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

[LORD IMPERATOR]

lex Luther is also canonically an extreme super genius who is one of if not the smartest person from his own universe. He invented FTl, Cold fusion, advanced cybernetics, interdimensional travel the list goes on and on.

His technology is so advanced it's essentially magic and allows him to go toe to toe with all but the most powerful of meta humans.

This show doesn't really have a character like this. The Boys survive mostly because of eye rolling amounts of plot armor and the Seven randomly becoming retarded anytime they might have the upper hand.

The problem is, the show wants the bad guys to stand for the things they hate, so they can't afford to let the bad guys be as cool as classic Lex Luthor who cured cancer on a larp like it was nothing.

The closest thing they had was Sage saying she could do it, but won't, because humans are animals. Aside from the fact that she and her compadres are just juiced-up humans, having a supe cure cancer or solve climate change would be a strong argument for their rule. They wouldn't have to suck up to billionaires whom they hate if they could patent things like cancer cures or tech that can fix climate problems. Vought and its Supes could get so much money and goodwill out of that, to the point where they wouldn't even need Tek-Knight to run prison camps for them because of how popular they'd become. When the people ask the Vought heroes why they should accept Supe rule, Homelander and Sage would present practical solutions to problems like cancer or world hunger, and the people fall in line because their lives would be easier under the Supes.

But they won't do that, because A) this show runs on misanthropy, so people can't ever be allowed to be happy for long, and B) you're not allowed to like the bad guys. So they can't ever be cool. Especially since the show-writers hate the fact that people like Homelander and Soldier Boy over Starlight and Hughie. Having the Supes use Sage's super-brain to solve world problems in exchange for political power is an easy, practical way to gain support, but they won't do it.

At least Lex doesn't do it because he's pure fucking evil. He couldn't give less of a shit about gaining the support of the world; all he wants to do is conquer it through fire and blood, to bend the world to his will and genius. At least back then when the character was cool and made sense, since he doesn't have a legal corporation, he's just a thief and a murderer who steals what he needs and kills anyone who gets in his way.

Spoiler: CORPO LEX SUCKS

Lex is basically Jeff Bezos/Bill Gates level 1%er businessman. Besides being ruthless enough to kill underlings so they can never testify against him/have underlings as middle men to take the fall, he's got the money and power to blackmail and bribe anyone who is in a position to go after him. Hard to be a fed or spook who wants to go after Lex due to whispers of him being a bad man when your supervisor is on Lex's payroll getting bribed half a million a month to let him know who's talking about him and his misdeeds. And Lex has a reputation of being vindictive as fuck to anyone opposing him (besides his threats to Ted Kord's family, he famously fucked up Bruce Wayne/Batman by murdering his girlfriend and framing him and his personal driver for said murder along with the fact that Metropolis has had several mayors "die suddenly" for causing problems for Lex). So any fed or spook who thinks he can make a name for himself bringing down Lex Luthor quickly gets told horror stories about entire families brought to ruin if they start making noise about going after Lex. Especially since they can always use said immunity deals as a carrot to get Lex to work for them, as Lex loathes working for the government unless he needs a get out of jail card.

That doesn't work in the post-9/11 world. It wouldn't just be one Fed or spook spying on Lex, entire agencies working for the government itself would be, and they would know everything he does. The military, CIA, and FBI would keep track of every deal Lex makes, especially since they'd know he's the kind of asshole who'd do shady shit, since he probably has done shady shit for the Feds, so they know firsthand that he's not a trustworthy guy.

Eventually, he'd do something that they couldn't tolerate, especially since the Feds need Superman to keep planet-ending threats like Darkseid at bay, and Lex keeps trying to kill the guy, so no amount of blackmail or bribery is going to work, not when the Feds can just cancel Lex's bank accounts and leave him without a single penny to his name. If Lex actually succeeds in killing Superman, and Darkseid shows up, it's over for Earth, and the Feds would know that. Even if Lex tries to step in Superman's shoes and does his best to repel Darkseid, corpo Lex is probably going to wind up dead.

Like I said, best case scenario, he becomes like a modern Russian oligarch who got his money taken away, worst case scenario, his door gets kicked down and he gets kidnapped and tortured in Gitmo, or killed by Seal Team Six.

Similarly, Lex knows that the Feds might roll their eyes at the idea that there is a rogue scientist constantly trying to kidnap him and replace him with a pliable clone but Lex fucking knows that the masses will eat that up that there is a bitter ex-LexCorps employee constantly trying said scheme and will acquit him at trial (which again, is how they handwaved Lex's evil deeds not just once but TWICE in universe). And if the clone excuse doesn't work, Lex can always go underground with the billions he has hidden away and dissolve Lex Corps for a bit, until shit happens and the US Government offers him immunity for his help dealing with bad guys.

