Tuesday 25 June 2024

The Boys: Life Among the Septics

" I swear to God... stupod people who think they're smart make me want to eat my own ***."

Yet again, there's a lot going on here, early in the season though we are. Sister Sage continues to be fascinating- the smartest person on the planet and utterly amoral. She has ber own agenda too, and we start to see parts of it. Despite her obvuous disdain for the subtle racism directed at her, she is ultimately a supe supremacist, telling the Deep to stand up to Ashley because "You're an evolutionarily superior being."

Ironically, she's an interesting comparison to Stormfront and, in the end, similarly fascistic. It's just that her racism is less... old-fashioned. And Homelander quite agrees. Much of the episode consists of Ryan prepping for his first "Solo save" in public, which goes horribly wrong as the "villain" is horribly killed by Homelander. Chillingly, Homelander just doesn't get why Ryan is upset about this- "humans are fragile".

Horrifying though this is, it shows a horrible truth: superheroes never truly save anyone, it's all staged... as A-Train is forced to admit to his nephews. Meanwhile, he's filming his own origin movie which is changing his past to include all sorts of subtly racist tropes... and Will Ferrell. No wonder he's annoyed enough to sneak footage exonerating last episode's two murder scapegoats to Annie and Hughie.

Meanwhile, Kimiko gets drunk, continues to be lovely to Frenchie and maybe, just maybe, confronts her own past. Hughie, meanwhile, confronts his errant mother. And the ongoing psychodrama between M.M. and the dying Butcher continues.

Best of all, as ever, is the social commentary- the subtle and not so subtle racism of MAGA America, and the dangers of conspiracy theories, which are far from harmless and all have dangeroud far right ideology not far beneath the surface. Ah, I love The Boys. I just need to get bleeding well caught up.

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