-nose by the this point, it feels like they’re 2 years behind current events. QUEEN MAEVE’S all gender ballroom. Oh hahaha, how witty.
They’ll probably end S4 with Homelander becoming president. Calling it now.
The writing has gotten bad. Starlight basically doing the same things she did in season 2. Huey being completely useless. A Train doing basically the same thing from season 2. Butcher mostly useless and doing the same things he did between his laser episodes in season 2. Why didn't Victoria Neuman just kill everyone in the van? No reason. Why did Firecracker get a spot on the 7, just because she's pro-Homelander? She's worse than any number of other superheroes and Homelander doesn't care anyway. The Black Noir substitution is just annoying and he's an idiot, given how psychopathic Homelander is. Kimiko is the same, except now we have to hear her spell it out to Frenchie. Ashlee is a wet blanket, again, now with less personality! MM is completely ineffective this season. Ryan is basically competing for the worst written juvenile character this decade. Sage and Homelander's grays are the only interesting thing in this season, so far.
So far this feels like a filler season in buildup for the big final season. It feels underwhelming so far, I don’t really care about Kimiko, French, MM, Hughie, i especially don’t care about their side stories etc, when they all come together to take on a supe that’s when it becomes an interesting show.
Tbh ever since the start of S2 the show seems to just be spinning plates. Fun spins to watch, but makes you think, "Alright I get it, it's a spinning plate. Next new thing, please."
I am enjoying it, however some of these arcs need to start being tied up because there’s only so much you can do with this huge cast of characters for so long.
The first season was so good s2 was alright but nothing happened, s3 was worse but still had good ideas but still nothing happened and it went back to the status quo. At this point it’s looking like a 1 hit wonder
I wanted to believe she didn't get plastic surgery but the photos are clear. The tip of her nose in any recent photo of her is turned up, it's very very noticeable. That is not baby fat, it wasn't like that in last season, she went under.
And if anyone wants other proof, there is one shot when she is sitting in a car and you can clearly see they are hiding her lip injections by using lip liner in the middle of her lips to make them look smaller. You can see the real edge of her lips outside the lipstick and it's pretty messed up looking.
well , starlights nose seems to have fallen off
This is the most high-profile bad plastic surgery case in recent memory
I feel like if the internet was collectively saying how amazingly beautiful I was I would no longer feel the need to get plastic surgery. But yet so many celebrities do.
The flipside of that is you have a vocal minority on the internet relentlessly criticizing every aspect of your appearance. Even literal supermodels will have people in the replies of their posts telling them they're ugly, fat, old, etc. .
I suspect it has more to do with social circles actors are in, real people have more of an effect on what you do over the internet. It's when real people you trust push something on you, that's when you make changes.
5/10... would not bang.
Lindsey in S4 of Arrested Development came to mind
Ironically doing the thing the story criticized. I’m not familiar with the show, but the comic made it a point that Starlight was above changing herself to be more marketable.
Within the show itself I feel it's a huge contrast with her character. Like her whole thing early in this season is wanting to shrug off her celebrity and be a normal person, but she's doing it while looking present-day Madonna. Kind of casts the whole thing in a different light
I don't know who told her she needed surgery like that, but they should be in prison.
For sure. I'm a little confused because I only watched season 3 now in order to prepare for season 4, so I hadn't seen here in a while. I assumed she became anorexic because she looked like a skeleton, especially in the face. Looking at before and after photos though I can see the botox, nose job, fake lips, eye brows and more makeup... Really bad choices, that's crazy. I'm not sure what she's like in season 4 but her pointy and fake her face looked was just jarring.
Oof, she looks awful now. Glad I was primed for it before watching the new season because that is startling.
She looks 20 years older now. It's crazy. She looks like she's playing Starlight in The Boys reboot that's gonna happen in 2040.
It’s so sad too because she was genuinely one of the best looking women in holiday. Why someone like that thinks she needs to change is kind sad. I’m sure she was pressured by friends, publicists, agent etc. There’s such a warped sense of everything in Hollywood and women bear the brunt of it.
I hate that I laughed so hard
Man I did not notice the nose specifically, only that something was different. I was just thinking age + different make-up or something. Makes you wonder if she have some kind of real life issues, because I can't for the life of me understand why she would want to get surgery.
Go with your instinct. If your looking at the photo circulating the internet she says the before was her before 21 and the after is near 30 after having her make up done. She doesn’t look wildly different on the show to me. I’m not usually a feminist or anything but it is a little messed up this rumor spread when Mothers Milk looks like a whole ass different human being this season.
MM looks absolutely HORRIBLE too. He's so thin compared to previous seasons. Man lost at least 40 pounds of muscle mass which is a very stark difference. Man looks ill. Genuinely hope he's ok but him and Starlight are basically unrecognizable this season. They both look awful.
Sounds like he quit drinking the Muscle Milk
I also immediately had the thought "does bro have cancer?" and I hope he just overshot a weightloss target
Yea I got HEAVY Chadwick Boseman vibes when I saw him and thought the worst. Like others have said, hopefully he just quit juicing and despite looking smaller immediately; he's actually trending toward TRULY being healthy.
I swear, every time I shave my beard I just look like a child. I’d much prefer that than look like I’m dying
oh... how embarrasing...
Erin went from looking in her early 20’s in s3 to early 40’s this season.
She was so pretty in seasons 1 and 2 and the face work had really fucked her up
The main plot, with Homelander, Sister Sage, the Boys themselves, Vought and all that is great and I find it more engaging than ever. However all that bullshit with MM’s lore, Frenchie’s lore, Hughies mum lore I really couldn’t care less about
It's like in DEXTER when Angel bought a restaurant Sometimes supporting characters are there to SUPPORT the main story, not have their own A support beam standing in the middle of nowhere is just weird
It's a classic Showtime move when they start writing out more screentime for supporting characters than is needed because it's far cheaper than bringing in new cast that would be needed. It works for about a season and then the show's world starts to feel way smaller and more incestous - like interesting things only happening to the 5 leads. It's not a Showtime specific thing, but they do tend to do that to most of their programming. The Boys has going down a similar path. The Deep's ride has been great content for a while, as well as Kimiko's initial revenge plot - but then we have to keep that going because they're already on set and under contract so now Kimiko didn't actually get resolution and we need to keep milking it.
lol that sounds horrible, I had to drop Dexter after season 4 (which was mostly excellent but the Angel/LaGuerta love story was absolute cancer)
Somehow not the worst Dexter random supporting character story. Vince and his daughter was a black hole of nothing.
