Gen V: Jumanji

 "I fart the star spangled banner!"

I haven't seen the titular film, so no doubt there are all sorts of pop culture references I'm not getting here. Nevertheless... 

The B plot here is so, so sweet. Sex is often played for gross in Gen V and The Boys, but this episode has one of the loveliest sex scenes I've ever seen, as Emma and Sam make love. It's his first time, but Emma is so very understanding and makes it clear that there's no pressure. Bless her.

The rest of the episode, though.... oooh, it's dark. Also structurally clever, of course. How can we get the rest of the gang to give Cate the time of day ever again? By getting trapped in her traumatised psyche and get to understand, if not condone, what she did. Cate has a lot of work to do to even begin to earn back their trust... but it's a start.

We know what Cate did to her brother, but not how her mother proceeded to hide her away, unloved, for nine years, easy prey for Shetty and her bottle of pills. And there are parallels with Jordan who, we now see, made some dodgy decisions in going along with brink, and with Andre, who started sleeping with Cate while Luke was still alive. And then there's the parallels with Marie: her sister's rewaction is utterly heartbreaking.

But Shetty, the doctor, and that supe-killing virus... ouch. We've had two intense and character-based episodes, two superb bits of telly, but I get the feeling a lot is going to happen in these last two episodes.

The Boys: The Instant White-Hot Wild

 "My cake hole will remain open!"

This is such a The Boys season finale. There's lots of fighting. There's lots of characters, and lots of character development. So much happens. Deep breath.

Homelander wins, the bastard. He has his son, and ends up as pretty much openly fascist. Billy Burcher loses, with a yrest to live after using Temp V, and having turned against Soldier Boy to save the son who isn't even his son by blood but by love- the opposite of Soldier Boy and Homelander, both products of a cycle of abuse, that seems to be spreading to Ryan. The look on his face at the Trump-Nazi rally is chilling.

Incidentally, any Americans reading this who support Trump, or the Republican party, you're not conservatives, you're Nazis, ok? Kindly *** yourselves. Thank you.

Maevew, the only supe (Annie aside, and yes; they're both women) not to be corrupted by her powers, gets a heroic death and gets to live, sans powers if sadly also sans eye, but her ex is back with her. I think, overall, she has her well-deserved happiness.

The Deep is... ever more tragic and pathetic. MM is a decent man worthy of respect, who loves his daughter and shows the dad he can be, a shining ecxample to all of us who love our little girls so much it hurts. Kimiko and Frenchie are the cutest couple ever. And Annie gets a supremely satisfying ending, loved and worshipped by Hughie and discarding her costume to join the Boys.

And yeah, Black Noir. His death. As Oscar Wilde said of Little Nell, you'd need a heart of stone not to laugh.

The Boys: Last Time to Look upon This World of Lies

 "With great power comes the certainty that you'll turn into a right ****!"

Wow. The Boys does it again. We have the Legend, a coke-snorting retired celebrity monger who may actually be based on Stan Lee. We have Ashley as CEO of Vought, but Homelander, like Trump, finds himself in power (the superpowers are, of course, a metaphor of that), but far too thick to exercise it effectively.

We have the loving but awkward relationship between Annie and Hughie. He, being male, feels he should protect her, hence his increasing addiction to Temp V. Yet he's wrong. She's a supe.She needs not his protection, but his love. And so the gender roles are reversed. Can Hughie be a real man and be the loving man the superhero Starlight needs? The signs are not good.

Homelander, who has always been the villain, takes shape even more as the big bad. His aggressive assault on Maeve- what happens to her? Is she dead?- is a shocking as Maeve herself who, in giving an increasingly unhinged Billy Butcher some more Temp V, and being told that supes like her shoild be destroyed... kisses him. Well then.

And Soldier Boy is loose, in the USA. His relationship with OnlyFans star Crimson Countess has disturbing parallels with that of Maeve and Homelander. Crimson Countess ends up dead. Does Maeve?

This is superb telly, outrageous and nuanced. A-Train's subplot, in which he gets to realise, at last, the true nature of a "supe lives matter" racist supe wanker wjho deserves a good kicking, is perhaps the most interesting. This is bloody brilliant.