The Boys - An Amazon Prime adaptation of the Ennis comic series

[Tad Loaf]

S1 was the only good season, it took a instant hard nosedive after and gets carried because the tense Homelander scenes (Which is why The Boys all take a huge backseat to focus on him and he's become the hands down star of the show even though it should be Butcher/Hughie) and unsubtle political pandering gets the normie reddit audience literally hard. There's also an obnoxious amount of sheep who just parrot the comic is "edgy" therefore the worst thing ever because it doesn't pander to their politics and a youtuber said so despite most of them not reading a single issue themselves (spoiler, it's not high art but it's better than the show). The Boys in the show basically do nothing but bicker with each other over stupid shit while getting drastically less things done because the pretentious director wanted them to be more "grounded" than giving them powers like the comics...oh oops looks like we couldn't make clever use of that premise so we have to give them powers anyway, all those people who said the show was so much better for not giving them powers will now quietly pretend like that was never said.

S3's finale is arugably one of the worst finales in television history, the awkward attempt to course correct the entire season setting up Homelander being defeated because they can't afford to kill off the star of the show while turning Butcher into a literal "My wife's son" cuckold and butchering his defining character trait of being willing to do anything to get the job done on top of not having Maeve die just because she's gay (confirmed in an interview, not even speculation) sealed the fate of the show to never feel like anything more than a glorified play pen where toys have "super tense one on one conversations" the ocassional gory fight and gay sex scene but nothing of weight actually happening because the status quo is too important.

Completely wasted potential because the writers got too high on their own farts while desperately wanting this shit to go on for a dozen seasons so they can farm reddit gold for saying trump bad a decade after he left office.

/rant

 

[Still Exceptional]

James Stillwell in the show is basically Stan Edgar. Different face and skin color, same ''seen-it-all'' corporate attitude and lack of respect towards Homelander.

To me Stan Edgar is a pale imitation of James Stillwell. In the comics it was shown that Stillwell was the real brains behind Vought, to the point where when Stan Edgar died of a heart attack he allowed another executive to take the role of CEO while he continued to be the power behind the scenes. I also love how he basically wasn't even worried about a lot of Vought's shit coming out, citing people's apathetic reaction to incredibly damning shit leaked via Wikileaks. Says people will just shrug and say "The world works the way I always suspected."

The only good part of the latest episode was the fact that it introduced me to the existence of Fudgie the Whale cakes and now I need to know where to get one.
View attachment 6125504

They're made by a company called Carvel, as shown on the cardboard insert there. They've got 341 locations across 19 states, most of them in New York. They may have a location in your state if you're in the USA.
They also have Fudgie the Beer.

 

[Mystery Spy]

The Boys in the show basically do nothing but bicker with each other over stupid shit while getting drastically less things done because the pretentious director wanted them to be more "grounded" than giving them powers like the comics

I am giving you a like because you made some great points. But I do think the show did a better choice in that not giving the boys powers, save for the female, was ultimately the better choice. Granted they ultimately weren't ablet to make good use of it, because politics, but it was used extremely well on season 1. Too bad they wasted it.

A group of underdogs stopping corrupt demigods is much more compelling than People with superpowers fighting other people superpowers. Except one group , aka the boys, uses trenchoats, I guess.

Not sure if I agree that the comics are better. I mean, lets not kid ourselves, the comic is Ennis power fantasy with Butcher being his obvious self insert (and yes I know he died). I think season 1 is better than the comics. But as of now? I concede the comics are better in that it at least isn't wokeshit.

A bad story told sincerely will always be better than woke propaganda.

 

[Tad Loaf]

I am giving you a like because you made some great points. But I do think the show did a better choice in that not giving the boys powers, save for the female, was ultimately the better choice. Granted they ultimately weren't ablet to make good use of it, because politics, but it was used extremely well on season 1. Too bad they wasted it.

A group of underdogs stopping corrupt demihos is much more compelling than People with superpowers fighting people with other people superpowers. Except one group , aka the boys, uses trenchoats, I guess.

I agree in theory the premise could be cool, my main issue is how people act like the show trying to engage with that premise inherently made it better, it's the same line of thinking with the people who think Batman is the best superhero ever because he has no powers, both can be done well, and in the show's case it tried to bite off the harder route due to what I see as arrogance and crashed for it.

Not sure if I agree the comic is better. I mean, lets not kid ourselves, the comic is Ennis power fantasy with Butcher being his obvious self insert (and yes I know he died). I think season 1 is better than the comics. But as of now? I concede the comics are better in that it at least isn't wokeshit.

