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Historical Roasts really is a show that makes you wonder "How many people approved this?", as you watch it more questions arise such as "Is this racist or just extremely bad? Oh my god I think it's both".
Jeff Ross is fine as a roaster outside of this show, in fact a number of these people are good at what they do outside of this show. However this puts just about everyone in the absolute worst situation with awful writing, offensive for the sake of being offensive jabs, and a meddling premise.
I give it a 3 because at some point it's like watching an ongoing bus wreck full of clowns, you really can't take your eyes off it even if you wanted to. With Hitler roasting Anne Frank the awful lazy jokes write themselves to the point where it's fun to come up with better writing material than the show as you watch. Sure, it could be a 1, but while watching said bus wreck of clowns you almost giggle at the tragedy. Ultimately the show made me laugh, but not from what it set out to do.
I rarely cry while watching movies or shows, but the end really got me... damn ;(
A good ending. Probably not the best season finale ever.
The best scene was Garcia's stare!
[7.8/10] There’s been a subtle theme of people breaking good on The Boys this season. It’s always been a dark show about people messing up and playing in the dirt in the hopes of keeping others clean. And yet, there’s been throughlines -- about A-Train turning to the good, about MM coming into his own as a leader, in a weird way even about Homelander becoming a better father -- that brought more and more folks into the light.
You can see that in “Assassination Run”, the finale of season 4. Time again, people choose something better, more hopeful, with a more aspirational bent than The Boys’ usual cynicism.
After a season’s worth of struggling with her past and her identity, Annie January starts to reconcile with herself. It’s admittedly strange, albeit on brand for this show, that what pushes her to that point is a sociopathic doppelganger who thinks the worst of her after being inside of her head. Not for nothing, it’s Erin Moriarty’s best performance of the season, as she revels in getting to play the heel for once. And the show’s production team does extraordinary work in putting Starlight and her double on screen together in close quarters.
And yet, what gets Annie out of her funk is a little ambiguous, but seeing a vision of her worst self presents to her, giving her the opportunity to reject it. Beating up someone who looks exactly like you, Captain Kirk-style, can apparently give you some moral clarity. More importantly, though, Annie’s confident enough to know what she wants to fight for, and who she wants to fight for it with. That's enough for her to have a breakthrough and help save the day when it’s needed most.
Kimiko and Frenchie have a bit of a breakthrough too. After participating in all of this and feeling the good vibes through difficult circumstances, they resolve to try to forgive themselves a little bit each day. The idea that there is bravery in that, a chance to grow and move forward, is heartening, especially as they find solace in the comfort they provide to one another.
I’ll admit, I’ve never been a Frenchie/Kimiko shipper. The relationship always felt a little too brother/sister to me, and beyond that, a little troubling given the state that Frenchie found and nurtured Kimiko in. But I can't deny that they’re sweet together, and with a first kiss on tippy toes, sweetness isn’t bad amid all the darkness.
Hughie aims to cut through that darkness. If there’s something in The Boys that is aspirational, that speaks to human resilience and decency, it’s his pitch to his friends and allies. The cynical view is that too often, superhero flicks tell us implicitly that violence is the solution, and that the answer to terrible danger and vicious threats is to punch them in the mouth, preferably with a superpowered fist.
Hughie proposes something radical, albeit ironically in line with the philosophy of Professor X. He suggests that forgiveness is courageous, something he learned from his dad and extended to his mom. He’s seen the way his friends’ lives have become fucked up from them becoming monsters to fight monsters. He doesn’t want that anymore, for him or them.
So when Victoria Neuman wants out, when she realizes this is a constant cycle of mutually assured destruction that only ratchets up to become worse and worse, when she sends out an olive branch to The Boys, Hughie urges them to take it. They trust but verify, in MM’s words. But they are open to truth and reconciliation, to charting a different course than the brutal and bloodstained one that the cold war between Supes and those afraid of subjugation at their hands have been pursuing since The Boys began. So when Neuman walks in, daughter in tow, ready to give peace a chance, even after all they’ve been through, our heroes, super and otherwise, are ready to accept her and find another way.
And Billy Butcher comes to tear it, and her, completely apart.