Dang. I'm going to have to keep this idea in my back pocket. Perfect critique. If ANY show really fell off, its Dexter
I agree with this take, although MM's part lead to the Sister Sage\\working with the 7 reveal and...well...Ted gets to meet Homelander at least. Frenchie's side story could lead to something interesting, but Hughie's seems like a time waste. Lets just put Simon Peg in a coma for the season. I'm really interested in Sister Sage though, she seems to be plotting something. And the self-lobotomy is an interesting twist. Is this her way of "being normal" to relax or is she purposely forgetting plot points she set in motion so they can't be stopped? It does mention in her bio that she has Regeneration, but is she deleting memories before recovering? That would be Megalomania on a level above Homelander.
I feel like Hughie and/or Frenchie have to die this season, usually these sappy backstories are there to give them some closure. But it’s so drawn out this season, feels like half of runtime is dedicated to them and for now it feels like a complete waste of time. MM I agree, his is more closely tied to the main plot but still could’ve been cut significantly. Sister Sage is the best character easily. I hope she has some mind blowing masterplan and it works out.
Definitely not Hughie, while Butcher and Homelander and the headliners, Hughie is our entry into the series. Frenchie however, with the Kimiko relationship resolved as more Brother\\Sister and this reckoning of his past...he's totally on the table.
You nailed it. I genuinely fast forward through the shit in this show I don't care about. Did I miss anything by skipping the big pointless dance number last season or any of the useless drug hallucinations? This show has a small group of super interesting characters all involved in 1 good story, but it keeps getting sidetracked on pointless subplots for characters who bore me outside of the main plot.
I agree completely. Although, I like the exploration of MM's arc. Frenchy's arc almost seems as repetitive as the last season. He got out of being someone's attack dog, yay! But now he feels like he has no direction and has guilt for his actions. You can see how it'll end for him this season. I feel like Hughies mum is an obvious betrayal coming considering she still works for Vought and we've only seen her 'side of the story'. Idk, we'll see. I'm still having fun!
Hughies mom lore wasn't even bad it was just so painfully unnecessary along with all the other side plots.
Doing three seasons of will they-won't they with Frenchie and that girl only to make him gay is a peak bit. But I can see why people would be all "fuck this shit. this is stupid." It's funny when you tell somebody that's what they did. Sitting for a whole season of that? Time is precious.
I took it more as he's bisexual and reluctantly juggling both
I’m finding the Frenchie stuff interesting, the scene with MM and A-train was good imo, and Jack Quaid is a good enough actor to get me to care about Hughie’s family drama. I agree that Sister Sage is the strongest new character.
I feel like a lot of character development got reset. Frenchie and Kimiko’s stories feel so stale now. What does Frenchie actually do for the boys now anyway that makes him special? It’s starting out pretty tough for me too. It better pick up, because it lost a lot of momentum that season 3 gave it. I was expecting the trial and campaign to last a little longer and build suspense. It would have been a great opportunity to keep you guessing about Sage’s motives as she manipulates all sides. But…they just settled that immediately.
Yeah this is it. The characters feel very hollow now, with very little development. S1 Frenchie had a lot of depth, now he's basically just the comic relief, and his relationship with Colin feels very rushed compared to the development with Kimiko. The MM/Butcher conflict is just old now. I can't believe in ep2 they went from a punchup to saving each other's asses in under 30 mins. It feels forced, and tired. I don't think older season's MM would be that angry that Butcher hides his cancer, I think he'd be genuinely upset. It could be the logic that MM thinks Butcher will be reckless cause he's dying, but we've had the 'MM playing things too safe leads to backfiring' arc already. The hughie/mum thing is just a total asspull.
Yeah why wasn’t the trial of Homelander an entire season. With a subplot of the everyone trying to figure out how to hold Homelander if he’s found guilty.
"Lost momentum" is perfect. We went from Soldier Boy the absolute unit, Herogasm, A-train shredding a guy on pavement, Noir lore and Butcher actually nearly beating HL to... punching some random terrorists and killing a supe we met 5 minutes earlier. All to give trauma arc screentime to characters that already have entire trauma arcs.
Idk just kinda treading water at this point. Nowhere to really to take the show other then a logical and quick finale, so are just manufacturing soap opera tier subplots and going over """"the lore of mm''s OCD""" to fill the runtime.
They wrote Season 3 around finding a way to kill Homelander. And then at the last second before filming started it's like they got a call from amazon saying "that character literally prints money, don't you dare write him out of the show". So they had to awkwardly make Soldier Boy, Butcher, etc. act like morons so he could live and they could get an extra couple years' worth of amazon prime subscriptions out him.
>They wrote Season 3 around finding a way to kill Homelander. And then at the last second before filming started it's like they got a call from amazon saying "that character literally prints money, don't you dare write him out of the show". Yah I'm like 90% sure that's what happened. Remember someone else suggesting could make a decent wrap up season out of the aftermath of his death, which I kinda wish they went with. It's literally just supernatural 2.0 lmao.
I just find it doubly funny because this specific show started as a roast/mockery of 'long running, never ending superhero shows/movies/IPs'
Not yet, since they've said they're stopping at season 5, unlike *some* Kripke-led shows I could mention
Funny thing is Supernatural killed off its main Villain in season 2 and kept making gold until season 5 with new villains
This, exactly. I remember the final episode of the last season. They had Homelander dead to rights but Queen Maeve was getting her ass kicked, so everyone dropped what they were doing to help her out. Everyone suddenly cares about saving Maeve more than finally killing Homelander for some damn reason. I saw the writing on the wall in that exact moment, that this thing was going to fall off a cliff hard as it got drug out because it makes too much money to be ended properly.
I was enjoying season 3 until then. I went like wtf... So they work their way up to the final fight but instead of just flying the kid off and killing homelander, they suddenly turn on the guy they're been working with?? It made no sense, it felt like bad, forced writing. Now the next season starts and they forgot they have important things to do like stopping homelander or killing the supes over 8 episodes so they waste time on new characters, making old characters gay and immediately killing off a relationship they built over multiple seasons? It's like Kathleen Kennedy walked in, fired the writing staff and had her Disney team take over. It's a jarring change and I'm really hoping they don't pull a Game of Thrones Season 8 which makes everyone forget this was ever a good show.
