The Boys’ Frenchie backstory is one of TV’s best uses of flashbacks since Lost
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This post discusses plot points from The Boys seasons one and two.
“The Bloody Doors Off,” the sixth episode of The Boys’ superb second season, is undeniably the pivot point of the entire narrative. Not only do we learn that Vought International has been secretly working to stabilize compound V, to make it safe to inject into any adult human and immediately turn them into a super (and have tortured and killed untold numbers of test subjects in the process), we discover why: Stormfront was the wife of Frederick Vought himself. The seemingly millennial super is actually a 100-year-old Nazi, and she’s shepherding the company’s research in order to create a race of white-supremacist supers with the intent of creating a fourth reich. That’s one hell of a reveal.
But the reason the episode is the best argument the show has yet made for its unexpected pathos has almost nothing to do with any of that; instead, it’s all about Frenchie. Tomer Capon’s wisecracking science and weapons expert spent much of the first season as a cypher with a messy past. We didn’t know much about his checkered history (aside from a complicated relationship with his ex, Cherie), and he mostly served in a capacity to help drive others’ stories forward. That all changed in “The Bloody Doors Off”: We get the story of Frenchie’s life, and it’s a tragedy that gives him arguably the most complex perspective of any of these characters. Not only that, but the way the story unfolds—criss-crossing past and present, weaving them together to make both sides equally alive and rich—is among of the best use of flashbacks in genre TV since the heyday of Lost.
For much of the first half of the season, Frenchie wasn’t given a terribly large amount of material. He visited Cherie, he did drugs, and generally appeared to be in something less than great shape. As it turns out, these breadcrumbs were laying the foundation for a potent character study. His pining for Kimiko seemed to be a strange admixture of attraction and paternalistic over-involvement in her life, in ways that didn’t fully make sense. Why was this guy so hell-bent on wedging himself into her existence and dictating her choices? But there’s a loss at the center of Frenchie that has dictated all he has done. Just as important, it represents the symbolic core of why the Boys fight supers, in a more relatable way than Butcher’s single-minded zeal, or even Hughie’s earnest do-gooderism. (As Annie notes, Hughie is “too good for us”—“us” being everyday folks who aren’t quite so noble at all times.)
Before they infiltrate the Sage Grove facility, Frenchie is still giving Kimiko shit for briefly disappearing to do some killer-for-hire work. Without any real insight into her motivations save for his own presumptions, he looks down on her for a decision made in the depths of heartbreak. “This is what you bought with your blood money?” he sniffs, gesturing at her brass knuckles that read, “BOSSY.” She refused to be the damsel in distress, the grieving and damaged woman he could nurse back to health and set on the right (read: his) path, and instead of respecting her grief, he scorns her for it. It’s not a great look.
But we learn why he’s so insistent with his paternalism: He came by it honestly. Eight years ago, Frenchie was the father figure of sorts to Cherie and Jay, his girlfriend and best buddy, though the three seem to have more fluid roles than that. They’re a makeshift family like The Golden Girls, as he notes in the opening flashback of the episode—women who “made their own family,” like Frenchie has done with his two life partners, in a very real way. And he is the self-appointed head, the brains behind their crimes that keeps the trio flush in cash and drugs. So when he’s busted by Mallory and given a simple choice—either go to work for her or Cherie and Jay will be locked up in a Supermax prison—it’s no choice at all. He sees everything he does as in the service of protecting his family.
Which is what makes his impossible choice all the more tragic. By abandoning his mission to go save Jay from a potentially fatal overdose, Frenchie isn’t there when Lamplighter goes to Mallory’s house and accidentally kills her grandkids while trying to take her out. Had he stayed on his post, he could have sounded the alarm that saved them, or possibly even stopped Lamplighter before he made the assassination attempt. But in choosing his family over the job, he failed to protect those kids, and shoulders the guilt of their deaths. (Ironically, Lamplighter also uses Frenchie’s actions to displace some of his own guilt at being the one who executed them: “Why didn’t you stop me?” he pitifully demands, as though Frenchie is the true culprit.) Worse still, his actions end up costing him that family: By returning to his mission, Cherie and Jay think he’s abandoning them. They leave, and Frenchie never sees Jay again—plus, his hard choice turns out to be for naught, as Jay dies of another overdose just a few months later.
