Gen V: Trojan

 "Thanks for the level up, asshole."

Wow. That's how you do a finale. Just ramping up the tension, with Godolkin's murderously Darwinian student auditions also functioning as a way for him to level up his powers so he can finally control Marie, leading to a truly thrilling climax with Marie and her friends vs. Godolkin, showing the power of the collective over the individual... although the way everyone sneaked into there was, yeah...

There's a lot of good character stuff too, though. Emma and Marie bonding over how damaged they both are from past trauma. Marie apologising and healing Cate, showing absolute trust. Jordan forgiving Marie, and dumping her, in one breath. Doug (whose experience with "Cipher" has been truly existential horror) bonding with Polarity over admiration for his late son. Godolkin's joy at being able to eat, drink, have sex and just feel again. Sage's vulnerability when asking him to live with her. Polarity's extraordinary growth as a character.

Godolkin is, of course, a monster. Yet, fascinatingly, his ultimate target is indeed Homelander, whose far right, MAGA-tinged, mentally unstable nonsense he sees as "mediocre"- a reminder that, by and large, those with far right views are not exactly ubermensch.

And the ending, with Starlight, A-Train and the gang joining the resistance just in time for the concluding season of The Boys? Uplifting and magnificent. Here's hoping they all appear, and we haven't seen the last of them.

And yes, The Boys will be replacing Gen V for the blog in this "slot". 

 

Gen V: The Kids Are Not All Right

 "I saw my first vagina here."

"Ok. Thanks for that."

"You're welcome."

Wow. This episode took several unexpected turns. Yet it has us asking so many questions about Cipher. What does he want? Why does Marie's potential mean so much to him? Is Jordan right that he's in so much pain? What's going on with his dad, and all the hardcore carer stuff he does? He's sleeping with Sage, but what are he and his genius lover planning? He certainly doesn't seem to have Homelander's welfare in mind.

It's likely he manipulates everything for Marie, Jordan and Emma, sending Cate to Elmira as scapegoat as a blatant trap for the three of them, who are obviously going to spring them. It feels inevitable that they're all going to end up in that hellhole, and so it comes to pass. But there are so many nuances here. There's the shock of how Cate is treated when she arrived, her wig and fake forearm being removed. There's her genuine surprise and appreciation at what the others did for.

But... what Cipher pulls with Annabeth to manipulate Marie? Wow. And did Marie resurrect her? 

The scenes with Sam and his parents are nicely done too. At first it seems as though he's going to inevitably end up lashing out and killing them- but that gets subverted, and instead he learns a truth about who he is: his instability isn't Compound V, it's just genes.

This episode is... mad. This season feels as though anything can happen. The fact that we're kept guessing about Cipher just makes everything feel charged and exciting. And Hamish Linklater is literally acting his face off. 

The Boys: Dirty Business

 "Are Jewish space lasers brainwashing you into joining ther shuls?"

The above isn't the only appropriated quote from America's far right- we also have that old "legitimate rape" line and talk of a total ban on abortion, heavily dog whistled white supremacism and pushing of an oligarchy where the super rich can do what they like without regulation. It's all perfectly judged satire, highly appropriate in a week where the boy Drumpf said the quiet part out loud.

I've no intention of recounting all the myriad plot threads that you get in late season episodes of The Boys: there's a lot going on here. But the satire is the point. So is the hypocrisy. Hence the fact that these social conservatives have a BDSM dungeon, and we get a scene at once hilarious and horrifying, where Hughie, undercover as a very interesting riff on Spider-Man, is put in the situation of not knowing the safe word for the person he's supposed to be. Literally, ouch. Yet this all turns truly nightmaring.

I love the Batman parallels, too- Tek Knight is blatantly a Batman analogue, with an old money background, a masion and a "Tek Cave". Yet he's plotting to build internment camps... and his Alfred hates his guts.

Then there's the revelation about Butcher... Kessler is as much a hallucination as Becca, the devil and angel on his shoulder, respectively. Is he really going to engineer a virus for supe genocide...?

But even that pales beside the revelation of exactly what Firecracker is willing to do for Homelander. Wow. I mean, this is a blog, but words fail me. Exquisite, outrageous television that perhaps does more than any other art to show the true existential threat of the American Republican party to everything we hold dear.

The Boys: Beware the Jabberwock, My Son

 "It's an absolute wonder to me that you've all managed to live this long..."

Oh my. Only The Boys could possibly do flying killer sheep infected with Compound Vi quite like this episode. As ever, this is exquisite.

So many little touches. I love, once again, the little bits of Vought advertising excess, with its tone deaf attempts at diversity and the blatant not to Kevin Feige's public unveling of the next raft of Marvel films.

There's so much more, though. The ending, when Billy Butcher reveals what his real, devilishly clever plan was. The links to Gen V. Homelander's slowly successful corruption of Ryan. Ashley's cold betrayal of the ex-sub whoi dumped her, framimg him and ensuring his horrible death. Seeing Stan Edgar again, and his commentary on everyone. Firecracker really going all out to destroy Annie.

And yet there's real heart here. Frenchie's terrible guilt, and Catholic guilt at that, over all the muders he's committed... and what it spurs him to do. 

But the real, incredible, heart-wrenching tragedy here is, of course, Hughie and his dad, with a tour de force performance from Simon Pegg. The dynamics between Hughie and both his parents here is utterly incredible. 

And yet, even here, there's glorious amounts of gore. Ah, The Boys. Like nothing else on telly, and I love it so much.

The Boys: Wisdom of the Ages

 "Your life is literally in your hands..."

Wow, This is a dark, dark episode. For a start, much of it consists of Homelander slowly torturing, humiliating and killing those who made his childhood so damaging. It's all good character stuff... but damn, it's dark.