Yeah a lot of the comic is Ennis power fantasy and having fun with Butcher but at the end of the day not only did Butcher die but he ultimately the final antagonist (The Boys is basically a modernization of Moby Dick in a lot of ways), so it's not like he was put on a pedestal and given ass pats for being who he is which is what makes it better than the average leftist power fantasy because those characters have to be perfect and right in everything beyond just the writer enjoyment.

The comic definitely handles a lot of things better than the show even outside the political aspect, character motivations don't jump all over for the sake of keeping the plot moving, their relationships are more fleshed out like Butcher/Hughie, or Homelander and Stillwater, and although people try to use edgy to condemn it, and yes it goes extreme often, it's -good- for a story to have some bite to it, something to wake you up and not just more be sterile or safe topics we've seen a thousand times before. The story actually follows The Boys as they go from one job to the next, learning a bit more about them, their relationships growing which ultimately leads to the resolution with Hughie and Butcher at the end.

Edgy/Juvenile can be negatives in and of themselves but they don't necessarily make a story poorly told, and as much as people say the comic just exists to shit on superheroes I always saw it more as shitting on celebrities/hollywood, Superheros are just used as an extreme fantastical stand in for them, if you ignore the superpowers they are literally just normal celebs which everyone can get behind shitting on. Also Ennis is unironically a huge Superman fan.

 

[TheHarbinger]

S3's finale is arugably one of the worst finales in television history, the awkward attempt to course correct the entire season setting up Homelander being defeated because they can't afford to kill off the star of the show while turning Butcher into a literal "My wife's son" cuckold and butchering his defining character trait of being willing to do anything to get the job done on top of not having Maeve die just because she's gay (confirmed in an interview, not even speculation) sealed the fate of the show to never feel like anything more than a glorified play pen where toys have "super tense one on one conversations" the ocassional gory fight and gay sex scene but nothing of weight actually happening because the status quo is too important.

I immediately thought that the third season finale of The Boys would be compared to the final episodes of Game of Thrones. Basically show destroying and legacy ruining levels of writing. Every season of The Boys they have had the chance to try to rebound or recover from the decline after the first season. But the third season finale arguably doomed the show beyond ever being able to redeem itself.

But now that Game of Thrones is getting so many spinoffs you could argue that its collapse is now midway through its overall series. As once House of the Dragon and Dunk and Egg get made for HBO there will be just as many spinoff seasons post Game of Thrones' bad seasons as there were good seasons of the show before everything was ruined.

I am giving you a like because you made some great points. But I do think the show did a better choice in that not giving the boys powers, save for the female, was ultimately the better choice. Granted they ultimately weren't ablet to make good use of it, because politics, but it was used extremely well on season 1. Too bad they wasted it.

The Boys not killing everyone is because the show has no budget. No G-Men or various other superheroes for them to kill. They should have been having open war with Vought since the first season. Instead they barely accomplish anything. They are still trying to bribe or blackmail superheroes instead of killing them. Most likely they have no intention of having anyone of the Boys kill anyone unless it's self defense or Butcher's parasite acting on its own. They'll have the virus go crazy and kill superheroes.

A group of underdogs stopping corrupt demigods is much more compelling than People with superpowers fighting other people superpowers. Except one group , aka the boys, uses trenchoats, I guess.

They did that with Translucent then no one else. Maybe Butcher beating Mesmer to death in the subway but that wasn't clever it was just pure brute force. It's like the writers used that lure the viewers in then abandoned the idea and pivoted to the faggy political show it became.

 

[ChampFantana]

I remember seeing a few dustups on blogs and Livejournals and such back in the aughts where there'd be these people who'd throw out accusations against authors and books and go on about tropes and subtext and white-splaining and so on and I'd read post after post by the major players in these loud, angry arguments that sprawled through various blogs, comment sections, etc. constantly talking about genre TV shows instead of the books and authors supposedly under discussion. "Erm, I've never read the book or any of this author's books, but I want to continue in dragging them for their supposed racism, sexism, etc. so instead, let's turn to my vast knowledge of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer."

Boy do I fucking feel THAT. I spent the late Aughts-early 10s on a message board centered around some shlock movie blog written by a guy who'd be hard-pressed to count to twenty without being bare-foot. (No, it wasn't AICN.)

The amount of pretentious, pseudo-intellectual drivel I read on that site from cretins who had never touched grass OR a vagina was beyond measure.