When I wrote about the evil grin Billy Butcher let loose in “Beware the Jabberwock, My Son”, I compared it to the same one Tony Soprano gives in a late season episode of The Sopranos. Without giving anything away, if there’s a consistent theme in that show, it’s about people having opportunity after opportunity to make a turn for the better, to shed the damage and dirt they’re all mired in, and for time and time again, for generational inertia or institutional entropy or just plain selfishness to drag them back in the muck.
That's what I think of when I think of Billy Butcher here. God help him, for all that he’s been going through, he’s tried to keep a hold of his better self. He’s held onto the memory of Becca as the manifestation of his better angels. He’s set aside decimating all Supes because it would hurt one that he loves. He’s tried to protect his surrogate little brother, asking Hughie to carry on his wishes, even if he can't be there. He even offers an apology, albeit a vicarious one, to The Boys that he’s asked so much of. For as blackened as Billy Butcher’s soul has become, he’s held onto enough of the light to stay afloat.
And he’s done it for Ryan. God help him, he loves the kid. When Grace wants to push him or force him or cajole him, Billy gets her to ease off. He wants to convince the young lad, show him where he’s safe, rather than trap him in the same kind of cage where Homelander was made into a monster. This is a caring, empathetic side of Billy, the side that we’ve only seen come out rarely. And when he thinks he’s on his deathbed, when the easiest thing to do is try to tell a kid what’s what, he responds with compassion and kindness.
And it isn’t enough.
It’s not Billy’s fault. Everyone’s understandable here. Grace loves Ryan no less but she knows the stakes and takes a direct approach that just ends up scaring the poor kid. Ryan doesn’t know his own strength and rightfully fears being made into a lab rat or a weapon and doesn’t want a parent who fears him. And Billy knows the stakes too, but tries everything to reach the kid as a father, not a captor, and as a loved one.
And it still fails. Grace still dies for it, at Ryan’s hands. After everything, Ryan still goes back to Homelander.
That's it. The glass is shattered. The thing that held Billy Butcher back from the darkness is gone. He tried. He tried with everything in him when the easiest thing in the world was to give in. And it still wasn’t enough. As with Tony, there is tragedy in that, in someone succumbing to their worst impulses, and losing the good parts of them in the process. Especially when death and destruction follows in their wake.
All the good work comes to naught. The Supres get what they want. Homelander is unhinged and losing control. He outs Vicky. He scares off Ryan and seems to be threatening him. His proceeding based on impulse rather than plans results in him having to come up with a quickfire hitlist to keep people in line. And despite all his screw-ups, he comes out on top.
It’s the part I have the most mixed feelings about. There’s something to the idea that this was a part of Sage’s plan, albeit with a few bumps in the road. Her engineering the situation so that even Homelander’s predictable vanity leads things to where she wants them is a touch too perfect. But there’s something to be said for the idea of Homelander trying to lead, resulting in nothing but disasters only for the smart people in the room to ultimately prop him up and put him in power anyway.
That said, the political commentary is even more on the nose than usual. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it’s good to call a spade a spade, and especially in an election year, pointing out the oppressive tendencies that are the echoes of real life events makes some sense. On the other, at some point it starts to feel like set dressing and bluntness in lieu of actual incisive social commentary.
Still, there’s something to be said about the total loss. Homelander gets what he wants, and immediately uses the power to sic his superpowered thugs on the “undesirables” just like he always hoped. The Deep doesn’t care about actual respect or intelligence, just strong-arming people into offering it out of fear. The duly elected representatives are gone, and in their place is a puppet of malign forces. The good guys either get locked up or barely escape. For all the good, for all the hope, the forces of evil win out here.
Maybe you need evil to fight evil. For all the restraint and decency Hughie, Annie, M.M., Frenchie, Kimiko, Vicky, and more have shown, it leads them to being captured, coopted, killed, or sent on the run. The closing notes The Boys leaves us with in its fourth season (aside from a Soldier Boy tease) is one where the high-minded and hopeful crash into a wall of indifferent cruelty, exemplified by the man who used to be their leader.
Maybe Billy Butcher did die in that hospital bed, or at least the last decent part of him did. He tried to hold onto that part, for Becca, and for Ryan. But Becca is dead. Ryan is a killer who’d rather go back to his father. And little brother stand-in Hughie is now just standing in the way.
