The Boys: Nothing Like It in the World

"Are you gonna tell me what's wrong? Or are you gonna stain my clean sheets with your sweaty despair?"

Another bloody good episode here and, just like the last one, we have asplendidly clever and twisted take on a big theme, this time love. So we have Homelander having an icky assignation with the late Madelyn again, complete with the milk stuff, until it turns out it's just that shapechanger bloke... and Homelander has him killed at an awkward moment.

We also have the cult auditioning various potential wives for the helpless Deep. We have Frenchie's ill-advised kiss. We have Hughie and Annie on a mission together where they are allowed to be fleetingly free, happy and in love... but have to stay apart because happiness is not safe. And, of course, we have Billy desperately planning to get Becca to freedom after their emotional reunion. And yet the seeds of their doomed relationship are cleverly sowed within the dialogue from the start: Billy wil never accept a supe kid so it's him or Ryan. And Becca's comments, while lovingly meant, are devastating: Butcher's dark obsessiveness was there long before her.

We also have MM's OCD pointed out to us, and hear more of his past. And the rivalry between Stormfront and Homelander develops, too. But it seems she's older than she seems, and very racist indeed, which explains the disturbing connotations of her name. Halfway through, and the season is getting very interesting indeed.

The Boys: You Found Me

 "I was just like you. And then I started givng pieces of myself away, and I guess I gave away everything."

This was an... eventful season finale. Highly satisfying, full of shocks, and very Garth Ennis indeed. It also contains the most disturbng sex scene since Nero and Agripinilla in I, Clavdivs, but that's The Boys for you.

There are of course shocks galore. Homelander kills Madelyn at the end like a bastard, shortly after she gets promoted by the mysterious Mr Edgar whom we will certainly be seeing again as he's played by Giancarlo Esposito. We meet the mysterious Grace. These terrorist supes were deliberately created by Homelander so Vought can make more money. And, of course, we learn the truth at the end- Becca is alive, in suburbia and raising her son with Homelander. Boom.

But it's not just shocks, it's masterful resolution of character arcs. Hence Madelyn's own petard hoisting her. Hence A-train getting back on the Compound V and having a heart attack. Hence Hughie slowly seeing how unhinged Butcher is and returning to his true friends. Hence Annie, knowing the truth about Compound V, confronting her manipulating, gaslighting mother. Hence her deciding to be a real hero after all following an unexpected pep talk, of sorts. from Queen Maeve. Hence the Deep's Britney Spears moment. Hence Annie and Hughie maybe having a future togeher after all.

This is a finale that delivers on the shocks and surprises while still having time for character, humour andsubtext. Its magnificent. 

Season Two to follow within days...

The Boys: The Self-Preservation Society

 "There's always a choice!"

This is an extraordinary- and unusually serious- episode where lots of threads come together and we realise just how damned elegant the plotting is as Homelander reveals the Boys to the surviving Seven- and greatly enjoys doing so, right bastard that he is.

Poor Annie is shot by both sides, as Howard Devoto would have said: suspected initially by Homelander of being in league with Hughie while Butcher remains convinced she's a fully invested member of the supe conspiracy. We also get origin stories, sort of, for both Homelander and Butcher, the damaged indivuiduals at opposite poles. Homelander was raised as a lab rat, while we learn that Becca, after being raped, became pregnant with Homelander's child and died horribly in childbirth.

Parallels abound. After being fugitives the Boys finally accept Fed protection after MM persuades Butcher, and suddenly the Feds have leverage to kep supes and the US military separate. And then... suddenly emerges a terrorist supe in Damascus. Oh dear. Then we have the only comic relief with the Deep in Nowheresville, Ohio... except, on what I suppose could be a kind of poetic justice, a girl hes invited to his room, well, rapes him. In the gills.

There's a lot of pain here. MM's wfe seems to dump him. Annie feels understandably betrayed by the man she trusted. Everthing is very dark. It's all quite masterfully done, and here comes the finale...

The Boys: The Innocents

 "It snapped off..."

They cast Haley Joel Osment as an ex-child star who is now all washed up. That is simply the most meta thing ever. And it's brilliant.

And so is the episode. We see the fakeness of life in the Seven clearly, with manufactured documentary footage showing very clearly how curated are their lives, their histories, even their feeling. Starlight's cry of genuine rage last episode is gradually altered to fit a pre-conceived narrative, with the Deep uttering a carefully crafted apology. Yet the Boys are discovering the truth, piece by piece. All superheroes are manufactured in childhood with the possible exception of Homelander- where did he come from, then?