As to The Boys, I spent the last couple of weeks binge-watching the first 3 seasons on Freevee because FUCK giving GRIDS Dr. Evil any of my money. It's a genuinely shitty adaptation of a not-particuarly-good-to-begin-with comic series. None of the actors are any good outside of Homelander, and Karl Urban is wasted in his role. (I genuinely like a LOT of Urban's work, and he has a lifetime of goodwill from me thanks to LoTR.)

Kripke being too stupid to create actual satire instead of ham-fisted leftist agitprop is another thing that drags the show down. It saddens me because I genuinely enjoyed the Kripke-run seasons of Supernatural and consider Dean Winchester to be one of the coolest TV characters of all time. I guess Kripke had a decent tard-wrangler back then to prevent him sharting his mental diarrhea politics all over the place.

 

[Dragged Into Sunlight]

Catching up on S2 and S3

It's incredible how you can feel the Jewish showrunner seething behind the screen.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Catching up on S2 and S3

It's incredible how you can feel the Jewish showrunner seething behind the screen.

And yet try as he might, the people that Eric Kripke wants us to despise are the ones that people fall in love with. Homelander, Soldier Boy, Stan Edgar, they held up the show. They made Homelander into an insane Super-Trump, and yet people tune in to the show just to see him. They made Soldier Boy the poster child for toxic masculinity, and yet he's the most memorable character from Season 3. Stan Edgar personified the soulless, Machiavellian capitalism of a company like Vought, yet his scenes were always a treat to watch, especially with the scenes where he put Homelander down or discussed the politics and situation with Vought and other people.

It's kind of like how GRRM, being the leftist hippie twat that he is, wrote Tywin Lannister to be a petty, backstabbing, rich boy shitheel in the ASOIAF books, yet Tywin is the best character in the Game of Thrones show, to the point where fans admired and loved him. The quality of the show died with him.

Kripke will have to save Homelander's death for S5's end. Otherwise, if he tries to do the show without Homelander, it just won't have the same charm anymore.

 

[urr13 account]

OK I'm just skimming the TV Tropes recap page for the latest episode since I didn't care to watch it.
>Among Firecracker's celebrity friends are Jon Voight and Kanye West.
That's fucking retarded. Voight is literally a Neocon Boomer and Kanye West is well... Kanye.

I don't watch this show so I'm aware my opinion here means little, but I find this type of thing annoying in a lot of media and here's my take on why it always stick out and makes me cringe:

It ruins the world-building on the show.

You see, in a universe with literal superhero's would Kanye West or Pewdiepie (referenced in a previous seasons as being a nazi or something) even exist?

Based on Season 1 it seemed like in this world superhero's had basically taken the place of the traditional celebrity. It seemed like athletes, actors, and music artists were less of a big deal. If you have people with super speed and other cool powers, why is Pewdiepie still a celebrity? why is kanye west still super famous?

Once you create a world this different from reality, awkward attempts to reference our reality always seem out of place. The writers of the show don't think about stuff like this, they literally have a world with Black superheroes running through women but the black lives matter chant is still a thing. Did the George Floyd thing still happen exactly as it did in our real world in this show with a fuckton of literal. superheros. It doesnt make any sense.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

I don't watch this show so I'm aware my opinion here means little, but I find this type of thing annoying in a lot of media and here's my take on why it always stick out and makes me cringe:

It ruins the world-building on the show.

The way I see it, trying to make it just like the 2020s makes no sense. If superheroes were a real thing, not only would that cause a culture shift, like how Dr. Manhattan's existence jumpstarted a scientific and cultural revolution in the Watchmen world, but there's no way in Hell Uncle Sam would allow private entities to wield Supes that can be as threatening as a nuke. They'd nationalize that shit and keep the formula for Compound V locked up in the Pentagon or some secret base, and only companies who have ties to the Feds could use it. Vought perhaps would still operate as it would, but they'd hardly be the only company, since the Feds would also have other companies around that they can use to also make superheroes or super-serums.

Someone like Homelander won't be wasted fighting criminals, but rather, fighting wars. They'd send his ass to Iraq or Afghanistan, and more than likely, the Boys version of America would win those wars just like Watchmen America won Vietnam thanks to Dr. Manhattan. Someone like Homelander flying around like an angel of death vaporizing enemies with his heat vision and disemboweling terrorists while tanking bullets to the face would cause the enemy to have a morale breakdown. Especially if they're superstitious; such a being attacking their forces, tanking all they can throw at him, and crushing them severely would cause them to believe that either God has abandoned them, or has sent that being to punish them. Homelander would be to these terrorists what Attila was to the Ancient Romans, the Scourge of God that has come to punish the sinners. You might even see these radical jihadists defect to Yankee Christianity because Vought programmed Homelander to appeal to American Christians and he's one of them on paper.