The US government can easily turn to Bruce Wayne and other super-geniuses and super-billionaires. Lex is hardly the only man with that much money and power. Also, the Feds throw around trillions of dollars; someone like Lex would barely be a blip on their radar. So even if he has billions stashed away in hidden funds, not only can the other super-billionaires counter his influence, but the Feds could probably pay whoever he tries to bribe ten times whatever Lex would pay.

 

[Sniperwoof]

 

[Cleverbot]

I skipped over all the BDSM scenes and I didn't remembered much after my first viewing. Then I saw this meme and thought, "oh yeah, Hughie really did get molested by his childhood hero after his dad. died. wtf."

Apparently even Reddit thinks this episode was tone deaf. Especially compared to Starlight getting throat-fucked by her former childhood hero as well in the first season.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheBoys/comments/1dvi7mc/both_quotes_taken_verbatim_from_interviews/

Here are the sources for the quotes:
Starlight: https://archive.ph/W6fWk
Hughie: https://archive.ph/cTFN6

 

[Oilspill Battery]

I've been rewatching the series before I watch season 4, the scene where Ashley calls A-Train an entitled piece of shit for crying about blue hawk curbstomping a black man while A-Train himself is responsible for several homicides intentional and otherwise was extremely satisfying and it was nice to see him eat some humble pie.

Its a pitty they ruin it later by letting him get revenge anyway and completely undoing his substance abuse arc and removing all consequences from his actions by making his transplanted heart (that he took from the guy he was getting revenge on) fix all his medical issues.

Literally pure character regression. He never loses his entitlement, he doesn't get humbled, his medical damage is magically undone, zero lessons learned, zero consequences. He only joins the boys because he's pissed at homelander making fun of him instead of any serious reason.

Come to think of it, why did V fix his broken bones but also damage his heart at the same time in earlier seasons? His coach said that he was losing bone density due to V abuse, but V also... fixes his bones?

V seems to randomly damage or heal you depending on what the plot requires.

 

[Get the rope Macaulay!]

Apparently even Reddit thinks this episode was tone deaf.

i'm more shocked that the subreddit allows this stuff. the star trel/wars subs don't allow shit like this. it must be a rather common opinion and Amazon saw the writing on the wall if its getting this much backlash, or maybe the kike just knows he has to burn it all down now to keep his 5 year plan in place or else they'll have another supernatural situation on their hands.

 

[Mystery Spy]

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I can't be bothered to watch this newest season, but apparently it had a scene of Starlight watching photos when she was "younger," that is, before her botched surgery last year, and her crying in pain.

It could be a coincidence, but if the writers did this on purpose, then damn, that was insanely cruel and ruthless to do to Erin Moriarty. It's like they forced her to watch how much she damaged her own face.

It's probably just her being a good actress and something about Firecracker damaging her reputation, but that pain feels like she is grieving her lost beauty. It wasn't even due to the passage of time; it was just a bad choice based on self-esteem issues. That's some Homelander-level savagery. It was very painful to watch because you know that the damage to her face is very real and not make believe make up.

Homelander would be proud.

 

[Miriam Margoyles]

I've been rewatching the series before I watch season 4, the scene where Ashley calls A-Train an entitled piece of shit for crying about blue hawk curbstomping a black man while A-Train himself is responsible for several homicides intentional and otherwise was extremely satisfying and it was nice to see him eat some humble pie.

Its a pitty they ruin it later by letting him get revenge anyway and completely undoing his substance abuse arc and removing all consequences from his actions by making his transplanted heart (that he took from the guy he was getting revenge on) fix all his medical issues.

Literally pure character regression. He never loses his entitlement, he doesn't get humbled, his medical damage is magically undone, zero lessons learned, zero consequences.

I am not going to lie, A-Train was literally the worst part of season three, and it was all the worse for me because I had such high expectations at the beginning. I genuinely thought they were going to do something clever.

I liked the idea of A-Train trying to chase the African-American demo with his A-Train To Africa idea - I was excited, because it seemed to me that they were trying to take on Black Panther, which was (and arguably still is) a bit of a sacred cow among the MCU set, with even people who loved to turn their noses up at superhero movies significant by their absence when it came to criticising that PARTICULAR superhero movie (I wonder why).

Sadly, it seems that, in Eric Kripke's mind, by becoming woke to black political struggles, A-Train is now miraculously free from any consequences or criticism of his previous actions. One of the low points for me was when he gets punched by Hughie, the guy who's girlfriend he killed, the same girl he laughed with his friends about killing, and then suddenly Hughie's the bad guy for punching him? Why? Because A-Train knows what police brutality and racial profiling is now? Oh, because this is showing Hughie's struggles with his own toxic masculinity?