That’s the key to understanding the pathos of the series’ pack of antiheroes. In trying to be loyal to both of his makeshift families, Jay/Cherie and the Boys, Frenchie lost both. Billy, MM, and Hughie all have crystal-clear and conscience-free personal reasons to be taking down supers. But Frenchie lost everything in trying to protect everyone, and now, he feels a permanent sense of ostracism even among his seeming friends. His motivation stems from a need to regain what he’s lost, not punish others for taking it from him—he wants a chosen family, and a life freed from the burden of guilt that has suffused it. But by chasing that same previous role of paternal caretaker, he’s obscuring his view of the new state of affairs, in which he’s just one of the damaged souls trying to make their own way in this group of revenge-seeking roughnecks. He can’t go back to the way things were, and he can’t ever regain what he lost, despite longing for it all these years. That’s a far more powerful and affecting well of pathos than the painful but culpability-free positions enjoyed by the others. Frenchie is a walking Greek tragedy.
The way the show weaves in this loss makes it all the more potent. The flashbacks to Frenchie’s history aren’t just dropped in throughout the contemporary story, dual narratives running side by side to get through them both in an efficient manner. The Boys smartly links the past chronicle to present one, using it to enrich and lend meaning to the group’s caper at Sage Grove. It does this right from the start, as Frenchie’s Golden Girls-inspired paean to his self-chosen family smash-cuts to him in the present, taking a power saw to Annie’s neck in hopes of freeing her from Vought surveillance—the effort to help Annie is a caretaker role. Just as his prior life saw him taking the active job of keeping his family safe, now he’s recapturing a bit of that same magic.
As the episode progresses, we see Frenchie’s undoing in the past shade into his trauma in the present. After being told to “stick to the plan” by MM—the very thing he didn’t do five years ago, leading to disaster—Lamplighter and Frenchie finally have it out, and the show cuts to the night in question, placing Frenchie’s impossible choice front and center. He reveals the truth about what happened that night, and we get the exchange that embodies the entire nature of Frenchie’s character, as well as the poignancy at the heart of the story. “Why didn’t you tell us?” MM asks, finally seeing his former friend in a new light. “We would’ve let you off the hook.” Frenchie’s reply says it all: “What makes you think I want to be let off the hook?”
With that, a new dynamic enters the group and shifts the manner of their escape from Sage Grove. As a result of learning Frenchie’s story, Lamplighter doesn’t give away their presence to Stormfront. Kimiko is receptive to Frenchie’s subsequent apology for his behavior. Lamplighter turns himself in. In other words, the present narrative changes as a result of the past one, the two bound together in ways that transform and push forward the narrative, instead of merely filling in the gaps of Frenchie’s backstory. And it does so while capturing the tragedy of his humanism, revealing him as a character whose internal guilt has shaped his actions as strongly as any sense of moral justness.
Frenchie is more than just a guy seeking retribution. He feels a responsibility to the losses in the past, and is torn by a sense that sometimes, there’s no such thing as the right thing to do. That even your best efforts will not only fail, but doom everyone and yourself in the process. It’s an anxiety to which anyone who’s ever let down another person can relate. A sense of personal failing despite the seeming helplessness inspired by a world of super-powered evil is more than super: It’s all too human. And it’s given The Boys a newfound depth of soul and empathy often missing from its go-for-broke nihilism.
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After the mess of Preacher it’s wild how much better this show is than the source material. It feels stripped down to its core elements and reassembled from there, peppering in references to some of the comics worst excesses without indulging in them, Preacher in hindsight feels like a messy first draft of what they’ve achieved with The Boys.
The show is so much better than the comic it’s not even funny.
Totally agree. The comic book series for The Boys is just nowhere near what they’ve done with the show.
We know their secret weapon that Preacher didn’t have: Eric Kripke, who’s just so underrated
They are managing to up the ante with every episode
That ending to Ep07 last night – mama fucking mia
Though I admit I didn’t follow Preacher’s comic run all the way, I do think at some point it was also superior source material than The Boys’ comic is. I know there’s some cliche about how film and tv adaptations are often better if their source material has a great premise but is a flawed piece… (Though I do think Ennis’ Preacher run had issues, but…) And yes, Eric Kripke.
Though I admit I didn’t follow Preacher’s comic run all the way, I do think at some point it was also superior source material than The Boys’ comic is. I know there’s some cliche about how film and tv adaptations are often better if their source material has a great premise but is a flawed piece… (Though I do think Ennis’ Preacher run had issues, but…) And yes, Eric Kripke.
Though I admit I didn’t follow Preacher’s comic run all the way, I do think at some point it was also superior source material than The Boys’ comic is. I know there’s some cliche about how film and tv adaptations are often better if their source material has a great premise but is a flawed piece… (Though I do think Ennis’ Preacher run had issues, but…) And yes, Eric Kripke.