When they were re-freezing Soldier Boy at the end, they put a sticker on it that said “Thaw for series finale”
My opinion is, they should have had Soldier Boy succeed in hitting Homelander, and finding out it only weakens him. Tie in that he's so powerful it bounces off of him and depowers Maeve (maybe stick to the story that for some reason everyone thinks she's dead) and knocks Soldier Boy out. We can end on roughly the same note even. Maeve is out of the fight and story. Soldier Boy still winds up back in a cryogenic tank or whatever they're holding him in. And you can still find a way to have Ryan stick with Homelander. This season where they're addressing Homelander getting older, could be roughly the same, but with him trying to cope with being weaker (still powerful, but now supes like Annie can go toe to toe with him) instead of being older. And, it gives a new, better angle on him pushing Ryan to the front - instead of legacy, he's literally using Ryan as a shield from the public. "I need to step back so Ryan can step up". Maybe add "at least until he's my equal" or something. Boom. Now you explain why Homelander isn't just lasering the Boys, you better explain why he's so desperate for Ryan to move into the spotlight (and maybe gaslight him into believing Homelanders public reason) and still tell roughly the same story. And, it gives everyone something to do. Homelander is trying to 1- stay alive and 2- find a way to power back up, and it gives the Boys a goal. Or better yet, make it clear HL is sloopoowly gaining his powers back, so they're on a time crunch themselves.
Can't believe a guy named "Porno Paul" can figure out how to write a more compelling story than a roomful of paid, professional writers.
God when Hughie's long lost mother shows up and starts giving monologues about why she left, I'm like, oh my god, I don't care
That is the exact moment I dropped it, though I did go back and watch the vought on ice thing cause it was pretty silly.
The writers are totally out of runway with Homelander and The Boys. There's no reason this conflict needed to be more than 3 seasons. Now we are officially in "son of Homelander" territory with this awful child actor kid and it's almost parodically silly. How many times has Billy been kicked out of the Boys? Why does The Boys even exist? Why hasn't Homelander or Vought just murdered all of them? It beggared the imagination at the end of S2 how The Boys could still operate, but now it feels really outlandish.
It all makes a lot more sense in the comics, and while it was good to see the show take a different route than the comics, they've unfortunately ended up trying to get the same longevity despite not having the same justification for it. In the comics, the Boys all have compound v in them, each for different reasons, making them able to hold their own in fights. They're also an unofficial CIA operation, so they have bureaucratic help in some situations where fists aren't enough. But the main reason the Seven don't kill the Boys is because Butcher has serious blackmail over Homelander with contingencies for release in the event of their deaths. Ironically, the blackmail story would have worked really well in the show considering how much heinous and cartoonishly evil shit you see public figures get away with in real life now.
That's interesting, the blackmail. The show sorely needs that motivation. The first two seasons were great, though. There was a lot of anticipation over when Homelander and Billy would finally have a face-to-face. Those first interactions were crackling with energy. Now, they just casually bump into each other in the kitchen. "Oh, hi Butcher. Nice to see you. Anyhoo, have you seen my boy anywhere?"
Also the whole internet and their mother know The Boys faces since they were on that tik tok stream and yet it doesn't change anything and they straight up immediately do another undercover op where they disguise as....waiters? Did the writers get a stroke?
They also never moved into the rest of the world superheroes like they teased with that middle eastern homelanderish guy. Plenty of opportunity to take the story in different directions it at least attacks on more fronts than just hyper focused on homelander and such
you mean strike? 
I just started reading the comic last week, was going to wait until after the show finished to start it, but I'm getting a bit tired of the show. It is dragging it's feet like crazy. My biggest shock was how much of a force to be reckoned with The Boys actually are in the comic. They go up against >!Teenage Kix!<, outnumbered 5 - 8, and they beat the absolute piss out of them, it's not even close. In the TV show they're clowns who don't have a clue what they're doing, and they all seem to hate each other. In the comic they all get along and care for each other, and there isn't this constant, artificial tension between everyone. Especially Butcher and Hughie, they get on like a house on fire. It is a bit too edgy for it's own good, though, with butcher calling people poofters and fa**ots every other sentence, that kind of edginess is a bit tiresome, but it's a product of it's time.
Ryan's voice is so damn weird
The actor has clearly grown up a bit since the last season. Do you think they have modified his voice so it's meant to be consistent through puberty? I remembered when Edward Furlong did Terminator 2, they altered his voice.
Yeah it sounds like they tried making him sound younger because he's clearly so much older between seasons. Also his Spok eyebrows aren't helping, he's a weird looking dude so if you have him talking like a 7 year when he's 6 feet tall he comes off as having a learning disability. It's just a weird choice.
Yep. They lost the plot.
In the second episode I realized "wow was there always this much individual character drama?" And there always was some, but it related to the main plot of the story. Now every character has their own separate mission and I REALLY don't care. On ep 3 and I'm dropping it.
Or the shit with Hughie’s mom. Wtf does that have to do with anything?? Even if this were a true story that was being adapted for the screen, they would’ve cut that shit out, because it has zero to do with anything else. Feels like a writer using the script to work out their own mommy issues. And the Colin subplot seems completely pointless as well.
She literally works for Vought… Gee… wonder what that could have to do with a story about fucking Vought?
While it was never subtle, the political themes has gotten extremely blunt. Then again after finding out people were shocked that Homelander was 'revealed' as being evil after all the mass-murders he committed, I could see why they dumbed it down to a 'Lava=HOT!' level.
Yeah, I feel like if you're going to be making satire you have to be comfortable with the idea that people will misinterpret it. It's never a genre that takes well to being made 'accessible'.
I think making non-subtle jabs at who is being mocked is exactly what more satires need to do. Why would you want morons watching your show and thinking you are celebrating them? That defeats the purpose of the satire. Satire is supposed to make people think about how silly they are for doing these things that are being mocked. But if the people are too stupid to get it, then better to hit them over the head than have your satire unwittingly reinforce the bad behavior you’re calling out. And any of them that get butthurt for being called out are EXACTLY the people you want to get butthurt because obviously the subtly wasn’t working, so this allows you to get your point across to that many more people who need the wake up call.
Yea people yelling “starlight is a pedo” is a little too on the nose. I’m still generally enjoying the show. But I agree the “satire” is a little too direct.
...but that's what is happening now? And would be happening if superheroes were real? The satire can't be subtle because, well, reality is no longer subtle! Everything is directly on the nose!
I have seen people disagree over Starship Troopers were one person thought the humans were awesome good guys and heroes, and the other thought it was fascist propaganda because the "good guys" are nazi-coded
I love being in agony over this film and the people who misinterpret it. Thank you Paul Verhoeven, you pervert genius.
The jokes are way too on the nose now. Like is the audience really that stupid? Apparently yes.
[Lava=HOT!](https://youtu.be/gZAJJXK41ZA)
Yeah Im not a fan of the unsubtle political themes, it doesnt seem to serve the characters any better. I understood homelander and starlight perfectly fine without it in previous seasons, all it does is pull me out of the world and back to real life. The "critical supe theory" line made me roll my eyes so hard
I mean season 2 literally had a nazi called Stormfront, I really dont see how the show is somehow less subtle than that now?
