The Boys

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One of the most heavy handed woke tv shows of all time is the original Star Trek. One of it's most woke episodes is where one alien is half black on the right side and half white on the left side, while his mortal enemy is the exact opposite. But the original Star Trek and that episode are fucking awesome.

Good writing transcends woke narratives sometimes and is enjoyable in spite of it. The Boys is great in spite of the woke tags in the second season. And it will be great 50 years from now when people don't remember Trump, Biden, BLM or anything else that is topical right now.
Star trek glorified an impossible socialist paradise where differences don't matter and everyone can get along. It was escapist fantasy because it presented a society outside of reality and then showed those characters dealing with said reality rearing itself in alien races and being thoughtfully explored with discussions that presents the pros and cons along with different perspective an alien race might have.

The reason modern SJW hamfisted 'discussion' of politics is so irredeemably awful a lot of the time is due to the fact that counter points are not presented or expected, and anyone who is against the common line of thought is portrayed as evil and inherently wrong. Take the fat turbo cuck who murdered the durka. If they took even a little bit of time to present both of those characters as humans that are relatable, perhaps they'd have a powerful scene. Instead it's just a comicly meaningless murder portrayed between two chars that aren't involved in the story or relatable to anyone.
 
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Phanton

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It's a fun show, but it's not some artistic masterpiece. It's a parody of Justice League. We all know where the bar is set for DC movies. Let's not compare this to Star Trek. I can re-watch TNG all day, but I wouldn't bother watching S1 of The Boys twice.

It's too bad Stormfront was a 1 season character. She was a good antagonist for the most part and her arc felt rushed. She would've been way more interesting without the Nazi bit. That was very overhanded. I already didn't like her when she beat that kid to death on the hood of his car, so I didn't really need the 'oh btw shes a nazi too!'. Yeah, I get it, racism leads to the holocaust. If I managed to avoid watching every critically acclaimed movie from the past 8 decades I'd probably be really impressed. Also, you're fucking yourself when you shift focus to the 1940s in a show that's trying to move super heroes into the modern world of marketing/advertising and celebrity personas.

The head esploder is evidently a shapeshifter, an evil twin, or they really are that lazy and just retconned the previous episode. When she explodes the head through the window her eyes cloud over, so evidently this superpower takes some focus. We don't see the her eyes cloud over when she's in the room when heads are popping.
 
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Caliane

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yeah, Stormfront is not actually dead. Comic lamplighter treatment is likely correct, or close to it.
 
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Grim1

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Star trek glorified an impossible socialist paradise where differences don't matter and everyone can get along. It was escapist fantasy because it presented a society outside of reality and then showed those characters dealing with said reality rearing itself in alien races and being thoughtfully explored with discussions that presents the pros and cons along with different perspective an alien race might have.

The reason modern SJW hamfisted 'discussion' of politics is so irredeemably awful a lot of the time is due to the fact that counter points are not presented or expected, and anyone who is against the common line of thought is portrayed as evil and inherently wrong. Take the fat turbo cuck who murdered the durka. If they took even a little bit of time to present both of those characters as humans that are relatable, perhaps they'd have a powerful scene. Instead it's just a comicly meaningless murder portrayed between two chars that aren't involved in the story or relatable to anyone.

I whole heartedly agree that most of the woke garbage coming out right now is over the top and unwatchable. I see very few new shows because of that exact reason. They are propagandist trash.

But The Boys isn't in that category and is in fact very good. It isn't SJW garbage at all. Claiming that it is is just a reactionary habit because of all the other crap being forced on us.

Having Nazi's in your show doesn't automatically make it bad. They have been used very effectively in a ton of movies and tv shows for decades. And in this context where superheros are running all over the place, it's a natural fit. My only real objection to using Nazi's in a story is it's been done so many times before, you really have to do a good job to make their inclusion interesting. The Boys did that.
 

sakkath

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Girls obviously don't get it done, even when there's 3 girl supes - it takes a 10 year old boy to get the job done.
 
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Haus

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From my experience, girls only get things about half done.
Came here to say.......
Girls obviously don't get it done, even when there's 3 girl supes - it takes a 10 year old boy to get the job done
But got beat to it...

Deep's storyline in this show is basically "how can we make the Deep suffer today?" lol
I hoping the long play on Deep will be eventually he realizes it's everything on land that screws with him, and everything in the ocean he loves. Then we see him pivot to the "F the land dwellers" version of Aquaman, which is my favorite version.
 
