Why I love "The Boys"

I am the sort of person who gets excited about TV shows, old or new. Most recently I re-watched the entirety of The Boys, in keen anticipation of Season 4 dropping soon. 

In a post Game of Thrones era where big budget prestige TV had blood, gore and lots of dirty sex on-screen, The Boys still manages to consistently shock and awe its viewers through the sheer audaciousness of some of its visuals. On re-watch, I was consistently awed by how good the show is overall, it has a fantastic concept (corrupted superheroes who live for approval ratings), excellent acting and sequences which will be burned in your brain forever (a mite sized superhero who tickles his gay lovers dick from the inside and explodes into full size after sneezing from snorting cocaine - yes, thats a real sentence and the way it is filmed is astonishing!).

The world of The Boys is populated by familiar superheroes in avatars that are far more believable than the airbrushed world of other popular super hero franchises. This is bare knuckle, bare metal stuff and the first few minutes of the show acquaints us with what we can expect with the super-"heroes" of this universe. 

A-train, a facsimile of The Flash, runs through a person, obliterating her into sheer plasma through the force of his speed. And so it begins, our journey into the world of these supes, who under the patina of marketing and PR are actually narcissistic, avaricious and consider themselves above the regular non-supe crowd. 

Black Mirror, another high-concept, prestige TV show frequently shows us a vision of what the future might look like for the world based on our current trajectory. The Boys uses the device of superheroes to hold up a mirror to the world that we live in today. The emergence of Trump and the emergence of the worldwide culture wars are mimicked on-screen in almost eerily pinpoint precision that comes close to being a little too cute at times but the timing and acting of it are so good that it doesn't seem like parody.

The two protagonists of The Boys are The Homelander - who has the powers of Superman but the brain of a narcissistic man-child and Billy Butcher, a man possessed to bring down Homelander for reasons of his own. Billy Butcher is played by Karl Urban who has a delightful cockney accent with a generous sprinking of "cunt" and other British-isms in his portrayal. "Well well well, if it ain't the invisible cunt" and "Oi Oi" are standard parts of my vocabulary now.

The plot of the series is quite remarkable in itself. The world is populated by a large number of superheroes with the top A-listers being part of the Seven, the centerpiece of the superhero company Vought. Most superheroes are employed by Vought and they like all of us, struggle to move up the ladder and stay there based on merit, favors and other nefarious schemes. Homelander is the only one above all of this, as his powers of flight, laser eyes, invulnerability, super strength, super hearing, super smell nad x-ray vision place him firmly at top of the food chain of all superheroes. 

What he is not above from is being a narcissitic man-child who thinks the entire world revolves around him. This combined with his powers make him one of the most frightening villains of all time. A man aware of his destructive capability but constantly seeking approval and lashing out when he perceives any slight against himself. There is not a lot of overt violence that Homelander inflicts but there is always a layer of unease when he comes on-screen as you know that even the slightest provocation from anyone can lead to terrible consequences. Butcher, despite not being a supe is the only one who stands up to him consistently, driven as he is by wanting to destroy Homelander, no matter if it costs him his life in the process. 

The series sees Homelander finding himself in Butcher's cross-hairs. Butcher, who has now assembled a team of mostly non-supes, one supe and a supe supporter or two to bring down Homelander and Vought. Despite being vastly under-powered against someone like Homelander whose powers make him literally god-like, Butcher and the team - the eponymous "The Boys" end up making significant inroads against Vought before seeing that each step forwards could lead to a few steps back. 

Beyond the plot itself, what The Boys excels at is providing commentary on the world around us. The world of The Boys is very much like ours - companies are ruthlessly pushing their product, exemplified by Vought which uses its superheroes to get contracts from the government, sell movies, merchandise and licensing deals. The success and failure of Vought depends on the image of its superheroes in the eyes of the public. This leads to constant polling of approval ratings for the supes who live for these ratings above all else, knowing that despite their superhuman powers and abilities, their ability to draw a paycheck is dependent on how they are perceived and not at all on how they act. 

This leads to very very bad behaviour from the supes and their bad behaviour has to constantly be cleaned up by Vought who too are dependent on their superheroes and will do anything to whitewash their images with the public.

This is the world we live in today unfortunately. Reality TV stars become presidents, sex-tape stars become billionaires and known murderers are feted on stage because the only thing that matters is how they are perceived by their base and whether they are still money making assets for their corporate or governmental overlords. This paradigm too however has changed in the last 10 years. It used to be that perceptions would change based on actions. A politician convicted of a crime was sure to lose approval from his base. This too has now been inverted. In a world of culture wars, there is an explanation for everything. The deep state, George Soros, Bill Clinton, Antifa, the Lamestream media and many other such boogey men are used to explain away things that appear black and white on the surface. As Steve Bannon says, "flood the zone with shit", or as Kellyanne Conway said, these are "alternative facts". 

So many such culture war moments are covered brilliantly in the series. All lives matter, I feel threatened, meme wars, the lamestream media, rise of the neo Nazis are just a few. In addition, the series does a fantastic job of lampooning companies who try to co-opt popular and woke themes in order to win younger consumers. Co-opting the LGBTQ media, the ridiculous Kendall Jenner ad, parroting meaningless phrases about inclusity and diversion are some of the themes that are captured in a way that anyone going through life in our modern age will recognize instantly.

I cant wait to see what the new season will cover. I am less excited how the Boys will handle Homelander and more keen to see how they skewer our current world and the sheer ridiculousness of trying to make sense of it all.