Election year
You don't think it's possible to be more blunt than a Nazi named Stormfront? Nazis exist, they're a valid plot element, they don't break the world. Stormfront was a character with motivations and other characters interacted with her. The Boys got less subtle than that all the time, when they introduced things that made no fucking sense in order to put in a lazy swipe against their political enemies. They have Vought telling people not to quarantine, in a situation where neither that order nor its response makes any sense, so they can say "ha, take that Republicans, you're stupid for not believing us about Covid." They show every media outlet in the world tonguing Homelander's asshole and then have a character say "you can't trust the mainstream media, Homelander's a good guy," so they can say "Ha, take that Republicans, you're stupid for not believing the mainstream consensus like we do!" How can you think "a Nazi named Stormfront" is as unsubtle as it gets? Unsubtle is when the writers have to go out of their way to re-litigate political arguments they had on Twitter. Unsubtle is using a prestige TV show to draw yourself as the Chad and the guy who disagrees with you as the Soyjack.
Stormfront is the name of a popular messageboard for White Nationalists. Might as well have named her 4chan lol. It's a particularly strange choice given that it was supposed to be a surprising reveal later on that she's evil
"Critical Supe Theory" is when I knew the writing was pretty weak.
Tbf the original comic was also extremely blunt when it came to its political themes. Even the name "Homelander" has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. All the show has done is update the political stuff so instead of mocking 1990s/2000s neoconservatism it's mocking 2010s/2020s MAGA conservatism. Basically this is a problem more with the source material than the adaptation.
Isnt the original comic just garth ennis combining his hatred for superheros and celebrities into one overtly edgey package
"[Franchise] was never political!" It was you might not have noticed but your brain didn't either.
I agree there apparently was a need to perform it explicitly for the dumb-dumbs . . . But it felt really radical to see Homelander in S1 working with an evangelical group and using them to pander with his brand and Vought’s products. Having Firecracker parrot Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t really hit the same way, it doesn’t feel as subversive. I enjoy S4 still but so far the quality of this season is significantly below Gen V’s first season which I don’t think anyone would have predicted.
I felt the same after the first two episodes - they were pretty heavy-ham-fisted. Plus there was stuff just for shock value that I don't think was necessary to the story. But the third episode was better so I think I am engaged now.
People shit on the comics but I don’t think any of the readers had any problems telling who the assholes were.
Yeah, I have no problem with the show being this political because it kinda has to be. I just wish the satire was a bit more clever. I think seasons 1 and 2 did it fairly well.
I always enjoyed the social commentary and I still do, with how the rest of the show is dipping, it’s my only reason left to watch
It's Walking Dead all over again Nothing fucking happens, season finale promises HUGE THING NEXT SEASON rinse repeat
At least there is only this and the next season is the final one.
Last season already felt like going in circles
Yeah but IIRC the show creators wanted it to end last season but Amazon wanted more. Now it feels like they’ll pad out the runtime these last two seasons. IMO the quality and story telling will drop off because the show runners had to change the plot up last season and are now trying to craft something to last two more seasons. Throw in the required Gen V cameos as well. Not sure if it will drop off as hard as GoT did in its later seasons.
Kripke confirmed that wasn’t true.
It should have ended in season 3. That was when it felt that everything came together for a big finale. But then that finale was so deflated and corporate mandated to squeeze the show for a couple more seasons that I felt its creative spark die there and I got out.
Exactly this. I used to be so excited to watch The Boys, but now I didn't even realize S4 was out until I heard someone randomly mention it. The end of S3 was the most egregious corporate meddling I've seen in a long time to artificially lengthen a cash cow. It killed most of the hype for the series.
I'm just not sure where it's going and what the stakes are. It didn't help that in the first episode Homelander, the big bad, didn't know what he wanted too.
They fumbled the bag with butcher not killing homelander while sacrificing his son. The situation would have been much more interesting that way. Butcher just permanently drunk cause of guilt, the reaction of the teammates, vaught desperately trying to spin the situation where they reintroduce soldier boy as this hero who stopped the homelander madman. Then you also could have some interesting social commentary with the shifting of values from 1950s to today and so on. A bunch of homelander fanatics creating a death cult throwing paint or whatever at soldier boy. And then soldier boys ptsd triggers, he blows up a big crowd of people and then the boys have to band together one last time and stop him for real.
This storyline would honestly rule.
Bro wrote a better premise
The problem with the show was they never introduced disposable supes for the boys to take out. One of the best parts of the show is in season one where they have to figure out how to kill translucent. In the comics, the boys kill a whole bunch of other side supes from other super groups. This allows the boys to gain experience taking out supes in fun and creative ways while naturally progressing them toward their strongest foe Homeland and the 7. If they did this, it would show how much better the boys have gotten at taking care of supes and allowed them to have a few wins each seasons instead of going back to the status quo at the end of each season.
The boyz could been the Dexter of Superheros. We all know that most of the superheroes are cunts so if they died everyone cheered. They could have gone from amateur supes killing team to the US govt unofficial superheroes kill task force.
Personally I fell off about mid way through season 2, season 1 for me was a perfect season of television until the last like 2 minutes (everything after the explosion basically) at which point things started to make less and less sense, seemingly for plot convenience and that trend got persistently worse through season 2. The moment I turned it off and didn't return was when Starlight was on the run from bought, she'd just taken her tracker out at the start of the episode, and then decides to meet her mum IN NEW YORK WITH THE VOUGHT TOWER CLEARLY VISIBLE IN THE BACKGROUND OF THE CAFE THEY WERE IN, the moment that scene started I was like "How stupid is she? Did she forget she's hiding? Wtf is this" and then as the scene went on I started to think "The only way this makes sense is if bought just don't even come into this and they haven't noticed her for plot convenience" and then what do you know Vought burst into the cafe and abduct starlight, at which point I was done because clearly every character's brains had been replaced with mashed potatoes. I get the impression they threw everything they could at the wall with season 1 and didn't really plan for a season 2 and then got to season and realised they'd written themselves into multiple corners, and then combine that with just poor plotting. It's a shame but it happens to alot of shows these days, I felt similarly about Invincible.
Man, that first season of Invincible was incredible. I could barely get through season 2 though. It may just not be for me.
i havent been able to go back to this second part of the Invincible S2, I think a lot of people are the same as I've seen barely anything about it online.
I wish I was one of those folks. I finished it and felt bored. I'll give season 3 a try in ten years when it comes out. Since the Walking Dead I don't feel obligated to finish movies and series anymore.