In his place is a tentacle monster with no pretense or remorse, ready to rip Supes in two without so much as a please or thank you. The closing image of “Assassination Run” is Butcher unleashed, gazing in the rearview mirror at his dark avatar, with no more compunction about trying to be good. After so much nudging our heroes toward the light, The Boys ends with the battle lost, the villains in power, and the sandpaper soul of Billy Butcher turned to brutality and maybe even genocide once again.
In a season batch of episodes that played at aspirations toward kindness, forgiveness, and growth, only to let them all crumple under the weight of cruelty and loss once more, this may be The Boys darkest ending and bleakest ending season yet.
[7.6/10] I didn’t think you could capably pull off the Tyler Durden twist anymore. Audiences are too savvy, too primed for it. But shock of shocks, if you show a character already talking to an imaginary friend, the reveal that their erstwhile flesh and blood ally is, in fact, another hallucination, can still pull the rug out from under you. So kudos to The Boys for managing to successfully pull off a twist I thought was dead in the water!
It’s interesting from a character perspective as well. I thought that “Dirty Business” was mostly going for the metaphorical angel and devil on Billy Butcher’s shoulders. But the fact that Becca and Joe represent both sides of his psyche, the one that wants him to do good and the one that wants him to give into his evil impulses, has weight. Jeffrey Dean Morgan can pull off a taunting monologue like no other. And while we don’t know very much about what Joe Kessler means to Billy exactly, there is resonance for longtime fans of the genre to hear the actor who played comic both the Comedian and Negan, infamous amoral assholes off the comic book pages, tell BIlly that this is what he wants.
What’s funny is that I quickly got tired of the battle for Rick Grimes’ soul on The Walking Dead, but I still care about Billy’s. The reveal about the anti-Supe virus elevates his dilemma from last season into something even bigger. Now it’s not just choosing to save Ryan or choosing to save Homelander. It’s about choosing to save Ryan or to save humanity; and it’s about choosing to find another way or choosing to commit genocide. I’m a firm believer that good drama rests on characters making meaningful choices, and boy, Butcher has a humdinger.
I’m also surprisingly sympathetic to Firecracker, of all people here. Hillbilly Elegy laundered some hateful shit into the public discourse, but one of the few echoes of it that haven't soured is the idea that people from outside well-heeled spaces who manage to gain admittance to them often still find themselves on the outside looking in because they don’t know the unwritten rules of the elitist rungs of society. That rings true with Firecracker’s experience.,
Much like Homelander, she is still the worst. But the way she’s awkward about trying funky hors d'oeuvres, the way she puffs herself up to join Homelander and Sage, the way she composes herself in the bathroom after the sting of rejection is too much to bear -- it’s all recognizably human.
Firecracker’s beliefs are bad. Her values are bad. Her tactics are bad. But when you see what she’s putting herself through to gain admittance to the club and the approval of the people who lifted her to this plane -- even something as creepy as breastfeeding Homelander -- you get her, and you feel sorry for her. That's impressive in its own terms.
Hers is a sad story, and most stories on The Boys turn out sad. But one of the few uplifting bits here comes from A-Train. In one scene earlier in the episode, we hear The Deep talk to Black Noir II about the rush of violence, the way it forces respect from people who might otherwise look down on you. We get hints of the same idea in Billy’s story, that people like him and (maybe?) the real Joe Kessler get off on the bloodlust and the screams. And however problematic the depiction, that's certainly the message of the rest of The Boys’ encounter with Tek Knight and his sadomasochism.
But A-Train is the counterpoint to that. My favorite scene in the whole episode is the one that comes after Kimiko has convinced A-Train to risk discovery in order to take MM to the hospital, if only for his daughter’s sake. And as he does, in a beautiful, wordless scene, a little boy looks up at the genuine hero, and he smiles. There is the admiration, the appreciation, the kind of respect and catharsis that comes from doing the hard but merciful thing rather than the easy and bloody thing. The Boys is a dark show, and given its subject matter, that is as it should be. But it’s nice to get these little moments of optimism, the suggestion that people can change for the better, now and then too.
Speaking of which, I don’t know what to think about the business with Tek Knight. Hughie was essentially sexually assaulted and the show plays it for laughs. The joke is more on Tek Knight and Ashley than it is on Hughie, which is something, I guess. And I won’t deny being amused before things really take a turn, when Hughie is just pretending to be interested to keep his cover and doing more ridiculous things rather than being assaulted, and has a kind of dry resignation about it all.
