"The Boys," Year Three

Spoilers ahead.

Well, at this point you're either a fan of "The Boys" or you're not.  I've committed to watching the show for at least another season, but I think I've definitely reached the point of diminishing returns.  The show feels like it has set an end goal, which is to destroy Homelander, and now it's doing its best to delay doing that for as long as possible.  And this sort of thing drives me nuts.

This season follows essentially the same beats as the last one.  A new character is introduced, Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles), a legendary superhero who has been MIA for decades, but may hold the key to Homelander's defeat.  Multiple episodes are spent building him up, and his inevitable confrontation with Homelander, only to end with an anticlimactic clash and Soldier Boy being put back on ice.  A couple of minor characters are killed, the various romantic relationships are threatened and mended, and way too much is kicked down the road, to be dealt with in a future season.  The Deep and A-Train get a little character growth, but not so much as to affect anything.  Hughie becomes an asshole, but straightens out pretty quickly.  Starlight finally quits the Seven, but probably not for good.  

Two new wrinkles that are actually consequential this year are that the Boys team temporarily get to use superpowers - no secret because it's a big plot point in the original comics - and Homelander becomes Donald Trump.  The second point is the more interesting development, because it acknowledges the reality that outright fascists with the right messaging and the right amount of hype can enjoy immense popularity and get away with just about anything.  There are MAGA spoofs and references all over the place this season, and the ending even literalizes one of Trump's most famous claims, that he could murder someone in broad daylight and people would still clap.  Most of Homelander's screen time is spent doing away with all the little safeguards that supposedly keep him in check, and consolidating his power.  He's still fun to watch and root against, but his endless escalations are getting tedious.  

You can tell where most of the show's attention is by what the marketing has been crowing loudest about - Herogasm.  The notorious superhero orgy referenced in previous seasons has been brought to the screen in truly NC-17 fashion this year, and it's…  okay.  There is a lot of nudity and kinky business onscreen uncensored, and some of it is funny, and some of it is outrageous, and I'm glad everyone seemed to have a good time with it.  There is more sexuality in general this season, including an earlier fight using sex toys as weaponry.  However, there's also still a notable prurience around sex in the show, where our main couples - Frenchy and Kimiko, and Hughie and Starlight - are never shown doing much more than cuddling.  That dichotomy worries me a bit.  

 

We're still living in a superhero obsessed culture, so there's still plenty for "The Boys" to skewer.  This year there's a full Vought-themed Disneyland full of rides and merch.  One of the better subplots involves A-Train trying to stop a racist superhero from harassing his old community without running afoul of Vought's PR demands.  However, this isn't "Watchmen," and there's not much depth to any of the commentary.  "The Boys" is first and foremost about getting good action scenes, black humor, and shock value out of the material, and any real grappling with heavier issues feels like an afterthought.  I liked where Hughie and the Boys were at the beginning of the season, trying to address superhero accountability from different, more structured roles as part of the government bureaucracy, but this quickly falls apart because the person in charge is another secret villain.     

I'm running out of patience with "The Boys" because it seems to have found a groove it is comfortable with, and I can see the show idling here for several more seasons, if it doesn't just go full "Walking Dead" and decide to never pay off anything that it's set up.  I like several of the actors and performances enough to stick around for a while, but the show's novelty has pretty much worn off, and even hardcore nudity doesn't seem all that much fun anymore.  

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