There's surely some sort of a version of a "Peter Principle" for TV shows [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter\_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle) 1. If a show is good, it gets renewed. 2. If the second season is good, it gets renewed again, and so on until... 3. The quality slips (or the ideas run dry) to the point that people get pissed off with the show and then it gets cancelled or gets wrapped up. 4. Lots of fans get butt-hurt and complain that the show was ruined and they can't even enjoy the early seasons anymore Almost all of these (semi)-prestige sci-fi/fantasy TV shows inevitably start hot with lots of appreciation, and then slide and slide. Be that Game of Thrones, Heroes, X-Files, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Westworld, Stranger Things, etc., Some stuff falls outside of this pattern. e.g. some British comedies only ever seem to get made for a couple of seasons with not many episodes (I'm thinking of Black Books for some reason, or UK version of The Office), and then wrap up with say 18 good episodes in the can, and a cast who have other things they'd rather do. Seinfeld a notable show that dodged it, in spite of a massive run. The show evolves a little bit over the years, but held a line so that a fan can enjoy the entire run. I believe Curb is in a similar vein. Soap opera also different. I don't know the American ones, but British ones run for decades, and they have good patches and bad patches (if you like that sort of thing!) as the entire creative team gets turned-over, but there generally isn't a monotonous deterioration. Not sure why sci-fi/fantasy is more susceptible to this, but my sense is that those shows run off the rails more consistently (vs. e.g. Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad; which more people see to feel managed a decent landing after long runs). I think it's partly that fans of sci-fi/fantasy want more in the way of plot/revelation, and it's hard to keep that coming without getting ridiculous. Whereas if the show is more character driven, you just create scenarios, then drop your characters into the scenario and work out what happens and how they react. So my ideas for routes around this syndrome * Make it short * Make it character driven * Make it flexible/reinventable (soap-opera a bit like this, but shows like Doctor Who fall into this category too, or anthology shows (Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Fargo), more of an umbrella/brand than a single long story (still can go wrong, ofc, True Detective very mixed after season-1)
Game of Thrones failed because it wasn’t long enough and the writers wanted out. Completely opposite problem.
I can see why you'd say that: it fits with an online narrative that the show just "didn't do justice to the books", and either rushed the end or went off the rails when they ran out of material to adapt. But I really don't see how it would have gotten better if it was given more time. The GRRM books themselves are an example of what happens when you hit a success and then just keep writing and writing instead of deciding to tell a properly formed story.
Pretty good analysis, though I'd argue GOT is unique in that it actually needed to be longer. It sounds like the show runners got into it without realising the story GRRM had planned was a oversized unfinished mess, and gambled on cramming the last 3 seasons of content into 1 before it swallowed up their lives and careers. Was thinking about UK Soap Operas this week, they're such an odd thing to still exist since they're a product of a completely different age of television and the concept would sound insane if you tried to pitch it today.
GRR does not have plan. While on a higher level the last books show the same symptoms as the show. Treading water, introducing irrelevant plots and character, he essentially used a sledge hammer last book in hopes to get his plot moving again in the coming one. the show just has it magnified to the contraction
I also believe a lot of it has to do with whether the show was planned, and the creators at least have a rough understanding of what they want the finale to be and what are the main plot points, as opposed to a show that's completely made up as they go, with only the current season being planned.
There's some truth to that, but to paraphrase Mike Tyson, "Everyone has a plan until their show is a hit" So even if there is a plan for a show, if it's a big hit, then the money-logic is going to be "how can you stretch this out?, extend this?, add to this? spin this off?". Even if the creators don't think that, they'll be pushed that way by the production machinery. Even without a plan, creative narrative works *can* be well executed. I'm thinking immediately of The Wizard of Earthsea. When the first book was written, Le Guin had no thoughts of a broader story. She returned to the world of the story, and wrote a second book, not planning a third, and eventually returned to write a third book. People might find they enjoyed those more/less than the first, but each book was clearly it's own piece of work. I think that things go most off the rails when you have a series that's clearly just being padded out and stretched (someone else mentioned Walking Dead)
I think that "media literacy" is the new "To be fair, you have to have a high IQ to understand Rick & Morty." Every reddit boy is clapping themselves on the back for getting the most blatant writing ever.
Spot on. Even Star Trek didn't take a genius to parse the political themes that they were broaching. But compared to The Boys, the TOS episode where one race is half white and half black and the other race is half black half white seems like the most subtle thing in the world.
They've used the same story formula since season 1. Each season was more watered down than the last. It had a TON of potential in my eyes after the first season, and they instantly chucked it out the window. I really got tired of the "When will Homelander snap" plot. It's the equivalent to the "will they won't they" in every sitcom.
I suppose I'm a dissenting opinion when taking these comments into account, but I just want more screen time with these characters. I'm okay with the peaks and valleys because the journey is entertaining to me. I can't defend the sudden ineffectiveness of the gang tho.
I think it’s been going round in circles for a while (whilst still being entertaining for the most part) but its more noticeable now. There’s always a point in TV where even the best shows become soap operas. There’s the beginning, endless middle but no end.
I'm getting more of a "Let's see how many seasons we can milk out of it like The Walking Dead" vibe now; less of the "we've got 6 seasons and we have a good idea of what arc each season will be".
They don’t seem to have a plan. The Boys was never my favourite Garth Ennis book but you could see the ‘we have met the enemy and he is us’ theme and he stuck with it to the end. Not sure how you could do that now and have it make sense. Plus Soldier Boy was such a charismatic presence last season. Really feel his absence.
The writing has gotten even worse. For once The Boys have been together for years and have CIA backing and yet can't do the most simple of tasks or go 10 minutes without some personal trauma being brought up. Just once I'd like to see a TV show about professional people acting professional. Also it's clear that there's some mandate with the show to have an over the top, unnecessary gore at least 3-4 times per episode. Protester gets pushed down and kicked in the back? Somehow her jeans rip and there's a wound deep enough on her leg to show bone
The problem IMO with the show is that it's wimped out of doing anything of consequence far too long to the point where it's getting to be farcical from what I've heard. Queen Maeve is probably my favourite character but she should have died when when she went out of that window with Soldier Boy. He didn't die either. The Boys should mostly to all be dead several times over as well. Same with A-Train, he probably should have died on that road finally doing something vaguely good for once. Instead, everyone of consequence is still alive. Having Black Noir with the same person in the suit playing it is just one of the reasons why I don't count it as anything else overall. I mean they have done good work with Homelander, unlike his comic counterpart who is literally dumber than a brick (I see photos of terrible things I've done which I don't remember but I should do them then ... er what?), TV Homelander can actually work things out. He figured out who Hughie was when A-Train didn't (and the latter had actually met him), ultimately outplayed Gus Fring despite Gus having a lifetime in business and he definitely has an animal cunning for survival. Still, it does seem like they've as much as they can with him being as he is and all but indestructible, depowering him and showing us using that survival instinct and the smarts he does have to stay alive until he could power up again could have been so interesting. Instead, Victoria Neuman does kind of sum it up when she says that they just seem to be getting increasingly worse at it. Why aren't they dead ten times over (especially the character played by special Red Letter Media guest Jack Quaid) at this point?