Iraq and Afghanistan would become American protectorates a la Puerto Rico, North Korea and Iran would flatline, while Russia and China would be experimenting on their own citizens to try and create their own supermen. And ideally, the Americans won't stop at just creating one Homelander or Soldier Boy; they'd have clones of those heroes waiting around like a Seal Team. If, by some joke of fate, the enemy manages to kill the hero, the Feds would just have another one take said hero's place and pretend like the hero never died.

You see, in a universe with literal superhero's would Kanye West or Pewdiepie (referenced in a previous seasons as being a nazi or something) even exist?

Maybe they're also supes. I can imagine an alternate world where Supes can be made through serums, and some figures we know now could be made into Supes.

Based on Season 1 it seemed like in this world superhero's had basically taken the place of the traditional celebrity. It seemed like athletes, actors, and music artists were less of a big deal. If you have people with super speed and other cool powers, why is Pewdiepie still a celebrity? why is kanye west still super famous?

Agreed. Unless Pewdiepie and Kanye took V as kids too, I don't think they'd be able to stay relevant.

Once you create a world this different from reality, awkward attempts to reference our reality always seem out of place. The writers of the show don't think about stuff like this, they literally have a world with Black superheroes running through women but the black lives matter chant is still a thing. Did the George Floyd thing still happen exactly as it did in our real world in this show with a fuckton of literal. superheros. It doesnt make any sense.

It's the same problem Alan Moore failed to solve with Watchmen. The USA has a superman with godlike powers of matter manipulation, teleportation, multiplication, he could just enter the USSR incognito, teleport all their nukes into space, then the Yanks could invade and take control without much of an issue. But for some reason they're still afraid of total nuclear apocalypse.

Every time they try to make superheroes fit in the real world, it doesn't work, because realistically, a superhero-infused world would not be the same as ours. Not only would the culture not be the same, but law enforcement, military, and the general feel of society would be different.

 

[Not A Bunny]

And yet try as he might, the people that Eric Kripke wants us to despise are the ones that people fall in love with. Homelander, Soldier Boy, Stan Edgar, they held up the show. They made Homelander into an insane Super-Trump, and yet people tune in to the show just to see him.

There's this weird line that's been pushed since probably season 2 in every comment section:

"Hurr durr, the Trump-tards just figured out that the show is making fun of them!"

How many more seasons are they going to push this retardation as if we don't remember it from a year ago?

Can we all just admit that Antony Starr is a great actor in a shitty show with scrub-level writing that wouldn't make it past the entry stages in a community theater brainstorming group?

 

[TheRaptorJesus]

From 2016 onwards, they fucking forgot about Dubya and focused all their hate on Trump, whereas 20 years ago Trump was their ally and Dubya was the Spawn of Satan to them.

The biggest issue is the obama era where no one would dare make fun of him and say a peep. So all the late night that used to be funny died then tried to come back with orange man.

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

The most likely explanation is that she had some self steem body issues, that some jealous bitches seized to brainwash her to sabotage herself with surgery making her believe she had to “fix” herself. It happens all the time. When you see perfectly fine beautiful young women doing this, 9 times out of 10 the cause is other women lied to her.

It’s a tragedy she listened to them instead of all the men in her life that must had praised her looks.

You made up a fantasy scenario in your head, insulting the fantasy women (because of course you do) and praising the fantasy men for something you invented. You aren't right in the head.

Erin apparently has no agency and couldn't have wanted it herself.

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

It would've made more sense for her to be a telepath, or at least someone with some kind of empathetic, mind-reading power or sensory power, as a way for her to gauge people when talking to them. Add that in with her having a regenerative brain that works at a faster pace than other people, and you could have a good explanation as to why she's considered the ''smartest person alive''.

"Smartest person alive" is just a vague power set in general. What does it mean? Does she just instinctively know everything? Does it mean she's good at learning? Does it give her wisdom too, or just book smarts? Is she smart in all areas like emotional topics and what not?

 

[Dragged Into Sunlight]

I just started S4. Do I really want to sit through an entire season of sassy Supergenius negro woman. JFC

Ah yes, Frenchie who is obviously been in love with Kimiko the entire fucking series all of a sudden madly in gay love with a black guy since we need to hit our faggot character quota since Maeve left.