But so is everything else. Sage has her own demons, unable to be free from the burden of her genius. So much so... that she gets her toyboy the Deep to give her a te,porary fontal lobotomy so she can dumb down for a while.Wow. And that's only the second grossest moment in this episode. The worst is... you know.

Then there's the dying Butcher, the little worm that's roaming in his skin, and that... explosion or something that saves his life. Frenchie finally confesses to Colin. Hughie does his ultimaterly fruitless little deal with A-Train... and what's happening with his Dad?

And yet... the most distressing part of the episode is how cruelly Firecracker (who at one point say to Sage "You know, when I first met you, I thought you were kind of uppity. But you're one of the good ones"... just wow) ruins Annie's life on television via a six hour hatchet job. Liberals are always held to higher moral standards than fascists, because we have morals and they don't. The asymmetry explains why they succeed, and why we must sometimes compromise on our ethics in order to crush them.

This is darker, more of a downer, than most episodes. But, as ever, besides the grossness and the cynicism is a real moral outrage.

The Boys: We'll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here

 "Elon Musk has more charm than he does. And she's half-android."

This episode proves that, good as the last two were, it's possible to get even better. Such a brilliant, perfect, nuanced piece of television.

There's all kinds of very contemporary subtext here, with Vought and its cronies pushing superheroes as a far right wedge issue. There's a man with a gun who nearly murders some of Starlight's followers because of a crazy, Pizzagate-style conspiracy theory. There's a nod to the concerning transphobia epidemic that's rife today, Sister Sage's sinister Project 25-style plans include plans to remove all books covering "critical Supe theory" and allowing Supes to outrank the police and military. Brr.

Yet the character stuff is deep. Hughie finally gets to see his errant mother as a real human being, who left her child not becaudse of innate evil but because it was the only way to save herself folloeing a suicide attempt caused by post-partum depression. Wow. Sister Sage and Firecracker join the Seven... and, very cleverly, after we've come to realise what a nasty, MAGA piece of work Firecracker is, the rug gets pulled out from under us: she genuinely comes from nothing, and had her life chances ruined by thirteen year old little rick girl Annie... and "People don't change". Wow.

Meanwhile, Kimiko realises she has to face her past and overcome her deomons, while Frenchie refuses to share about him, retreating into getting high, having to face not only that he's killed Colin's family but has murdered so many. It's interesting to see where they're going with this. M.M. struggles with leadership, the new Black Noir struggles with his acting, and the Deep has a love triangle going on with Sage and, er, an octopus.

But the real meat of the episode is the tug of war between an increasingly scary Homelander and the dying Butcher for Ryan. Butcher and Ryan have a truly affecting scene, Ryan clearly seeing Butcher asa flawed, damaged but ultimately good man. Homelander, meanwhile, is casually leaving a trail of human bodies behind him... but what't that multiple personality moment at the end? He has to go "back to the start?"

As ever with The Boys, I've no idea where this is going. But I bleeding well love it.

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.

The Boys: The Department of Dirty Tricks

 "You know, there were no relations with an octopus..."

Ouch. Three new episodes of The Boys dropped last Friday, showing zero respect for my schedule. Bear with me; I'mll get them watched and up to date as soon as I can, even if it means watching episodes on some consecutive days.

It's been a while, hasn't it? I've missed The Boys. This season opener may not have an... explosive moment like the last one, but damn, it's good. So good, in fact, that it even deserves to be bookended by a certain suddenly outdated stone cold classic by the Sex Pistols. But who are the flowers in the dustbin, and who the poison in the human machine, if I may further torture some already tortured metaphors?

So... Homelander, a scarily powerful and unhinged figure idolised by fanatical far right supporters, is undergoing a criminal trial. Meanwhile, a new president has been elected... and is trying to get the CIA, employing the Boys, to kill his vice-preseident, one Victoria Neumann, before January 6th and the inauguration, thereby altering the result of the election. Isn't it great to have such pure superhero escapism, which in no way reflects current events?

Most of the gang see Vicky (and her very, very scary daughter with some truly icky powers) as the main threat... but the slowly dying Billy Butcher is highly focused on Homelander. And they're sort of both right, althgough thankfully not yet in conflict; it seems that Butcher is about to betray Hughie and ally with Neumann against Homelander... but he doesn't.

Hughie's dad has a stroke. Homelander is having a mid-life crisis and is tired of being surrounded by sycophants (ha!)... yet he bonds with Sister Sage, whose superpower is genius... and follows her deliciously evil, utterly amoral plan.Right down to having his biggest fans beaten to death by three of said sycophants for a false flag op. Ouch.

And it seems Black Noir is not quite dead after all?)

The arc with Ryan isfascinating... will he choose Billy or Homelander? Frenchie has an old flame, Colin. Already, there's so much going on. As ever, this is soooo good.

Poltergeist (2015)

"Well, it's not like it was an ancient tribal burial ground.."

Meh. It's not that this film is badly made- it looks slick, is stylish and is well acted in a naturalistic style that Sam Rockwell excels at in particular. It just doesn't work as a horror film. At all.

As I've said many times before, I dislike sequels. And, as my wife pointed out during our viewing of this film, it's true that the slick look of so many modern horror films destroys all atmosphere and suspense in favour of a kind of music video arty cleverness; even the clown isn't scary.

The film goes through the plot motions of the original films but, while nothing is bad, and there's a genuinely brilliant scene involving a drill, well, Zelda Rubinstein has been replaced by Jared Harris as a reality TV ghost hunter and the directorial style, while slick, lacks the emotional manipulative was of Spoelberg which, while often annoying, makes the proper version of Poltergeist work.

This is a pointless remake. A shame; if they'd just made an original film about poltergeists they'd have saved themselves the awkward comparison.