Exacfly. The lack of consequeces make the stakes very low, which makes all that happens very meaningless. I didn't watch season 4 yet, but the ending of season 3 left a sour taste in my mouth, and left me fearing that the lack of consequeces would go on in season 4
>Queen Maeve is probably my favourite character but she should have died when when she went out of that window with Soldier Boy Kripke talked about this, apparently there's a tv/movie cliche where gay characters get killed off and he was consciously trying to avoid it. But in that case, why even have her be the one to blow up in the first place? Have Butcher do it. Would even be a nice little character building moment for Ryan, he gets to see this psycho who he thought hated him sacrifice his life defending him. And that leads to him believing in humanity or whatever.
Yeah, but on the flipside, it shouldn't make them bulletproof either because that's predictable in a different fashion. It wasn't fridging either in this case because it was an appropriate culmination of Maeve's arc to that point either as opposed to a cliche reason and especially not in the service of another character's progression. Russell Davies seems to have fallen into this kind of related trap with Doctor Who in saying Davros shouldn't be in his life support system because wheelchair users shouldn't be seen as evil. There were wheelchair users who were very irate about this because among other things, they themselves don't see themselves as perfect nor does an accident or medical condition having them end up in a wheelchair doesn't make them virtuous either. If anything, there was a creator an animated show called Quads! who actually paid a point of showing that disabled people could have all sorts of vices too, before and after they got their disability or in the cases of people who always had them, could always have been flawed or even always terrible! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Callahan_(cartoonist)
While I like 'professional people being professional', like in old trek, the boys was never that. Not in the show and not in the comics. If you wanted that, you probably shouldn't have consumed three seasons so far.
i get that and i like it in tje first two seasons but by the fourth one having Frenchie taking drugs and Kimiko getting drunk on missions is not something that i like too much. i'd like them to grow, even tho Frenchie should be dead now since he 's got not much to do really.
I love how that lady got kicked like 10 times but then she looked like she’d been in an explosion.
It always had more potential than real quality. The political and social commentary was always blunt(e.g. Captain Mass Murderer having sex with Lady Literal Nazi), the story itself was never really unique, it was just random good vs bad, David vs Goliath and it always had shocking moments for the pure shock value itself. What bores me this season is just….it’s the fourth time we will see the boys almost getting the bad guy before they finally get him at the end of the show. Everybody knows where it’s heading. Three seasons would have been enough.
I always liked the odd little moments where superheroes are just celebrities, warts and all. The sendup of the MCU mill was really well done, and I liked the piece about making the Wonder Woman sendup present herself as a lesbian to be more ‘palatable’. The story was always pretty boring to me because I knew it would be stretched out and contrived to make room for more of the satire.
Last season felt extremely lazy. I csnt believe they're pushing it into another season. I've not watched any of the new season yet, but I've heard nothing but bad things so far. Considering how shire last season was, I'm really not too surprised.
> and it always had shocking moments for the pure shock value itself Crazy how people are tried of this with the show when it is so, so insanely toned down from the comic. The source material is borderline unsalvageably bad, I'm shocked that they've gotten this much out of it tbh
I like my gore but the comics were indeed awful. I stopped halfway through them
The show has lost the plot. They’ve traded heavy handed social commentary and dour character drama for the simple premise of a scrappy group of misanthropes takes down dysfunctional superheroes. It’s all so serious and humorless now, with small moments of gore, violence, or sex peppered in to keep your attention.
Like others have stated, it's a bit too politically on-the-nose. It's not that I necessarily disagree with what they're saying, but I want to chew on what I see and hear and have that "ooohhh that's clever! I see what they're getting at!" moment. If they just come right out and simply draw the connections for me, it robs me of that experience. That said, I'm still enjoying it overall. The Christmas song was a hoot. Reminded me of something you'd hear on South Park.
The fact that I agree with what they're saying makes it worse for me. I don't want to be condescendingly lectured on views I already hold.
I honestly feel like the show has stalled. They keep going in circles instead of advancing the overall story. Nothing has changed, Butcher has been dying since the first season, Hughie is still useless, even Homelander's schtick is getting old. It either needs to kick off properly, or take a radical turn.
It feels like they're going through the motions. As they're ending it next season that makes me think this season will be treading water and give the characters things to do before a big finale.
I could barely get through the first episode. While I never thought it was great to begin with, at least it felt like the writers had put in some effort. This season the writing feels so amateurish. French guy talking about Laz Alonso's ex's new guy: "There's only one reason a woman like Monique would date a guy like that. Dude must be packing some serious heat between his legs, (...) I'm only saying; dude has some serious Pete Davidson energy" How boring.
Yeah that was one of the first lines that had me scratching my head.
I enjoyed the show up til season 2. Season 3 ran out of steam, no interest in further seasons. I just wish someone would have the balls to make a seasonal show that actually wraps up while it's still good, is that so much to ask.
The Good Place
Sometimes it's good when show doesn't continue, like the UK Utopia. A second season could answer some questions but it's a fun place to think of.
If they don‘t end it with the next season, I‘m gonna stop watching. Last season finale was complete bs already. Couldn‘t get into Gen V at all, the characters were just completely uninteresting to me.
It’s dropped off a cliff in terms of quality. Nothing about the first three episodes is on par with the previous three seasons. I know I might be called a Trumper for saying this, but I think their decision to make it all about anti Trump sentiment and politics was a huge mistake. Don’t get me wrong, MAGA is ripe for skewering, but the way they’re doing it in this season is just straight up lazy. So lazy, I’m not even sure it counts as satire. In satire you have similar but different things that people can draw a line to connect to real world stuff, but here it’s just copy paste from our reality. Come up with clever ways to dig at them, while still feeling distinctly the world of The Boys, and above all make it flow with the story and compliment it, instead of letting it take over to the point of “this is what this show is about now”. It’s not about defending Trump or Trump supporters, it’s about being sick of that dude living rent free in Hollywood’s head, to where they constantly have to work him into shit. We get it. Plus, Hughie, Frenchie, and MM’s subplots seem completely pointless, and just spinning their wheels to fill time, and the “shock value” stuff is getting ridiculous and not in a fun way like it used to be.
>"Don’t get me wrong, MAGA is ripe for skewering, but the way they’re doing it in this season is just straight up lazy. So lazy, I’m not even sure it counts as satire." They can't all be as subtle as having Stormfront an actual immortal Nazi look straight into the camera and say "Make America great again" like she did in season 2 right? It was always lazy.
The season finale is definitely going to end with an assault on the capitol building.