This is the episode where we learn what's motivating Butcher- his wife was raped eight years ago by Homelander and then vanished, which is horrible, and one of many example of how the untouchable supes ruin lives. Yet Butcher is very blsck and white about the supes. He doesn't trust Mesmer (quite rightly!), and won't believe that Annie is genuine. He's very big on the truth... yet he lies to the team at the end having turned down official status from the Feds. There's a strong theme throughout of truth versus lies. And Homelander is the still, evil centre of all that is wrong.

And poor Hughie is going to have to betray somebody...

The Boys: Good for the Soul

 "You played my butt like jazz. With poise and skill, and willingness to improvise."

Hooray for The Boys having to do the courage to do an episode which so joyously and righteously skewers the evils of fundamentalist Christianity (which, I stress, is a totally different thing from actual Christianity) any hypocrity, cynicism and greed that lies behind the whole thing. It's nice that we get different perspectives, too, from the cheerfully irreverent atheism of Burcher to the honest and simple religiosity of Annie, whose faith may not be dogmatic but is much more real than that of the forces behind fundamentalism.

The beginning is very dark, as Popclaw confesses to A-Train... and he immediately makes her take a fatal heroin overdose. We then learn that he did this at the orders of Homelander, who now controls him even more deeply than before... and views the video of what happened that day. Including Frenchie's face.

Frenchie is in trouble. Yet he seems to be developing a real bond with the girl which is touching to see, and his joy at the end when she seems to heal herself after apparently dying is deeply touching and, indeed, humanising. Hughie, too, impresses MM and, indeed, the viewer hugely as he manages to blackmail Ezekiel successfully, improvising after things go terribly wrong.

Hughie, also, is struggling not only with the conflict between the mission and real feelings for Annie but with the conflict between these feelings and those for the recently departed Robin, whose ghost is ever-present. Annie, meanwhile, struggles with the expectations of the Believe festival, under pressure to pretend beliefs she does not hold, not only for the Seven but her own manipulative, selfish mother.

And then there's Homelander's speech, and the subsequent scene with him and Madelyn, which... let's not go there. It reminds me of Nero and his mother in I, Clavdivs. But quickly moving on... there are other things, too. Rebecca has been missing for eight years yet Butcher won't give up. And Maeve has a bit of a drunken breakdown in front of her ex after last episode's hijack hijinks.

But this is the best ending yet- Compound V is being given to a baby. And Butcher uses the baby as a gun. This is, still, awesome telly.

The Boys: The Female of the Species

 "How do you know so much about the Spice Girls?"

Butcher's monologue about the Spice Girls alone would make this a bloody excellent hour of telly. But there's more. So much more I'm really enjoyng The Boys. Every episode advances the arc in various wool ways with lots of character development, world building, and the kind of dark humour that can only have come from the brain of Garth Ennis.

We begin with an intriguing flashback to Butcher's wife or girlfriend Rebecca who is no longer around- presumably dead? I'm sure we will be drip fed much more of this backstory over the coming episodes. We aso learn more about the Compound V den- A-Train has been running it, and V has been fed to a mysterious and now missing girl who speaks no English and has fearsome powers.

But there's much more. Horrifyingly, Homelander and Queen Maeve (mainly that cynical, self-centred bastard Homelander) arrogantly swan around while trying to stop a hijacking... and end up having to leave all 123 passengers to die as the plane crashes, deliberately not even saving a few people so there can be no witnesses to their incompetence. It's a magnificent sequence that reveals so much about these characters and this world. And worse, Homelander manages to turn it to the supes' advantage.

Interestingly, though, Maeve is clearly having a quiet attack of conscience. This whole sequence, if anything, overshadows the "Boys" and their search for the mysterious girl as they struggle to trust each other. But this is yet another episode of incredibly good telly. And next episode Hughie is expected to blackmail Ezekiel, a kind of closeted, Chrstian fundamentalist Mr Fantastic...

The Boys: Get Some

 "Hughie, you just arse-bombed America's sweetheart..."

An awful lot seems to happen in every episode so far, and this is no exception. We're introduced to Mother's Milk(!), another old mate of Butcher's who seems to have reason, like the rest of the gang, to hate the supes. And Frenchie. He's a cool addition, and at this stage a person Hughie can usefully confide in for the benefit of the viewer.

