The Boys “We’ll Keep The Red Flag Flying Here”

So, before I go too far, let me say that I really like The Boys.  I don’t think there’s been a dip in quality or anything.    But right now, I think it might not be firing on all cylinders like I normally want it to.

Now, part of that may be because so many characters have their own subplots right now, and when I try to write these up, I try to look for a common theme over the course of the entire episode.  For this one, the thing that leapt out to me is that most of the characters end in a bad place as they see their lives on a downward spiral.  Oddly enough, one of the few who doesn’t seem to be there is Butcher, and he’s dying.  He got to spend some time with Ryan, decided to ignore Kessler’s pleading and not drug the boy, and that was that.  Hughie, likewise, learns a bit more about his mom and maybe comes to an accord with her.

Everyone else?  Not so much.  Mother’s Milk may be learning he’s not really leadership material here.  Annie finds out Firecracker has a very personal reason to hate on her going back to their childhoods, and Firecracker doesn’t believe a person can change.  Frenchie is too worried to tell his new lover that he killed Colin’s entire family once upon a time, plus a whole lot of other people, leading to taking too many drugs before going out with Kimiko to kill some bad people.

To be fair, Frenchie took the drugs before he knew he was going anywhere.

But for more superhuman disappointment, Kimiko found someone she knew working for the child traffickers that used to hold her.  Sister Sage’s advice doesn’t work because Homerlander is far too impatient to do anything to her specification, and then she ends up seducing the Deep.  The Deep lost his position in Vought.  The new Black Noir still doesn’t know what he’s doing.  A-Train might have flipped, but I have my doubts.  Ashley, not a superhuman, has been demoted to figurehead or mascot in the company, and Victoria knows that the new president wants to push to get supes out of law enforcement and the military because they’re just entertainers.

On that last one, naturally Homelander has a plan to do the opposite of that.  But Homelander, he doesn’t know why Ryan isn’t happier since Ryan has everything Homelander would have wanted as a child.  That just goes back to how messed up Homelander is that he assumes everyone is like him when, well, nobody is like him.

So, that’s some good stuff there, and many of the characters end the episode feeling down, plus I somehow suspect Sister Sage’s seduction of the Deep is part of a, no pun intended, deeper plan, but that remains to be seen.  What struck me as being a bit much this time is the mishap at the Vought ice-show where Hughie was nearly killed by Homelander while trying to plant a listening device.  Homelander’s heat vision went off and killed a skater by cutting her in half, and from there, the other skaters panicked and ended up slicing each other up, with the Jesus guy cutting another fellow’s throat.  Are ice skates that sharp?  I dunno.  Probably.  But I found myself wondering if the carnage was that necessary.  Frenchie’s hallucinating while Kimiko ripped some bad guys to bits was good enough for the odd violence, but something about the ice skater massacre struck me the wrong way.

Still, that’s a relatively minor complaint.  I do like the way things are working out, especially since I am sure Sage has more planned than she’s letting on.