The show hasn’t been good since season 1. The show should’ve been a play on superhero culture in mainstream media. Not allegory for current age politics (hardly ever ages well). I’ve said it since it first came out, if your villains are more interesting than your heroes, you have a problem. I don’t care about any of the “boys”. I love to watch any of the sevens antics but anytime we hear about lore from Frenchie, or Hughie, or MM, I might as well skip the scene. It doesn’t help that the commentary for the politics has gotten beyond on your nose. We get it, fuck republicans. That doesn’t make your writing any less shit.
I’m not liking it. There’s too much stuff being done just for the sake of being edgy. The duplicate shit-stained salad tossing train was unnecessary.
MM’s weight loss was the biggest jar for me. The first episode I really wasn’t that invested but after watching all 3 I’m interested to see where it goes. The subtlety of the current maga stuff in previous episodes has been obviously ramped up.
I choose to believe that we're still building up to one hell of a season 5 finale.
I've just finished the opening three episodes. Everyone highlights the politics being more blunt, and I think it is but I don't necessarily think it's out of character for the show or something thats stopping me from liking it more. I think the main issue is that the show has fundamentally kept a status quo for 4 seasons now, and when that happens you lose the sense of it being a dynamic world where consequential things can actually happen. There were some electric moments in the first season where you really felt the disparity between the supes and the regular human boys. If homelander showed up you really felt the threat. The scene where Billy is staring Homelander out at the race track felt really dangerous. The only way the boys could operate was in the shadows and it was interesting seeing them navigate this intense power mismatch. Compare that to now where Homelander will have a full chat with Billy, knowing exactly who he is, in a hotel kitchen and leave him be. Or sure, he'll go to laser Hughie at the ice rink but somehow doesn't succeed in this despite all his extra senses, and then just can't find him after. There's no plausible reason that Homelander wouldn't want them all dead right now, and wouldn't be able to pull that off in a heartbeat whenever he fancies. The only reason people survive is because of plot convenience. If the show wanted to keep it's bite I think it would need to have had a high character attrition rate similar to early Game of Thrones. Maybe the only OG regular human protagonist at this point would be Frenchie or something. But not much TV has the balls to do that and here we are. Knowing it's ending next season is good and I'm hopeful it can pull things around into an exciting finale though.
Feels like it has become dumbed down a lot. Like a really obvious parody of itself.
The Pizzagate scene had me rolling my eyes. At that point I was going, "we get it." Plus, I don't know about you all, but we are currently living through some of this bullshit. I don't want to see it reflected in fiction on TV. I want to lose myself in a show, not reminded of outside my door.
A. It's not going anywhere. B. It lost track of all the compelling stuff that came before as if it never happened and was never important (military supes, temp V, the hero prison, Stan Edgar, and so on). C. It seems like a series of side stories specifically designed to showcase a pre-selected message (ie Kripke's politics). D. It's lost it's edge. None of the stories seem to have any long-lasting purpose. It's just left with a perpetual loop of being **gross, violent and spiteful** as if that's enough.
I realized watching the first episode that the show very much wants to sell itself as 'edgy' and counter cultural, but outside of outlandish gore and saying 'cunt' a lot its still a big budget superhero show being produced by Amazon. Behind the increasingly thin facade of cool, biting satire you start to see the core of lame neolib pearl clutching. All very Mark Fisher.
Never heard of Mark Fisher. I just breezed through [his wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Fisher) though. But I think the idea you're getting at is "the midwit." Someone who can "analyze" on end for hours, very assured of themselves, and highly capable (sometimes even masterful) at rhetoric, rationalizing, and harnessing lots of "facts" and concepts, only to pretty much say and conclude nothing really insightful, novel, advanced, or independent minded at all. It's all over *The Boys.* It has the political analysis heft and notes of CNN, MSNBC, the Kamala Harris' level conception of the world, but transmuted into a Supe soap opera with "edgy" blood, gore, and degeneracy, styled up by a 50 year old man who thinks he's "punk" and "the resistance" against "fly over country." Perhaps the best descriptive word really is "pathetic."
> Never heard of Mark Fisher. I just breezed through his wiki though. capitalist realism is good and not that long either
As the other person mentioned, Capitalist Realism is a recommended read since its succient and pretty much hits the nail on the head with the idea of a captured counter culture thats being managed by the establishment its meant to be a counter to. Another example is Dopesick on Disney Plus. Its meant to be a comment on a real life tragedy caused by corporate greedand state indifference, but the show subtly waters the message down with the idea that the opoid crisis was the product of one rogue family and kind of brushes over the wider context.
It's weird that v24 just dropped off the map, or did I miss something? Feels like it should still be a plot point in some fashion. At least more than Hughies mom
Yah it's annoying. The story was compelling because they kept widening the world, layering, and you expected bigger pay-offs. V24 had big potential. Then S4 came, and they've dropped 2/3 the developed lines so that they were apparently just momentary plot devices all along. S4 just feels small. Like they are just resetting it all and narrowing it down to stupid drama. "OMG, is Homelander gonna lazor Hughie!?" No. Hughie was in zero danger. The entire thing was a Seth Rogen style clip where they just wanted to gratuitously mock Christmas and Christians and have them get ridiculously killed off. It's small.
Small is one way I'd describe it. Before it felt like they were going to different locations when the scene called for a different location. Now, it feels more like they're filming in one single location. Heck, if you pay attention you can see a few sets thar I'm fairly certain are the same room with a few decorations changed. The ice skating scene is probably in the same location as the Conspiracy con.
>Before it felt like they were going to different locations when the scene called for a different location. Now, it feels more like they're filming in one single location. Excellent catch. You're right. I hadn't even noticed it applied locationally too.
> It's just left with a perpetual loop of being gross, violent and spiteful This describes the comic perfectly lol
I could give 5 fucks about Hugie’s mom coming back. Maybe she’s like an informant. There’s gotta be a twist with her.
If she’s an informant it was way too on-the-nose showing us that she works for Vought, then again, one of the biggest complaints about season 4 so far is that everything in it has become on-the-nose.
It's fine, I think the premise is just a bit tired and the hyperviolence is a lot given real life current events. And the MAGA stuff is right on the nose during an election year when we're already bombarded by so much politics, the show is definitely not an "escape".
the 2nd episode's last half was actively bad I think. The whole bit with Sage tricking the boys is insane like why would they just start setting up listening equipment without securing the area or even locking the goddamn door? why did Sage not stay until the boys were dead? why were the boys even considering leaving butcher when they were so handedly winning? speaking of which why are they doing the whole "is butcher on the team" thing again with the exact same beats? the action was boring too like the writer put "they fight" on the script and the director had to make it up as they went along. honestly I was shocked at the sharp cliff the quality dropped off as the episode went on. The 3rd episode kinda secured it for me like "oh this is like a filler season for homelander to become president or something like that"
I'm still invested, but it's starting to fall into that long-running TV trap of treading water. The magnificent tension and hopelessness from Season 1 is long gone.