I wish The Boys dispensed with Butcher & Hughie ‘cos IMO they’re clearly holding back the protagonists as worthy leads. As this article points towards, Mother’s Milk and Frenchie are deeper, more engaging and interesting people. Butcher is Poochie with an atrocious accent, the producers exuding a belief he’s the coolest guy in the room; while Hughie is an audience surrogate long past his usefulness. Even if they let him learn some spycraft, become more than a soppy mess. Instead, Hughie mopes about listening to Billy Joel. Both are frustratingly shallow, tedious characters. Especially compared to Homelander, who now overshadows the entire show in terms of vicious complexity.
MM and Frenchie are there to either babysit Hughie or remind Butcher he’s just about to act on his own worst tendencies. So they ground the thinner characters and we get a more rounded ensemble as a result. I think it would fall apart if you removed any elemnts from the dynamic. It was really fun to Hughie and Annie being fatehre by MM in that episode they were together.
They addressed that in the first season, Hughie’s their sleeper hitman: the guy nobody thinks is capable of doing certain things, only to turn out fully capable of doing those things, to the shock of everyone involved, including himself. Like when he went into Vought tower to plant the bug, when he pulled the trigger on the butt bomb, when he faked having incriminating evidence on his phone of the stretchy guy having gay sex with him. He’s always allowed himself to be pushed into situations he doesn’t feel he’s capable of, and then surprises himself by finding out he’s more than capable, he’s even quite good at it. Butcher is just a ball of anger wanting to be aimed at something/someone. However, his revelation with Becca is starting to shift that as he’s starting to reinterpret the whole series of events that got him where he is now. He’s trying to change as he really doesn’t have vengeance as a motivator anymore and he even tried to walk away from it all if it wasn’t for the other boys.
I can’t agree. Frenchie is great but I wouldn’t suddenly now watch a show only about him- or MM, who is my favorite character. I think The Boys needs both Butcher and Hughie for the dynamics they bring to the team, and the series. Butcher is an especially important counterpoint to Homelander on the other side. And while Hughie hasn’t been as proactive as he used to, they’ve still spent the last few episodes emphasizing why he matters, and he really does. Now if you want to criticize how their arcs have been written this season, that’s fair, have at it, but the show’s strength is all the shades of its ensemble.
I think with Hughie, what hasn’t gelled with me has been around this adjustment towards him being “the canary” or moral compass around which the more morally compromised others find their centre. That just feels incredibly limp, and betrays a sense the writers don’t know what to do with him. I don’t necessarily hate the idea in principal but Hughie needs some of his own agency, and allowed to succeed within his own merits. As to Butcher, well. Look, I won’t deny the ear-scrappingly bad English accent really gets in the way of assessing the character fairly. I like Karl Urban but his Cockney patter is atrocious. As to the character, I take your point about being a counterpoint, but the facade is misplaced and leans into the territory of myself asking “Why are you following this guy?”
I agree about Hughie, actually. He needs more agency. Big time. He had some of that working with Annie to publicly reveal Compound V, and I was disappointed how quickly and easily that got squashed, so he has had little to do since. But he remains an important symbol of the everyman keeping things in perspective.As for Butcher, it’s a similar problem- Getting back to his wife (sooner than I expected) got squashed (sooner than I expected), and it leaves the character less motivated. To the show’s credit they spent some time here, but as we learn more about the others, it does beg the question why they still follow him (MM should lead). I guess his CIA experience and contacts are too invaluable. (And his bad boy charisma is intoxicating 😁)
Yeah, if its one thing the comic did really right compared to the TV show, its Butcher. He’s more human with a personality, especially in his relationship to Hughie who he treats as a little brother and mentor figure, M.M. also as a brother figure and best friend, and even Becky, the person who saves his life and gave him a new purpose, while still managing to have him have his dark, brutal, manipulative, asshole side of him. The show reduces him to a angry, grunting, wreck with an inconsistent accent who tries and fails to bully and intimidate The Boys and even Becky sometimes into following his orders. I don’t understand why they even bother to listen to him.
If this is supposed to be some kind of character arc where he becomes a better person down the line, I hope so. But, they could just bring him back to the comics version as far as “Michael Caine with a crowbar” and Hughie as the “little brother” that acts as his consciousness and moral guidance, that would be great.