 

[Mystery Spy]

You made up a fantasy scenario in your head, insulting the fantasy women (because of course you do) and praising the fantasy men for something you invented. You aren't right in the head.

Erin apparently has no agency and couldn't have wanted it herself.

You have poor reading comprehension skills, because that's not what I said. I am describing a typical body dysmorphia scenario. Not a "men good, women bad take.".

My point is that women who suffer from it are more likely to listen to criticism and ignore all the praise (mostly for men). And it's also a documented fact that women do sabotage each other.

Individuals with BDD find it hard to accept compliments and believe in their honesty.

https://themindmap.co.uk/interviews/10-faulty-thoughts-that-occur-in-body-dysmorphic-disorder/

• Women use competitor manipulation as a form of intrasexual competition.
• Highly competitive women advised hypothetical salon clients to cut off more hair.
• Women told clients of similar attractiveness as themselves to cut off the most hair.
• Female intrasexual competition may be assortative with respect to mate quality.
• Female intrasexual competition manifests without any contextual cues to mating.

We suspect that intrasexually competitive motives may influence the full breadth of female-female interactions, whenever opportunities to manipulate the reproductive outcomes of other women present themselves, irrespective of whether or not those interactions involve an identifiable mating threat for any woman involved

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019188692300329X#s0125

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/the-queen-bee-in-the-corner-office/534213/

https://www.vogue.com/article/seeing-other-women-as-competition-isnt-always-a-bad-thing

And her being influenced and her taking her choice aren't mutually exclusive. Humans don't live in a vacuum.. We are social animals that strive to live in a society. The opinions of others do matter. If you still think this is a gender war, take (spoiler: its not; Its it's a mental health one) then that says more about your mental wellness than mine.

 

[Get the rope Macaulay!]

. One news article flat out said that they worked 'for free'.

except that would be a massive union violation, i quoted the SAG minimum (yes even for cameos that last seconds) and its roughly $1000 for one day of work. Obviously shows usually get around that by having you film as much as possible for that day, i used James Cameron in entourage because while watching the season it feels like he's in every episode on par with main characters yet he knocked it out in less than half a day, only staying for the free lunch.

And i'm sure you're going to now include some silly rebuttal but yes, it doesn't matter if you only have a minute of screen time, you still get paid a comparable shitload. its why The Gong Show had such a weird amount of prize money, thats literally the bare minimum they could pay the person that "won" at the time because its the union minimum.

 

[Anti Snigger]

The fourth episode having redeeming qualities has reminded me of how much of an abusive relationship these streaming release schedules are

 

[TheHarbinger]

except that would be a massive union violation

And? Amazon used slave labor from North Korea to animate of their cartoon shows called Invincible. They don't care about labor laws. Those two actors got paid pennies or worked for free. It happens. Their unions don't care about stuff like that.

 

[Caligura]

I don't watch this show so I'm aware my opinion here means little, but I find this type of thing annoying in a lot of media and here's my take on why it always stick out and makes me cringe:

It ruins the world-building on the show.

You see, in a universe with literal superhero's would Kanye West or Pewdiepie (referenced in a previous seasons as being a nazi or something) even exist?

Based on Season 1 it seemed like in this world superhero's had basically taken the place of the traditional celebrity. It seemed like athletes, actors, and music artists were less of a big deal. If you have people with super speed and other cool powers, why is Pewdiepie still a celebrity? why is kanye west still super famous?

Once you create a world this different from reality, awkward attempts to reference our reality always seem out of place. The writers of the show don't think about stuff like this, they literally have a world with Black superheroes running through women but the black lives matter chant is still a thing. Did the George Floyd thing still happen exactly as it did in our real world in this show with a fuckton of literal. superheros. It doesnt make any sense.

Derek Chauvin as a Superhero named Captain Knee curb-stomped that niggo so hard that half of Minneapolis (conveniently; only the parts where all the Somalis live) collapses in a brutal earthquake and the rest is fenced off would be really kino as a throwaway background line but the show is made by fags so obviously that wouldn't happen lol

That's my headcanon though.

Also Derek Chauvin (duh), George Zimmerman (we need to appeal to the Latinx audience), Kyle Rittenhouse (do I need to explain?) and Philip Brailsford (we need a token evil teammate) as an Avengers team of supes who go around busting niggos, spics, and pedos would also be equally kino.