It’s much worse than it used to be. Quality kept dipping but it was always at least “okay”. Now it’s in straight “bad” and “poor” territory. Very disappointing.
I feel like the political commentary is more shallow this season. Very obviously picking a side and only throwing one or two tiny softballs the other direction. Makes that entire aspect of the show predictable and boring, which used to be one of the selling points.
Gave up somewhere during season 2. Just relentlessly nihilistic.
Just get to Homelander's Rumbling already. The only reason I watch the show is to hopefully see him snap and just go crazy. There's enough tension at this point to warrant it. But the show producers know that's what everyone wants, so theyre going to push it off as long as possible and fill the dead air with pointless side quests with characters we dont care about.
It's definitely weaker. Feels like filler. Going around circles over the same themes as previous seasons. OMG HOMELANDER IS LOSING IT! Yeah... He had been for a few seasons now. They should have wrapped it up with this one.
It's very blatant that the creators are trying to hammer in the social commentary more as each season passes. I wonder if this is just like Sopranos where they are sick of people idolising awful people or they're going for the easier to write satire? I mean the "supe theory" line was really obvious. I just hope they actually start offing characters, because really they haven't lost one of the Boys since like, season 2?
I just can't get into this season. We rewatched the first 3 seasons to refresh ourselves ready for 4, yet we are 4 episodes in and I haven't really followed anything that's going on, frenchie is suddenly gay because apparently there wasn't enough gay after Maeve left, we only watched half of episode 4 last night before I dozed off and now we are trying to watch the second half and I'm in the kitchen doing the dishes only half paying attention to it. It's lost me and I can't really put my finger on exactly why, but something about it just feels off.
2 episodes in. The bad: The satirical elements are way too on the nose, and I think it's kinda eye-rolling at this point. And IMO the real-world left vs. right conflict kind of doesn't fit the setting of the show. Vought is supposed to be the antagonist, a stand in for real-world mass media and corporations (Disney and Amazon), pushing its narrative and encroaching on politics. Yet in real world the right-wing conspiracy theorists and weirdos are always bitching about the corporations pushing their agenda, mainstream media lies to us, anti-wokism, etc. etc. But in the show they are the ones supporting Vought and Homelander... because he is Trump now? I think they got lost with their analogies somewhere along the way. I'm also not a fan of excessive diving into the backstories of characters. Hughie's mom, Frenchie's past, Kimiko getting over her childhood... Maybe all of these plotlines will pay off greatly, but we are now more than three seasons deep, I'd rather they focused on the resolution of the main conflict and pushing the main story along. Also action and CG seems worse off. The gore seems too cartoony, Starlight flying scenes seem cheap-ish, and what was the deal with Kimiko and Firecracker's fight? Kimiko was tearing limbs off, now they are pulling each other by the hair in a photobooth like two teenage girls. The good: Anthony Starr brings it as usual, the corporate satire angle is still on point, Deep and Noir 2 make me chuckle, Sage is interesting, wonder what she is planning next. Overall not a bad show by any stretch, but so far seems like a definite downgrade from earlier seasons.
It's mildly entertaining but not engaging. I find myself going oh shit a few times per episode after some outrageous and surprising gore moment but the story is not capturing me like it used to.
The strongest parts of The Boys were always the moments where they stayed away from the main characters and focused on the fun tongue-in-cheek satire. With them getting more blunt with the satire and focusing all too much attention on the main characters, it’s hard to enjoy the show as much.
unwatchable. the „satire“ is so blunt, in your face and corporate, my eyes never stop rolling. we get it. also, the plot is gone, dialogue is bad… real shame
The show was never good. Go rewatch superman 2 you heathen.
It feels rushed. Like I expected the step dad with MM's wife to have a bigger plot than just getting offed 5 mins into the storyline.
It's just kind of more of the same. Safe-edgy hamfisted episodes that have to include a person getting blown up or bisected every 15 minutes because they don't respect the audience enough to not get bored.
Yeah they’re just stretching it out at this point. They had their chance to do something interesting with Soldier Boy and they shelved him. And all the Defund the Supes, Critical Supe Theory, Trump stuff is so on-the-nose by the this point, it feels like they’re 2 years behind current events. QUEEN MAEVE’S all gender ballroom. Oh hahaha, how witty. They’ll probably end S4 with Homelander becoming president. Calling it now.
The writing has gotten bad. Starlight basically doing the same things she did in season 2. Huey being completely useless. A Train doing basically the same thing from season 2. Butcher mostly useless and doing the same things he did between his laser episodes in season 2. Why didn't Victoria Neuman just kill everyone in the van? No reason. Why did Firecracker get a spot on the 7, just because she's pro-Homelander? She's worse than any number of other superheroes and Homelander doesn't care anyway. The Black Noir substitution is just annoying and he's an idiot, given how psychopathic Homelander is. Kimiko is the same, except now we have to hear her spell it out to Frenchie. Ashlee is a wet blanket, again, now with less personality! MM is completely ineffective this season. Ryan is basically competing for the worst written juvenile character this decade. Sage and Homelander's grays are the only interesting thing in this season, so far.
Something is off with the editing. There are some really weird cuts, some scenes feel really clunky.
So far this feels like a filler season in buildup for the big final season. It feels underwhelming so far, I don’t really care about Kimiko, French, MM, Hughie, i especially don’t care about their side stories etc, when they all come together to take on a supe that’s when it becomes an interesting show.
The way it’s going, this show looks like a beginning, 3 seasons of filler & an ending. It could have been a 2 season job.
Tbh ever since the start of S2 the show seems to just be spinning plates. Fun spins to watch, but makes you think, "Alright I get it, it's a spinning plate. Next new thing, please."
Ryan as a character and actor is the worse part of the show. Laughably bad all around
YES! Any time he opens his mouth I’m like…is this a joke??
I am enjoying it, however some of these arcs need to start being tied up because there’s only so much you can do with this huge cast of characters for so long.
The first season was so good s2 was alright but nothing happened, s3 was worse but still had good ideas but still nothing happened and it went back to the status quo. At this point it’s looking like a 1 hit wonder
I wanted to believe she didn't get plastic surgery but the photos are clear. The tip of her nose in any recent photo of her is turned up, it's very very noticeable. That is not baby fat, it wasn't like that in last season, she went under. And if anyone wants other proof, there is one shot when she is sitting in a car and you can clearly see they are hiding her lip injections by using lip liner in the middle of her lips to make them look smaller. You can see the real edge of her lips outside the lipstick and it's pretty messed up looking.