‘The Boys’ Focuses on Shock Over Story, and It Goes Badly

Season 4 of The Boys is almost over and things are starting to go off the rails. Not in the fun and wacky way that the show usually does, but in a way that is just… unpleasant and bad. Content warning follows.

In this week’s episode, Dirty Business, the group infiltrates a far-right rally where a coup is being planned, led by Homelander and Victoria Neuman. And tonight, we’re treated to two of the worst aspects of the show this season: its clumsy political commentary (one Republican quotes Todd Akin’s infamous statement about “legitimate rape” almost verbatim), and also The Boys trying to outdo itself not by improving its plots or character moments, but by just being… gross. But in a way that doesn’t really work at all.

It feels like this episode tried to copy the infamous “Herogasm” about a superhero orgy that led to a major confrontation between the characters. That’s not the case here, and much of the evening is mostly devoted to Hughie being sexually tortured by Tek-Knight and Ashley. Even though a lot of it is about things like foot tickling and cake farts, and then the threat of Tek-Knight doing something so horrible to Hughie that I can’t even write it here, it’s still sexual assault, and the show at least pauses to catch its breath and let Hughie break down afterwards. Still, it wasn’t funny or entertaining to watch or whatever it’s supposed to be.

The more I watch the current version of The Boys, the more I realize how much better the first season of Gen V was in comparison. This show is full of gore and sex, but it’s not THE The main goal of the show is that it also has a coherent plot and characters that you want to care about. If The Boys ever had that, they’ve now become an abused Hughie and a helpless Starlight. Now the show is trying to give A-Train some sort of redemption arc that, given the nature of the show, seems to set him up to be violently killed off shortly after.

This is not a pleasant season. Politics has become stupid, too close to reality, in a way that is not intelligent, even if I agree. with Those policies. And that desire to have viewers talk about the next twisted thing the show did the next day overwhelms all the plot development, which, six episodes into this season, boils down to “Homelander thinks everyone is inferior and wants to take over the country.” Like, I mean, of course he does, and his “smartest person in the world” he has working for him hasn’t concocted anything resembling an interesting plan to achieve that. Meanwhile, the show has no idea what to do with the rest of its central Boys cast, giving them disconnected, undeveloped storylines and isolating Butcher with his brain tumor hallucinations.

There’s only one more season of The Boys left after this one, at least with this cast, since the show is moving on to spin-offs. But at this point, I’m much more looking forward to Gen V season 2 than what happens next.

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