But it does take a turn at some point, and while I can tolerate nearly all the gross shit The Boys wants to throw at me (see: MM giving the knockoff Spider-Man a drug suppository and getting web-spray in the face, or Firecracker squirting Homelander with breast milk), playing someone getting groped and licked and humiliated against their will for yuks sits uneasily with me.
That said, I do find the show’s searing take on the Batman archetype -- as a private prison-owning, slave catcher-descendent masochist -- to be a quality satirical deconstruction of The Bat. I do get a certain amount of catharsis in the Alfred equivalent being the one to take out the guy when he finds out about the internment camps. And the way they torture a guy who otherwise loves torture by sending his money to social causes he disagrees with is a good chuckle.
There’s some other good stuff of note here. This is a great episode for Sage, with a backstory for why a genius level superhuman wants to eradicate humanity rather than save it that speaks to the “personal problems blown up to larger than life issues” style The Boys does well. Plus, Susan Heyward does an awesome job slipping between the Machiavellian mastermind and the brain-addled dolt before and after her headshot.
The other bad guys get interesting scenes too. I like Homelander feeling a larger version of what Firecracker feels, standing in a room of power brokers and seeing that the kind of shit he can use to rile up the idiots who kowtow to him doesn’t work on their type. And it’s neat to see Victoria Neuman step into the spotlight and take charge. As with Firecracker, it’s weird to find it cheer-worthy for a villainous veep to stage a coup, but Neuman finding her strength and grit at the right time is good stuff.
Kimiko standing vigil for Frenchie is nice. The crew helping Hughie scatter his father’s ashes is sweet. Starlight’s apology to Firecracker seems genuine, and her comfort for Hughie is endearing. And of note, this is a strange comparison, but something about the dialogue here felt positively West Wing-esque, which is not something the show usually goes for.
I’m sure there’s other stuff I’m missing in another one of these overstuffed episodes. But on the whole, there’s one glaring, uncomfortable misstep at the center of this one, and a whole bunch of bold and interesting stuff, including managing to nail a twist I thought couldn’t be done anymore. I don’t know quite how to resolve all of that.
[7.0/10] This is another episode of The Boys where it feels like there’s ten million things going on. Let’s focus on the good stuff.
The dynamic between Homelander and Ryan continues to be one of my favorite parts of the season so far. Ryan is trying his best to do what’s expected of him, but doesn’t fit into his dad’s role or the life HOmeladner wants for him. Homerlander is ostensibly trying to build something for his son, but subconsciously worries about aging and being replaced. Given the trajectory of the show, and Homelander’s own weird quasi-oedipal fixations, you can see him turning on his son at some point out of a concern that Ryan will supplant him. Hence Homelander showing up to Ryan’s first save despite Sage telling him not to.
And poor Ryan! You feel for this kid, just going align with what everyone wants of him ,but feeling insecure and out of control. His tears over accidentally murdering the stuntman make you feel for this kid who’s being placed in a situation he doesn’t understand and isn’t suited for. And the writing and performance of Homelander continues to be outstanding, with him not even processing that Ryan’s upset about the death of someone Homelander considers a “toy”, but rather assuming he’s upset at Homelander stepping into his limelight.
I continue to like the business with Sage. She clearly has a bigger agenda at play, and knows exactly how to play people to achieve it. The Boys hasn’t always been perfect at paying these kind of grand schemes off, but for now, I’m happy to be along for the ride. Her rightly pointing out that Ryan needs to stand alone, turning Deep against Ashley, and stoking the conspiracy nuts all make you wonder what she’s getting at. Sometimes it’s more exciting to see the plates spin than it is satisfying to see the writers finally stack the dishes, but I still like the fact that she seems to have a bigger plan in play.
That said, I’m nonplussed by most of what happens at the ersatz QAnon festival. The cornpone Jubilee knockoff, Firecracker, and the perverted Multiple Man knockoff, Splinter, don’t do a lot for me. Taking aim at the tinfoil hat crowd is certainly topical, which is a good mode for The Boys, but there’s nothing particularly incisive about the parody or deep about the show’s observations on why people turn to that kind of conspiratorial nonsense.
I’m not made of stone. There’s fun to be had in the heroes and villains crashing a bat mitzvah and going to town with mid-fight photo booths, heavy metal horahs, and menorah-based stabbing. But the show has done this sort of thing so many times by season 4 that it loses much of the novelty. I will say, as a fan of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, it’s amusing the see The Boys’ network stablemate get such an amusing shoutout here.