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Jozu

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The Deep kind of has awesome powers. Being able to just stay underwater and have the endurance to swim vast distances and basically live aquatically? Sign me up. He mine as well live in the oceans and communicate with sea life, seems like it would suit him better.
 
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Caliane

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I don't remember if the comics ever really addressed the stupidity of having those powers, and then using them to "fight crime" or even joining the military. The major plot point was military spending, and yes Voight trying to get juicy government contracts. That was their justification. But, voight did cut a shit ton of people loose, and have B, C and D super hero teams..
not many comics about getting super powers and using them in a Capitalist function.

Like yeah, Logically, the Deep would be a rich mother fucker from Deep sea oil drilling, or as a crab fisherman magnet. Collecting lost pirate treasure.. grants from government to matchmake endangered marine life, etc, etc. theres a fortune to be made in the sea we can't do as humans.
 
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Oldbased

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The Deep kind of has awesome powers. Being able to just stay underwater and have the endurance to swim vast distances and basically live aquatically? Sign me up. He mine as well live in the oceans and communicate with sea life, seems like it would suit him better.
If nothing else you could make your fortune asking fish where the nearest ship wreck is or planes that CNN went on about for a year as a headline.
 
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Kiroy

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I whole heartedly agree that most of the woke garbage coming out right now is over the top and unwatchable. I see very few new shows because of that exact reason. They are propagandist trash.

But The Boys isn't in that category and is in fact very good. It isn't SJW garbage at all. Claiming that it is is just a reactionary habit because of all the other crap being forced on us.

Having Nazi's in your show doesn't automatically make it bad. They have been used very effectively in a ton of movies and tv shows for decades. And in this context where superheros are running all over the place, it's a natural fit. My only real objection to using Nazi's in a story is it's been done so many times before, you really have to do a good job to make their inclusion interesting. The Boys did that.

this is crazy, it has all sorts of social justice messages embedded, but even if you put all that aside (which is easy with a good show, like watchman for example), the writing this season was shitty and lazy. There's an argument to be made that shoehorning in and changing plot points to facilitate that messaging may have lead to the poor quality.

Also callback jokes and inside jokes like "girls get it done" and fresca are fucking stupid when they're so overt. 99% of watchers aren't aware of that shit and have to take what they saw at face value.

How anyone can defend this season as anything above mediocre boggles the fucking mind.
 
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Lithose

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Okay so I just watched it.

Stormfront being stabbed in the eye makes sense if you read the comics and makes as much sense as sticking a bomb up the ass of a man who’s indestructible, to kill him. like, translucents skin should never have flown apart yet no one bitched about that. Why do it here? It’s not far fetched.

Pressure in a chamber will destroy things that an equal amount of force outside of chamber will not. It made sense Translucents skin shattered when an explosion pressurized him from within--even if that same amount of force could have been shrugged off from outside of him.

But I agree with the eye thing--eyes are more vulnerable even in humans...That said, the problem wasn't that the eyes were vulnerable, but rather how vulnerable they were. A normal person with a knife shouldn't have been able to do shit. Maybe a gun shot to the eye should have, but a knife?
 
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Kiroy

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Pressure in an chamber will destroy things that an equal amount of force outside of chamber will not. It made sense Translucents skin shattered when an explosion pressurized him from within--even if that same amount of force could have been shrugged off from outside of him.

But I agree with the eye thing--eyes are more vulnerable even in humans...That said, the problem wasn't that the eyes were vulnerable, but rather how vulnerable they were. A normal person with a knife shouldn't have been able to do shit. Maybe a gun shot to the eye should have, but a knife?

the problem with the eye being that vulnerable is that any hellfire missle, or landmine, or a number of government options would instantly kill a soup no matter the power level - unless they establish that just stormfront had that vulnerability a lot of the plot completely falls apart.

but again, it's just lazy as shit writing
 
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kegkilla

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I think a bigger problem with the writing is Butcher hitting her full force in the head with a crowbar having no impact. The physics of that make absolutely zero sense, no matter how hard her skin is to penetrate. She could be made of diamond but the force of the blow would still knock her off balance, unless her body weighs tens of thousands of pounds or something.
 
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Lithose

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it woulda been far more interesting to have stormfront's fall take place in more than 5 minutes. Its ludicrous that the show has repeatedly shown Vought tap dance around every single charge brought up against it, including how Compound V works, and then have everyone simply accept Stormfront is really a nazi and have the entire world condemn her instantly for it.