I love the montage as the corpse of Translucent is cleaned up- to Jane's Addiction's "Stop". And the events following from what Translucent let slip- that A-Train is having an affair with Popclaw, a kind of female Wolverine. And then there's a lot of intrigue about Popclaw and A-Train's relationship involving toe-sucking and resentment... and the discovery (after Hughie uses his own superpower of installing electronics in people's houses) that A-Train is using a steroid called Compound V... and was high on it when he killed Robin. All this stuff makes for great viewing, and not only because Popclaw accidentally makes her landlord's head explode while sitting on his face. It's not only in The Sopranos that cunnilingus can be deadly.

Annie's story is also unfolding nicely as her little problem with unauthorised crime-fighting turns out to work unexpectedly in her favour after the victim comes forward. It's all so fickle, and ironic, as she proceeds to be given a new, highly sexualised constume and has a narrative imposed on the whole thing for her... by, yep, a couple of men. The social commentary may not be subtle, but arguably it shouldn't be. And it's very well done indeed.

We also get more of Homelander being an utter douche, Hughie realising who Annie is and getting her phone number- but being expected to plan a bug on her (ouch). And the cliffhanger- of the Seven finding Translucent's body promises "war".This is well-paced, witty, gloriously irreverent yet meaningful telly that reminds me a hell of a lt of reading Garth Ennis' Preacher.

The Boys: Cherry

 "You're not the hero of this story..."

The second episode is, if anything, even better than the first as both Hughie aStarlight continue to disciver how deeply twisted is this world, with its cynically corporate and utterly immoral superheroes- and the whole thing manages to be great fun while this is happenning. It's all very, very Garth Ennis.

The plots drive forward perfectly while developing the themes. Starlight manages to get back at the pathetic Deep after last episode's #MeToo moment, but proceeds to get in trouble for stopping a rape without permission. And her first official patrol (with the Deep) proves to be a cynically stage-managed affair.

Meanwhile, Madalyn (Played by Jennifer McFly!) cynically and deliciously blackmails a senator in her ongoing plan to take over the US military, and seems to have a disturbing relationship with breast milk fetishist Homelander, who proves to be just as cynical and amoral as them all. This story may have an obvious political point, but doesn't forget to be darkly funny while making it. That awkward scene with A Train and the kid with cancer is magnificent.

Hughie, though, is truly dropped in the deep end. yes, his plot strand this episode consists of wonderful black humour as he, the now even more mysterious Butcher and the intriguing Frenchie spend most of the episode working out how to kill Translucent. There's an excellent dialogue between Hughie and Translucent which, I suspect, points towards the arc we can expect as he slowly morphs into a kind of hero. Or not. There's also a nice scene with him impotently punching a wall, showing very much that he's no superhero. And, of course, he ends by popping his kill cherry.

Translucent's death, though (by ass bomb, which is genius), is hilarious. I'm loving this.

The Boys: The Name of the Game

 "What do I look like?"

"Like you're starring in the porn version of The Matrix."

This is something Mrs Llamastrangler and I have just decided to start watching... and it's rather good. I have no knowledge of the original comic books by Garth Ennis (whom I know well from Preacher- and no, I haven't seen that series yet), but this is certainly very much reminiscent of Watchmen, at least superficially.

This is, essentially, a world where there are superheroes... yet, beyond the surface, those superheroes are amoral,  money grabbing, corporate bastards who behave like the very worst kinds of rock stars in the days before punk, and worse. We have two POV characters through whose eyes we see this world. The first is Hughie, whose girlfriend is gruesomely killed by speedster A-Train in suspicious yet covered-up circumstances and who, while struggling against a history of meek unambition, strives to get justice. We also have Anna, a privincial superhero who achieves her dream of joining the Justice Lea... er, the Seven... and ends up sexually abused in a shockingly #MeToo moment. These people are above the law, and it stinks.

We also have the awesomely sweary New Zealander Butcher, who enlists Hughie in his quest to encover the superheroes' many transgression. This is a superb basic concept, and an admirably successful first episode which succinctly introduces the many characters while balancing humour and tragedy superbly. More please.

Back to the Future, Part III (1990)

“My horse broke down...”

There’s a difference between our favourite films ever and the ones we objectively think are best, and it’s the second list that is likely to feature all those intellectual films that we may regard highly but tend not to use as comfort food. Back to the Future, Part III is my favourite film of all time. And no, it isn’t as “good” as cleverer films with more to say; it’s a blockbuster. It just happens to be the most perfect blockbuster that has ever been made or ever will be.