The material with the actual Boys leaves me mostly nonplussed. I’ll admit, I have some investment in Butcher trying to be honest for once, getting kicked out of the group, and still coming around to save his friends. The show gets at something real about the sad dynamic between him and MM, with the sense of Billy genuinely having made some changes but it being too late given all the shit that he’s put Marvin through. But it’s a little quick and given how much else is happening here, doesn’t get enough time to breathe.
It feels like Frenchie and Kimiko have already kind of reached the end of their arcs and now the show is grasping at straws for what to do with them. Kimiko struggling with her past and maybe going on a revenge spree plays like a rehash of what the show already did with her brother. And Frenchie’s new boyfriend turning out to be the child of a family he killed is a silly, soap opera-esque contrivance.
Speaking of which, I have real mixed feelings about the Hughie’s mom storyline. Jack Quaid does great work as a grown child struggling with the return of a parent who abandoned him. Hughie’s mom already has a certain presence to her, between the essential oils nonsense and the sort of passive aggressive, vaguely condescending school teacher tone she takes with Hughie. I’m compelled by their scenes together.
But the whole, “Your father’s been secretly talking to me for a couple of years and has granted me power of attorney” is another dumb soap opera-esque twist. I guess the show needs a reason why Hughie wouldn’t just kick her out, but it’s still awfully convenient. Maybe it’s all part of some Vaught plan to get to Hughie or something, but that would be even sillier.
I also don’t really care about Annie’s struggle with whether or not to be Starlight. As with Frenchie and Kimiko, it seems like we’ve kind of done her arc multiple times now, and the show’s running out of ideas for the character.
That said, strangely enough, one of the characters I’m most compelled by here is A-Train. The notion of his brother actually getting through to him, and him warning to do something genuinely heroic, is low-key inspiring. Him recognizing Hughie’s kindness in front of his family, and providing exonerating evidence for the men falsely accused of beating up Sage’s plants is one of the few genuinely good things we’ve seen him do. Nothing gold can stay in The Boys, but I’m intrigued by his change of heart.
Oh yeah, and seeing Will Ferrell play a Blind Side-esque mentor figure is worth a solid laugh, and so is the new Black Noir continually not really understanding his character.
Overall, I wish these episodes had more focus and momentum, and we’ve reached the point in the show where many of the character journeys seem to have reached their natural ends, only to continue on regardless. But there’s still some quality story threads to follow, particularly those on the supe side of the equation right now.
[7.5/10] “The Department of Dirty Tricks” sets up a lot of threads for the new season. Some of them are good. Some of them are fine. Some of them are questionable. Let’s take them one at a time.
I like the angle on Homelander -- that he is aging, worrying about what kind of world he’s leaving behind, having a bit of an existential crisis now that he’s gotten what he wanted and still isn’t fulfilled, and worse yet, has no one around him he respects.
I don’t know. Somewhere along the way, Homelander became my favorite character in The Boys: not because he’s good or eevn sympathetic, but because he’s broken and deceptively complex in his emotions in ways even he doesn't fully comprehend.
I’ve often said that Homelander is roughly the result of “What if Eleven from Stranger Things ended up in a bad family rather than a good one?” The answer is clearly that you would get a monster, but one who is a human as he is stupid and terrifying. That's not the kind of character you see much of on television, and Antony Starr’s performance continues to bring this megalomaniacal manchild to life in brilliant ways.
Of course, The Boys also uses him to offer some social and political commentary. It’s not difficult, because the world is increasingly as extreme and ridiculous as the events in this show (albeit sans the superpowers). Still, Homelander’s trial reflects both Donald Trump and Kyle Rittenhouse in interesting ways, particularly in the media spin around Homelander eye-blasting a guy last season. And not for nothing, it pushes Homelander even further into a supe-remecist direction.
I was painfully naive when Homelander talked about feeling nothing despite having achieved his dreams by ruthlessly climbing to the top of the corporate ladder and being cheered by the people for doing what he’s always wanted to do. Maybe this was going to be a reluctant Homelander, one who, upon finding himself surrounded by sycophants and easy adoration might take the advice of Lisa Simpsons and realize that getting what you want all the time will ultimately leave you unfulfilled and joyless. Instead, he’s leaning toward going full genocidal and fascist, deciding that more [wince] “cleansing” needs to take place in order for him to be happy. Well, we know where he comes from, I suppose.