If the show wants to be "political" then it needs to get its fucking message straight, Trump has shuffled around every single charge against him for years extremely successfully, THATS what the show should have done. Huey and Starlight "expose" Stormfront and she and Vought easily counter it with "fake photoshops", deepfakes (as she throws out a line), thats not me, Russian troll farms, liberal commies are trying to silence a true patriot, etc. Its pretty ludicrous that uploaded internet photos of "archive photos" will be taken for 100% fact by the entire world in the span of 1 hour.

Season 1 was them mocking typical marvel/comic TV shows and movies and showing a world where supes in the real would be absolutely terrifying and horrific for normal people. Season 2 doesn't really do that AT ALL, it portrays a world where everyone is in it for the money (Stan Edgar, Scientology guy) and thats a super boring, typical TV show trope. Lame and boring.

The difference is, most of Trump's charges were quite literally fake news or extremely thin. The whole reason why he's able to shuffle is because the media rarely has anything beyond the accusation to throw at him--they are literally relying on availability heuristics (Say a lie enough, and it becomes true). I mean, Russian collusion sprang from a single half drunk RUSSIAN intelligence agent (Ironic) in a bar with a washed up British spy who the FBI actually got rid of because he was known to lie and be unreliable. That's how thin it was...what was mind blowing was that it even had to be side stepped.

Its a completely different ball game when the accusations are not only very true, but there is evidence for them. You can muddy the water with deep fakes or calls of photoshops, but there are methods to verify these things and lets face it, Stormfront actually did do these things...so there is going to be more evidence out there and Vought knows it.

That said, you're right--they should have spent some time with her trying to spin it. But that would inadvertently show how difficult it is to spin a claim with substantial evidence behind it (Not exactly the message I think they are going for given their political commentary; they'd be saying a lot of smoke and no fire means the people producing smoke are lying).

Don't get me wrong, I doubt they wrote like shit because they had long term propaganda in mind. Rather they just aren't strong enough in terms of writing. They are competent, for sure--but not great, and it really showed this season when they tried to get complex with multiple arcs. They should stick to what they know...the simple story line of "what would happen if you gave normal people super powers. Oh, they'd become extremely shitty!"
 

Asshat wormie

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I am sorry are we debating physics in a show where a character can toss a SUV into the air hard enough to flip it 7-8 times but then does almost no damage to a human body with the same ability?
 
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Lithose

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the problem with the eye being that vulnerable is that any hellfire missle, or landmine, or a number of government options would instantly kill a soup no matter the power level - unless they establish that just stormfront had that vulnerability a lot of the plot completely falls apart.

but again, it's just lazy as shit writing

Yeah, but that's actually how it was in the comics. Missiles, mines, big explosives tended to kill supes. They were mainly invulnerable to guns ect. This seems like a long term mistake in the show where they built up supes too much.

Their writing is weak for the same reason why comic book movies were shit until you had a super nerd like Fiege in there....Because quantifying and thinking about powers is important so your world makes some internal sense (Real physics wold always seem absurd, but internal consistency is important). A lot of "professional writers" though are too stuck up to believe powers are anything more than a plot device. So they are shit in terms of writing them as an actual character trait (A trait that could be used to explore very real human conditions like what would humans be like if they were very powerful--which is a great allegory for money/wealth or political power ect. .)
 
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kegkilla

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I am sorry are we debating physics in a show where a character can toss a SUV into the air hard enough to flip it 7-8 times but then does almost no damage to a human body with the same ability?
Ah I almost forgot about the SUV toss. They should all have been dead.
 
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Asshat wormie

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Don't get me wrong, I doubt they wrote like shit because they had long term propaganda in mind. Rather they just aren't strong enough in terms of writing. They are competent, for sure--but not great, and it really showed this season when they tried to get complex with multiple arcs. They should stick to what they know...the simple story line of "what would happen if you gave normal people super powers. Oh, they'd become extremely shitty!"
They wrote like shit because they wanted the story to fit their narrative just like every other SJW "artist". The story sucked not because it was about SJW ideas, the story sucked because it was written in an attempt to fit those ideas.
 
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kegkilla

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Hot take: Elizabeth Shue carried the first season and the show lost its way when it became detached from her ruthless corporatist character.

Gus Fringe just couldn’t fill her shues.
 
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Gutterflesh

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This was a garbage season finale. The doubling down on the SJW nonsense was lazy and ruined what otherwise could’ve been an interesting series.