This is the third and final film in a series that starts as excellent and just gets better with every film, and which is so uber-familiar that we forget how good it is. But we have the timey-wimey plot, with an opening scene that manages to recap both of the previous film, along with a superbly constructed Western pastiche that gives us yet more versions of the McFlys and a villainous Tannen, along with lots of adventure, thrills and even romance. And comedy. Lots of that. And yet again the great Christopher Lloyd is superlatively good. In fact, Doc is the real hero of the trilogy, isn’t he? Marty is just this kid who isn’t that bright and is a bit bland. Well, until you call him a chicken, that is. It’s Doc who invents the time machine, acts the hero and even, this time, gets the girl. Marty is just the Boswell to his Johnson, the Hans Castorp to his Settembrini, the person through whose eyes we see it all and with a heroic arc of his own, but very much a sidekick.

So why is this third film my favourite? I think it’s because we know the drill by now, we can have more fun with this 1885 Hill Valley as we know the later ones so very well by now- we get by far the best version of Strickland, too. It doesn’t have to be extremely timey-wimey- it’s done that- so can explore the fun of the Western setting more. And it has a kickass conclusion, with Marty learning a lesson that helps him to avert his bleak future, and us getting to see Doc’s new family (let’s just not think about his age here) and a time travelling train.

And there are great touches- Doc in 1955 hasn’t heard of Clint Eastwood and is amazed to hear that Japanese parts in 1985 are considered the best. Doc gets utterly bladdered after one shot of whiskey. But this film works because it has heart, it has plot, it has humour and it has characters, all combined perfectly. Sod it, this is one of the greatest films of all time.

Back to the Future: Part II (1989)

" I know you just sent me back to the future, but I'm back. I'm back from the future."

"Great Scott!"

I’ve blogged a shocking 590 films, not including this one. That’s a lot. And I find, the more films I blog, the more I feel have to ration out those handful of absolute favourite films ever for fear of having none of them left to blog. But it’s getting a bit ridiculous that I still haven’t re-watched and blogged this, one of my favourite films of all time, so here it is. One day I may even get around to Part III.

Back to the Future was an excellent film to start with, but this is one of those rare cases where a sequel can outshine it’s predecessor. Re-watching this after a while just confirms how awesome it is- after the first film’s fairly simple time travel plot it’s incredible to see how cleverly this film makes a plot about time paradoxes that is actually rather complicated when you think about it, and makes it palatable for a mainstream blockbuster audience with oodles of charm. Even the reprise at the beginning manages to subtly smooth over the recasting of Jennifer and a rather less famous George.

As ever, Michael J. Fox is superb as Marty but it’s that splendid physical comedy performance as Doc by the great Christopher Lloyd that gives the film it’s charismatic heart. Doc doesn’t half talk a load of cobblers about the consequences of time travel that he couldn’t possibly be sure about but you just don’t care because Doc is so captivating. I laughed out loud this time at the “reveal” of his rejuvenation where he removes his rubber mask... and looks exactly the same. So let us not pry to closely at the fact he already looks pretty old in 1955 (Christopher Lloyd was 46 when they made the first film) and so must be pretty old by now. Let us raise an amused eyebrow as he says, having seen the alternate 1985, that he wants to fix everything, abandon time travel and turn to that other great mystery- women. On that note, let us merely raise an eyebrow as he, Mary and Jennifer are in that flying DeLorean in 2015, he gives Marty a glance, and renders Jennifer unconscious to stop her female prattling. A feminist he is not. This scene had me agog. Oh, and let us not pry too closely into his arbitrary ethics if time travel in which it’s ok to prevent Marty’s son going to prison but not ok to prevent Marty becoming “a loser”.

Never mind any of that. This film is wonderful, especially the farce at the end where the first film is happening in parallel, and they realised the importance of getting James Tolkan back as Mr Strickland. The parallel 1985 is horrible, a brilliant creation. And the 2015 is extremely amusing from the vantage point of now- the Jaws and Cafe 80s jokes are the same now as they were then but I was amused to spot a phone booth of all things. I love the antique shop. And I was highly amused to see that Marty Senior gets fired by... fax. Yes, well. It’s also interesting to see Biff watching that scene from the Clint Eastwood western...

If you don’t love this film, you’re wrong. That is all.