Parallel-universe casting time: barring more dialect coaching for Urban, who would you have as Butcher?My shortlist:Dominic West – he could easily make the trip from his natural Etonian plumminess to Butcher’s EastEnder growl. Speaking of which…Danny Dyer – no wait, come back! Pros: a career playing DTV hooligans and gangsters means he could handle both the Cock-er-nee oi! dialog and the show’s brutality, no trouble; he can be quite funny (see Severance). Cons: Dyer’s quite short, and Butcher has to convincingly stand eyeball to eyeball with Homelander; I shudder at the thought of his scenes with Becca; the show would have to keep him within his range, which is limited.
Scott Adkins: not the greatest thespian, but a competent martial arts guy from the UK.He’s 5′ 10″ and looks like this: and get this: “Scott Edward Adkins was born on June 17, 1976 in Sutton Coldfield, England, into a family that for generations were butchers.”
Hang on — “Cockney patter”? It has never sounded like anything but a annoying, realistic New Zealand accent to me. Wow, it’s supposed to be British? That is a total fail. And having Aussie John Noble come in to play his father….hm. I was actually confused by the fact that Butcher’s mother sounded British…But otherwise Butcher is pretty one-note this season, and it’s not a particularly interesting note.
Oh yes, he’s doing a “London” accent in the Dick VanDyk mould, as was his aunt. Both pulling this awful “cor blimey” awfulness. They even gave him a bulldog just to really ram home how English he is. I await the moment we learn he was a soccer hooligan in another life.
I assumed that having seemingly having an Australian dad – combined with his English mum – was a way of explaining his bizarre accent.
You always correctly point out this shows flaws. Really, the whole “boys” story this year has not really gelled to any sort of plan, and they seem to be spending this year fleshing out the characters. With Hughie, I believe they have to get back to his vengeance on A-Train, but they have not mentioned it once this season. Butcher is supposed to be rather larger than life by design.I would much rather them start to coalesce around a plan to take out or down a super again rather than just investigating the various shenanigan’s of Vaught. Plus, with the compound V reveal doing absolutely nothing, I am really not seeing how anything they find would really bring down Vaught from a PR standpoint. If they survived supers are created and could expertly spin that, I don’t see what the Boys would reveal that would make a dent. I would rather them be trying to kill the Seven. They throw in a raunchy thing like penis man to distract, but the Boys story this year is really spinning its wheels. Sometimes it is good to have character beats and spinning wheels, but if by the end of this season that is all this season was, I will be a little disappointed.
Its amazing how many people that seem to be millennials turn out to be Nazis.
We’ve known Butcher has always been an asshole deep down and that MM thing is caring for people but it was hard to say what Frenchie was like besides that he had convenient ties to organised crime. And self-destructive streak. It turns out he’s more like MM than either of them would admit – caring too much and drowned with guilt.
By returning to his mission, Cherie and Jay think he’s abandoning them. They leave, and Frenchie never sees Jay again—plus, his hard choice turns out to be for naught, as Jay dies of another overdose just a few months later. I don’t think that they left. Cherie seems to understand in the end that he has to go and agree to wait for Frenchie to come back. He promises to come back. I just don’t think he ever did.Because when after he goes beck tot he party Lamplighter is gone and soon after it turns out he burned Mallory’s grandchildren. and I’m pretty sure Frenchie just goes on a bender abandoning all the people who counted on him. And soon it’s not only Mallory’s grandkids he failed but also Jay. I think this is why he can’t let go of Kimiko. He can’t let go this time. Bad things happen if he does.But of course he can’t be responsible for other people’s actions – it’s made very clear when Lamplighter tries to blame Frenchie for his own sins how shitty that is. And he can’t save everyone – especially not from themselves. and trying to control other people’s life is not going to be met with gratitude. I was happy the episode made him realise that. Frenchie’s reply says it all: “What makes you think I want to be let off the hook?” It’s clear he desperately wants to believe in redemption. It’s why he tries to save Kimiko even when everyone believes she’s evil super terrorist. Tries to help her save her brother. And then even tries to stop Mallory from killing Lamplighter. Because if they can be redeemed maybe so can he.
Apart from the fact that he can’t really speak french, he is one awesome character, and I’ll forgive the non frenchness just for the awesome french rap songs they play when he’s in focus 🙂
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Tomer Capon and the writers infused a character originally written as a joke about French stereotypes into easily my favorite character on the show. This episode was a gift for Frenchie fans, like me. I have said it repeatedly, and I haven’t yet been proven wrong: The Boys has surpassed its source material in every aspect except the number of visible superhero jokes.
I got a “Shining Time Station” notification for this?