Pop Culture Pick: Let's Hear It For The Boys
Sour superheroes and the vigilantes keeping them in check return for more mayhem
Image Credit: Amazon
Welcome to Pop Culture Pick, a catch-all for subjects I want to highlight outside of the usual weekly Weekend Watch columns. In this edition, the boys are back in town and the town may not recover from it.
The first season of The Boys was a blast of satirical, scathing, and occasionally scatological superhero action. Drawn from Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s graphic novel series, it pulls no punches, kicks or laser eyebeams. So with Season 2 on the horizon, what can you expect from the show’s return?
Turns out, a lot more of the same (I’ve seen the whole season, but will not be spoiling anything here), and if you enjoyed the machinations of Homelander (Anthony Starr), Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), Hughie (Jack Quaid) and the rest, then you’ll find plenty to love. And if you are concerned about the safety of sea mammals? Well, you might want to skip a certain scene.
We’re re-introduced to the world of the Boys in the aftermath of the first season’s dramatic wrap-up: Billy’s nowhere to be found, the various vigilantes are laying low and superhero set The Seven must deal with their own new reality. Starr’s Homelander remains a big asset not just to the Vought corporation that backs The Seven, but to the show. His scheming, arrogant, smug man–child is given free rein and new shading once again; if he were to run for president in a future season, I’d be unsurprised. The actor and the writers make a meal of his every raised eyebrow and snarling, acid-dripping grimace. He’s ably challenged by Giancarlo Esposito’s Mr. Edgar, with the actor once again airlifted in to provide his own blend of snake charm for a snake oil salesman. On the negative side, a story about the blond blowhard looking to build a certain new family relationship hits some more familiar beats.
Chace Crawford’s The Deep, meanwhile, continues to be a source of comic desperation, as he tries to finagle his way back into The Seven through questionable means. I won’t reveal exactly what’s going on, but a certain celebrity “religious” organisation might have something to say (or write copious legal complaints) about it. Otherwise, the likes of speedy, troubled A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) and the mysterious Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell) have less impact but are welcome when they do show up.
On the Boys’ side, Quaid’s Hughie still has the lion’s share of the material. And, as the trailers have already shown, fans of Billy Butcher won’t be disappointed, as the sweary bull who never met a china shop he didn’t want to level, crashes his way through the plot.
The other members of the team, aside from Karen Fukuhara’s Kimiko, don’t exactly enjoy a lot of character development. On that front, the girls of The Boys in general, don’t fare quite as well as the leading men. Erin Moriaty’s Starlight has her continued conflicted dance with Hughie, plus issues both personal and professional. Dominique McElligott’s Queen Maeve, meanwhile, has a less satisfying (if necessary), subplot the result of the series having to juggle so many plot balls. And at least a couple of the episodes are mostly there to keep the plot ticking along in between bigger set pieces and/or jokes.
One a brighter, more impactful note, there’s Stormfront, the social media-savvy supe played by the ever effervescent Aya Cash, who throws herself into the role with gusto and goes toe-to-toe with Homelander on his own turf. She’s like an explosion of filthy joy, forthright and unfiltered (unless you count Instagram filters).
Wrapping up this second run successfully while drawing in as much of the cast as feasible while leaving plenty of road for the already-commissioned third season to travel, The Boys continues to impress. It gets away with an awful lot, like a child whose parents have a particularly lax attitude to discipline, but in channelling the anarchic style of the comic (while still slightly toning it down) it has something to say about the genre that most superhero stories simply can’t or won’t touch. And for that, it’s welcome.
The Boys arrives on Amazon on 4 September. Three episodes will launch that day, while the rest of the season lands weekly.