The Boys - Season 4: TV Review - Oh, How the Mighty Have Fallen
/****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. This is the worst of The Boys’ seasons thus far. It is a sprawling and unfocused disappointment.
When The Boys hit tv screens in 2019 via Amazon Prime it was a glorious jolt of savage energy into the superhero genre that gave a sharp and satirical middle-finger to Marvel, the cultural behemoth of cultural behemoths at the time.
With Marvel on the mountaintop in the wake of its astonishing MCU run which culminated in 2019 with Avengers: Endgame, the superhero genre was prime for a slap in the face and The Boys delivered it exquisitely, with a solid kick in the nuts to boot.
The Boys’ evisceration of the superhero genre and corporate cultural power as well as its clear-eyed, cynical take on corrupt American politics, made it must-see tv for its first three seasons (Here is my review from season three).
But a funny thing happened while The Boys became the go-to satirical superhero tv series over the last five years, namely the superhero genre declined in popularity and relevance, and that decline was steep and rapid. Since the dizzying heights of 2019 with Avengers: Endgame and Joker, superhero films have fallen off a cliff in terms of quality and cultural relevance.
The creative energy propelling The Boys has, in conjunction with the precipitous fall of its once-lofty satirical target, lost considerable steam (and with it, relevance) in its fourth season, and the show has started to resemble the politically-correct corporate IP it so expertly lambasted in its first three seasons.
Season four once again features ‘The Boys’, a group of misfits and miscreants like Butcher, Huey, Mother’s Milk, Starlight, Frenchie and Kimiko as they try to bring down the villain Homelander and the whole corporate superhero monster Vought (a wondrous stand-in for Disney and its awful ilk)…and save the world in the process.
Butcher is trying to save his “son” while dealing with a terminal illness. Mother’s Milk is trying to save his family. Starlight and Huey are trying to save each other and the world. And Frenchie and Kimiko are trying to save their souls.
None of this is new and frankly, none of it is very interesting anymore. Season four is less vivid and vital than the previous three seasons, and the drama, and comedy, tends to fall flat, and the characters tend to grate.
For the most part the performances all feel tired and cliched as well. Karl Urban as Butcher has been great up until now, but his work in season four seems a bit banal and predictable. The same is true of Jack Quaid and Erin Moriarty as Huey and Starlight respectively. The actors no longer seem to be embodying characters but just going through the motions.
The one exception to this is Karen Fukuhara as Kimiko. Fukuhara consistently brings a vibrancy and verve to her work as the mute superhero, and she fills her every moment on-screen with a vitality lacking in the rest of the cast.
There have been much complaints online about The Boys’ left-wing politics, but I don’t think that is the reason for season four’s failure. The reality is that The Boys has always been overtly leftist in its politics, been even in doing that it, maybe inadvertently, made fun of its own ideology.
While it’s true that the liberal politics are much more overt in season four than in previous seasons, that’s not a big deal, the real problem is that they’re so painfully vapid and trite. I mean, in season one the show savagely yet surreptitiously made the argument that 9/11 was an inside job and now in season four its reduced itself to scenes which feature torturing rich right-wing superheroes by donating their money to Black Lives Matter. That is so on-the-nose as to be embarrassing. Yikes.
The other issue is that the plot has gotten so convoluted and unwieldy as to be tiresome. The main objective of stopping Homelander and Vought has now gotten lost in a maze of odd personal tales that generate neither heat nor light.
For example, out of nowhere season four features a gay love story for the character Frenchie. That Frenchie wasn’t gay before is beside the point, but what is the point is that this storyline is superfluous at best, and egregiously tedious at worst….like when Disney added a gay character to The Eternals – they did it to check boxes, not drive drama.
Other storylines feel just as vacuous, vapid and venal. For instance, all of the stories surrounding Mother’s Milk, Starlight, Huey and even Butcher, feel redundant and devoid of the dramatic and comedic edge of earlier seasons.
I get it, things lose momentum the longer they go, but season four of the The Boys feels like a series trying to stretch things out by adding garbage filler rather than a genuine attempt to drive a story forward with energy, electricity, attitude and aplomb.
Season four ends by setting up season five, which will be the series’ finale. Unfortunately, season five is not set to arrive until 2026 and considering how much creative momentum and cultural relevance The Boys have lost between season three and four, one can only shudder to think how far season five will drop in quality and dramatic dynamism.
The bottom line is that The Boys was brilliant…until it wasn’t. And unfortunately, the bloom is off the rose and the series is now just playing out the string. Hopefully, and I really do hope this, it can right the ship and go out on top in season five with a furious finale. Considering the maddening missteps and malaise of season four, I’m not optimistic.
©2024