It does give power to the invitation from a character played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan(!!!), who invites Butcher to join his shadowy organization that aims to take down Homelander as the big prize, rather than following the CIA’s lead and chasing down new VP Neuman. Joe Kessler tells Butcher they need to act before Homelander and his ilk start rounding humans up into camps and, while that's the kind of talk that might cast you as a villain in the world of X-Men ‘97, given what we hear from Homelander in this episode, it’s not a cockamamie thought.
The next most interesting part of this one is Sage, the smartest person in the world, and Homelander’s new advisor. For one thing, Susan Heyword gives a hell of a performance. There’s a relaxed confidence in her presence that makes her seem like a formidable foil for Homelander. The way she instantly diagnoses Homelander’s conditions, hang-ups, insecurities, and anxieties makes her a sharp-witted Sherlock Holmes type, with the stones to stand-up to evil Superman at a time when he’ll not only tolerate that, but wants it.
But the idea, explored in The Venture Bros. of all things, of a Mr. Fantastic-turned-asshole type is intriguing, especially as she couches destruction and extermination in the realm of statistics and inevitabilities, makes her independent of Homelander. The idea of her stoking divisions, creating martyrs, creating unrest and then positioning her benefactor (or maybe, secretly, her) as a savior is cynical but salient in the modern era. Given the real life conspiracy nuts who abound, I’m a little more sanguine about “It’s all a deliberate scheme from those in power!” storylines these days. Despite my squeamishness, the idea of Sage fomenting unrest and roiling resentments to accelerate destruction works on its own terms, and is downright chilling in places.
We get hints of more interesting stuff on the villain side. Ashley’s still a unique presence as Homelander’s corporate lackey. We get hints at A-Train being uncomfortable both with his job under Homelander’s thumb and at the prospect of having to share the spotlight with another Black person. And by god, The Deep commiserating with a Tilda Swinton-voiced octopus is hilarious and incredible.
Oddly enough, the parts of the premiere that left me colder are on the good guy side of the equation.
The most compelling part of that milieu is Butcher. The idea that -- whether it’s a brain disease or just his conscience, he’s hearing the voice of Becca as the angel on his shoulder -- is an intriguing one. I like the idea that, god help him, he genuinely wants to protect Ryan and make good with the lad. There’s potent material here in the tug-of-war between Homelander and Butcher as father figures, each seeing something important in Ryan, each fucked up in their own way, and the poor kid doing his best to get by without inheriting all their damage.
It’s as sentimental as we’ve seen Butcher, and you feel like he means it. Whether it’s a promise to Becca or his own internalized feelings for the kid, last season he had the chance to kill HOmelander, and he gave it up to protect Ryan. That says something, and his willingness to look after the kid are one of the most admirable qualities we’ve ever seen in the guy.
But he’s not willing to throw Hughie under the bus to do it. “The Department of Dirty Tricks” plays with your emotions a bit. It would be in the spirit of The Boys’ cynical bent to have Hughie being the one part of the good guy crew who wants to keep Butcher around, only to be screwed over when Billy sells him out to Nueman. Instead, Butcher stays firm, albeit potentially at the cost of his mental stability. Head-Becca is right that these schemes tend to blow up in his face. Butcher trying a different, even slightly more straight and narrow path, could be interesting.
The rest of the storylines don’t do much for me. There’s something real and well-observed about Hughie ducking his father’s phone call and then feeling miserably guilty when his dad has a stroke. But I don’t know. His dad has barely been a character since season 1, and it’s been so long, that the whole thing feels more abstract that as emotionally poignant as the show seems to be going for. The prospect of his mom finally turning up grabs your attention, but that's more of a tease here than anything substantive.
Otherwise, the rest of it is fine. I’m relieved that Kimiko essentially states for the audience that her and Frenchie will never happen, but hotshotting Frnechie immediately to another relationship feels too sudden. Likewise, I’m interested in the idea of M.M. having to reconcile with his daughter after struggles with losing her would-be stepdad, but everything there happens pretty quickly and is laden with yawn-worthy “that nebbish must have a large penis” humor. At least it ties into the main story. And Starlight wanting to establish her identity apart from being Starlight is an interesting throughline, but we only get the bare bones here.
