The Boys Season 2 (Amazon) TV Show Review

"Shut your trap you dumb bird, or else I'll bollocks yer"

by Tom Davies

This is how The Boys returns – not with a whimper, but with a bang. A particularly disgusting bang as Hughie finds himself more drenched in blood than ever.

Season two begins leaving a short but vital gap in the timeline. Billy Butcher has gone missing after his last encounter with Homelander and a startling family reunion. Hughie, acting in association with Annie “Starlight” January is hoping to expose Vought’s use of Compound V to create superheroes. The Deep is not doing so good as a landlocked local hero and is on the verge of a full buy-in to a Scientology style cult… And that’s where we have to leave it for now, as Amazon’s scheduling prevents us from binging more than the first three episodes for some reason, forcing us to wait a week between each subsequent installment.

During its time away, it seems like the show has become more comfortable with its identity as a comedy and the season opener moves from the comfort zone of pitch-black humour to pure absurdity. Homelander stands in front of a transparent coffin at Translucent's funeral; a TV shows a dramatic reconstruction of Billy Butcher's supposed crime, complete with fake beard and cockney accent. And while the moments of goofy silliness are as enjoyable as anything the show achieved in the first season, the jolt from the undiluted level of graphic violence is liable to cause tonal whiplash over the first hour. Once you’re settled in to the new rhythm, however, it seems like the show could never have been anything else and finally it’s the most accurate representation of Garth Ennis’ work on screen, if not in plot then in its depiction of extreme brutality to elicit belly-laughs. Season one tested the waters, probed the appetite for TV willing to blend satire, and bloody death. Season two, as it stands, no longer cares about that blend but is more interested in its true ambition, gross-out comedy. And once you’re over the shift, it really works.

 

...a massively enjoyable, laugh-out-loud watch

The tone works. Eric Kripke’s script works. It’s a massively enjoyable, laugh-out-loud watch. But worthy of note is that, for a series called The Boys, the gang seems to have slowly become the protagonists of the B-story, even after the return of Karl Urban's as Billy Butcher (in a slightly less magnetic performance than season 1). Throughout the first two episodes, the show seems to spin its wheels more than a little whenever the group of superhero killers are on screen. Only with the third episode does it feel confident enough to start to change the status quo and even then, 45 minutes of plot feels a little stretched across an hour.

The things that The Boys got right in its first season mostly seem to have survived intact. Anthony Starr is as believably terrifying as the psychotic Superman analogue, Homelander; Jack Quaid as Hughie continues to be frequently (and often hilariously) covered from head to toe in blood and guts. The dysfunctional family that are The Boys still have great chemistry. But season two continues to inject more life into the show. Refinements to characters like The Deep give Chace Crawford an opportunity to continue his portrayal of a terrible and broken man hitting rock bottom. Laz Alonzo as Mother’s Milk begins the season on the front foot between his desperation to see his family and his doll house obsession. New character, Stormfront, played by Aya Cash (You’re the Worst) devours every second of time that she’s on screen as the straight talking new addition to The Seven; Batman-a-like Black Noir finally gets something to do and it is horrendous and hilarious; every nerd’s favourite comedian, Patton Oswalt makes possibly his greatest cameo in anything; and the pastiches of existing Marvel and DC heroes are sharper than ever.

The Boys Season 2
No, I'm not going to make a lame Thin Lizzy joke. If I Google it, I guarantee someone's already done it. THOSE HACKS!

As far as presentation goes, I’m not sure what Amazon has been doing with its sound design, but this latest batch of episodes seemed far superior to these ears than almost anything other than The Expanse, as far as original output is concerned. It looks great too, if a little muted at times, but seems unsure how to take full advantage of its 4K HDR opportunities. The slight Snyder-verse aesthetic works within the context of The Seven, but there are opportunities for it to look absolutely stunning, where it simply looks adequate. I appreciate the fact that these quibbles are truly minor.

If I have any actual complaints about the series, they are the exact complaints I had with the first season, and the exact complaints I would level at any project connected with Garth Ennis: it’s a little too proud of itself for taking things as far as it does. The purposeful boundary pushing sometimes smacks of teenage edgelord mentality. Taking things so far just because “you’ve never seen **** like this before, man.” Generally, it lands just this side of funny, but now and then it comes off as sophomoric and antagonistic.

 

...purposeful boundary pushing sometimes smacks of teenage edgelord mentality

We’re only three episodes in, as of writing, and the hints of pacing issues can’t help but nag at me. My memory of the first season is that it rocketed along and, with an almost unbroken continuation of the story line, I was expecting things to continue to escalate. They do. A little. But then, once you’ve demonstrated how gross, how dumb and how insane you’re willing to go, is there anywhere left to - Oh my god, what the hell just happened to that whale?! Okay, forget it. The Boys apparently still has new heights (and depths) to explore.

Oh, one last thing: the title of the third episode is a nod to Tenpole Tudor and that automatically earns a lot of goodwill from me!

Scores

Verdict

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8

8
AVForumsSCORE
OUT OF
10

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