A-Train has literally canonically murdered two women on screen at this point - are we sure this is an appropriate person to be using as a means of contrasting Hughie's flaws and failings?

OK, cool, toxic masculinity, gotcha...

Bluehawk was also a fucking trash character and a monument to awful, awful writing and I hate him. All of the other villainous characters in The Boys have arcs and well-developed personalities and you can see why they became the way they are. Bluehawk is completely one-dimensional. He's just racist. Why is he racist? Well, he's racist because he's racist.

Bluehawk doesn't appear in the comic, he's a character completely made up for the show and honestly, this is another case where I genuinely wonder why they created a new character for the TV show, when the comic ALREADY HAS a police-themed superhero.



He's called Five-Oh. He even has laser eyes, which would mean you could draw a direct visual comparison to Homelander.

Not in a lazy, stupid "Oh, Five-Oh is actually Homelander's long-lost cousin!" way, like they did with Soldier Boy being his father (and are apparently setting up to do with Stormfront being his mother), but metaphorically, to show that these unfair power structures are all the same and go all the way to the top, no matter who you think you are. That so long as the corrupt system is in place, there will always be a Homelander or someone like him standing in your way.

Why am I, someone who is not a professional television writer, making these creative connections and not the people being paid to produce this show?

 

[TheHarbinger]

Come to think of it, why did V fix his broken bones but also damage his heart at the same time in earlier seasons? His coach said that he was losing bone density due to V abuse, but V also... fixes his bones?

He's pushing his body to the point where it's breaking down permanently and cannot keep up with the healing. He needs more and more V to sustain his healing to the point where has to inject himself so often that he needs gallons of the stuff. When they use their powers it injures them which is a side effect of Compound V. Gen V has this as one of its main plots. That in the long run V causes tumors and cancers and other issues. And Temp V is even worse. They don't have the formula that made Soldier Boy and Stormfront anymore.

A-Train can only run faster than Shockwave when he's loaded on V. Once the V wears off the damage to his heart and body occur. And he needs to pump himself with even more V to sustain that level of output. His character is a parallel to athletes who use steroids and ruin their bodies.

V seems to randomly damage or heal you depending on what the plot requires.

This also. Every main character that gets a V injection gets powers. Hughie, Butcher, Kimiko multiple times, Zoey, and according to leaks a few more before the show is over. Yet V is supposedly like playing Russian roulette and lots of people die from getting it injected into themselves. Hughie's father is literally braindead but the V works perfectly and instantly on what was basically a corpse just for plot reasons.

This show likely has no lore master or editor. They just write whatever and hope that the audience isn't paying attention.

 

[Miriam Margoyles]

View attachment 6159909
Apparently even Reddit thinks this episode was tone deaf.

Are you surprised?

Reddit neckbeards going "Buh-buh-but what about the men?!"
Film at eleven.

Every main character that gets a V injection gets powers. Hughie, Butcher, Kimiko

Oh Christ, you reminded me of a part of season three that really fucking irritated me, the more I thought about it.

One of the worst examples of bad writing in season three, to me, was when Kimiko lost her powers during her fight with Soldier Boy.

Because you, the audience are thinking, 'Oh shit, that's gamechanging! This Soldier Boy fucker's no joke if he can just absolutely body Kimiko like that! Fuck, what are the Boys going to now, now their biggest player's been taken off the board?'

But then an episode later, Eric Kripke realises he's fucked up and written himself into a corner, so Starlight just steals a vial of Compound V from the Vought Labs (which apparently she can just do now, whereas before in season two that shit was locked down tighter than a nun's knickers and she had to blackmail Gecko into being her go-between to get even a single vial of the stuff) and then Kimiko shoots it up and she's fine again and it's fine.

So that just removes all tension in the story.

And at no point does it occur to any of the other Boys - like Frenchie, for example, who spends the climax of the show literally in the labs at Vought, surrounded by vials of full strength, permanent Compound V - that maybe they ought to shoot some up as well. Frenchie, by the way, who has been previously established as being something of a light-fingered, dastardly master thief and is a chemist by profession who's so good at his job he can identify novichok simply from some grainy video tape footage of some vapour.

Billy and Hughie are all over the V-24 shit, which is only temporary and gives you brain cancer. Meanwhile, there are literally cabinets full of the blue, permanent stuff just sitting there, and apparently anyone can just inject themselves with it once and it's fine, no side effects whatsoever, but no one ever thinks to do anything with it.

They don't even use all the V that they inject Kimiko with, because there's clearly loads still left in the bottle in the scene where Frenchie injects her! Like, you can see it right in the shot. There's clearly enough for like three or four people! It's like, gee, I wonder if I can see a solution to this little 'power gap' problem you guys have when you're fighting Homelander and Soldier Boy.