All-in-all, this is a solid, albeit not overwhelming start to the new season. As with even the best seasons of The Boys, this is kind of a hodge-podge, with a lot of interesting ideas floating around, but a lot of them popping out of nowhere and feeling awkwardly quilted together. There’s ways to make that work, some of which the series has found in the past. But at this stage, with so many plates spinning after three years’ worth of stories, I’m more apt to simply enjoy the parts I like and wait out the ones I’m unsure of, with less confidence that it will all coalesce into a greater whole.
That was... unexpectedly powerful. I really love the fact they mixed things up a little this week.
Yeah not gonna lie they lost me with this arc
The theme of this episode seemed to be having someone there for you...or not. The illusion that you have someone there for support or you don't.
The easiest of these is Christopher. He's patting J.T. on the back with one hand, and punching him with the other. (J.T., by the way, is played by Tim Daly, who folks my age will know best as Superman from the D.C. Animated Universe.) The irony seems lost on Chris, who appears legitimately surprised that J.T. didn't call him for support when he felt tempted to return to drugs in the midst of being shaken down by Chris. Chris doesn't understand being there for someone wholly, and separates his professional life and his personal life in a fit of cognitive dissonance that J.T. is right to be baffled by. To be frank, while I appreciated the theme of this particular story, I thought it actually dragged the episode down. It was a little too blunt, too blatant in what it was going for to work as well as it needed to, and in many ways it felt like the Davey storyline being rehashed only with Chris instead of Tony.
The other instance, which is also fairly on-the-nose, is Junior. I have to admit, I was kind of annoyed by this story at first. It seemed like comic relief in an episode where it didn't fit with Junior coming up with more and more outlandish excuses to attend funerals so that he can skip out on his house arrest. It seemed pretty ghoulish after a while. But then, after the death of his cousin's husband, a mere fifteen days after his cousin, he breaks down at the funeral, and it's clear how upset he is that he has no one. As he points out, he has no children, no spouse, and hardly any friends for that matter. He talks about carrying a torch for his brother's mistress but never being able to close the deal. He's a man who feels like there's no one really there for him, and it devastates him. Surprisingly moving.
And lastly, the main story, which is what bring this episode's rating up so high for me, is the story of Tony and his father's mistress. It's clearly that Tony sees, or wants to see, or hates to see, a lot of his father in himself. His ill feelings for his mother are not nearly so repressed anymore, and so upon meeting this mistress, who seems like a nice woman, his first thought is gladness, that it was his mother's fault for pushing him into the arms of this woman.
And then, he starts to unpack some of the stories he's heard. The way this woman who Tony imagines was really there for his father in a way his mother wasn't, didn't even stop smoking for him. And he starts to think about the ways his father wasn't there for his mother. And though he never comes out and says it, he starts to think about the ways he hasn't been there for Carmela. There's a lot of powerful stuff going on under the hood of Tony's story in this episode - his resentment at realizing his father gave his dog away to another family, and his being able to step outside of his own selfishness for once and imagine what his philandering does to his own family. So much said without writing it on the screen, and in a season that's reflected marginal but meaningful growth from Tony, it's another bit of his learning just a little bit more.
Hell of an episode, from Tony's attempt to show restraint and, as Melfi points out, some legitimate growth, and how everything believably blows up in his face. So many great scenes of just terrific acting. You feel for Adrianna, you feel for Tony, you even feel for Chris after he beat up Adrianna in a scene that nearly made me sick to my stomach. One of the things that makes this show interesting is that it's never shy about letting its audience know that most of its characters are bad people, but it also never holds back the fact that they're human beings, with sympathetic failings and emotional moments as well. And that end scene, so much said in so little words. Just great, great stuff all around.
Abbott Elementary serving us early 2000’s sitcom romance with Gregory and Janine. I don’t want them together yet! So I wish they'd tone it down a bit with the whole will-they-won’t-they.
“As you told me against my will” is how most workplace conversations happen.
I like Janine and Gregory developments but Ava and Janine’s slowburn friendship is so good too.
“I don’t dance to songs I don’t like, I don’t wanna give the DJ the wrong idea.”
“I get charity during the holidays but this is Mother Teresa level.”
It would be a nice Christmas treat if the show did a part 2 of their Christmas episode cause we just need to see what’s going on during their break. I like seeing how the characters interact with each other outside of school hours.