The Boys haven't even seemed particularly opposed to potentially using V in the past, because in season one when they learn of its existence, Butcher's first words to Frenchie are, "If we get you a bit, can you puzzle it out?" Implying that both he and Frenchie were perfectly fine with homebrewing and using their own Compound V.

It's also really frustrating that Kimiko wanting to regain her powers to protect the ones she cares about is framed as heroic and noble, whereas Hughie wanting to use Compound V to gain powers and protect the ones he cares about is... Selfish. Somehow. And also sexist and toxic masculinity and how dare you.

 

[Melight]

One more thing i gotta say about the boys is that gross out stuff loses its appeal really fast. You can only show a guy doing some heinous act so often before people either get used to it or turn it off because they find the constant barrage unappealing. Game of thrones sufffered from similar issues

 

[Payne in the Max]

Here is my summary on The Boys writing process:

 

[FedPostalService]

I don’t really care about the conservatives bad stuff. I care about them doing in a really dull way that seemed old 5 years ago.

I don’t hate it when writers insert their politics, I hate it when they insert their politics badly.

 

[Payne in the Max]

I don’t really care about the conservatives bad stuff. I care about them doing in a really dull way that seemed old 5 years ago.

I don’t hate it when writers insert their politics, I hate it when they insert their politics badly.

Well see it wouldn't be nearly as bad if they were at least nuanced about it.

 

[FedPostalService]

Well see it wouldn't be nearly as bad if they were at least nuanced about it.

They pretended to be by having a pop at corporate liberalism and virtue signalling, the have an unironic cameo by Patton Oswalt.

I still maintain that the problem is the writers are retards and it’s not their politics.

 

[Miriam Margoyles]

I don’t hate it when writers insert their politics, I hate it when they insert their politics badly.

If I could, I would take this quote, have it engraved it in a beautiful bronze plaque, then have it installed in pride of place on the walls of this thread just above Eric Kripke's disembowelled body.

 

[MrGodSlave]

Cancelled Prime. I saw the leaks from a few pages back that mentioned Hughie needing to be rescued from an orgy at Tek Knights mansion and thought it had to be fake. Hughie has moped around all season and then killed his dad, why would he be having an orgy? Then we see it, and it is terrible. Homelander nerfed again. Sister Sage is such a boring pointless character, as stated by many here previously, she does nothing remotely intelligent. Firecracker isn't developed enough for her suddenly feeding Homelander to matter. Sick of Kimikos dumb fuck face staring around rooms looking sullen. There is no momentum or point to this show anymore, just a vehicle for the writers to attach their faggy buzzwords and references.

 

[FedPostalService]

Firecracker isn't developed enough for her suddenly feeding Homelander to matter.

She does have great tits though. I wish they’d just balance out all the male nudity by have a very long lesbian scene with Kamiko. Two series ago I’d have wanted Starlight be involved too.

 

[Sniperwoof]

Why all the Homelander nerfs?

He went from Omni Man or Superman tier power at the beginning of the series then got reduced to maybe Captain America level and presently he's maybe even lower than that.

Even basic shit like his super hearing doesn't work correctly now.

Only thing I can think of is the writers realized it wasn't plausible for the Boys to be a threat to him and they couldn't figure out a way to organically make him get weaker so they said fuck it.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Why all the Homelander nerfs?

He went from Omni Man or Superman tier power at the beginning of the series then got reduced to maybe Captain America level and presently he's maybe even lower than that.

Even basic shit like his super hearing doesn't work correctly now.

Only thing I can think of is the writers realized it wasn't plausible for the Boys to be a threat to him and they couldn't figure out a way to organically make him get weaker so they said fuck it.

Once again, this is how capeshit works. Power levels are whatever the author wants it to be. One moment, Superman can go boxing with Doomsday and Darkseid like it was nothing, the next, some punk like Livewire can shock him into unconsciousness with a single electric blast. This isn't DBZ where there are numbers to the power levels as well as multipliers when they power up. It's whatever the author wants. For a show that hails itself as a parody of the superhero genre, it sure as hell shares a lot of the same flaws.

The Boys is no longer a parody of the superhero genre, but just a dark version of it instead. It became the very same thing it was meant to mock.

 

[Sniperwoof]

Once again, this is how capeshit works. Power levels are whatever thr author wants it to be. This isn't DBZ where there are numbers to the power levels as well as multipliers when they power up. It's whatever the author wants. For a show that hails itself as a parody of the superhero genre, it sure as hell shares a lot of the same flaws.

DBZ honestly had it right. You don't get dramatically stronger or weaker without a reason and if you do that reason is clearly explained.

Man I can't believe a dumb anime about sweaty men screaming at each other can do this shit correctly but capeshit with 400+ million dollar budgets can't.