This post discusses plot points of The Boys episode “The Big Ride.”
Started in 2005, during the first Bush administration, the Garth Ennis-penned comics that serve as the source material for Amazon Studios’ adaptation of The Boys were defined by skepticism and distrust. Corporate, military, and bureaucratic interests were increasingly merging together to entertain, distract, and subdue us, and they were using superheroes, “brands made real, brands personified,” to do so, Ennis told Uproxx. Eric Kripke’s first season of The Boys explored the corruption festering under American-flag capes with sneering style and anarchic anger, and the second season pushes that dynamic combination further by introducing an array of new villains. A new member of the Seven, new capitalist overlords, and new religious swindlers embody as much of our current time as Ennis’s original comics represented the immediate-post-9/11 era, and premiere “The Big Ride” reorganizes our familiar players and their shifting alliances.
In the season-one finale, “You Found Me,” the arcs of Homelander (an exceptionally unsettling Antony Starr), the leader of the Seven, and Billy Butcher (a gloriously unhinged Karl Urban), a former CIA operative turned vigilante, collide. Butcher had thought for years that Homelander had raped and killed his wife, Becca (Shantel VanSanten), which caused his vendetta against all superheroes (or “supes”) and the Seven in particular, heroes with whom the rest of the world is obsessed. Homelander had been told by Vought, his employer and the world’s most powerful corporation in managing superheroes (and, it is later revealed, producing them through experimentation with the secret substance Compound V), that Becca had a miscarriage. Both were lied to: Becca and Homelander’s son are both alive, a secret that Homelander’s lover and handler at Vought, vice president Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue), had kept to herself for years.
“Are you telling me that this whole thing is based on fucking feelings?” Homelander had laughed at Butcher when learning of his vendetta, and in typical Homelander fashion, his every move is a dick move. He murders Madelyn by burning his laser eyes into her brain, brings Butcher to where Becca and her son are hiding, and gloats in introducing himself to his son. That was the final scene of “You Found Me,” and in “The Big Ride,” its ramifications are still reverberating outward.
Butcher is still missing, framed by Homelander for Madelyn’s murder. TV reenactments of Madelyn begging Butcher for her life sell the cover-up, and a hotline is established for tips about Butcher’s whereabouts. Meanwhile, his teammates hide out among a Haitian gang, unsure when—or if—Butcher will come back. What now? Weapons dealer Frenchie (Tomer Capon) keeps trying to get Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), the supe they saved from Compound V experiments, to speak. Ops guy Mother’s Milk/M.M. (Laz Alonso) busies himself fixing up injured gang members. And Hughie (Jack Quaid), so much younger and so much more innocent with the rest of the group, drawn into their orbit after Seven member A-Train (Jessie Usher) killed his girlfriend by running through her, spends his days in a funk. He barely sleeps. He listens to a lot of Billy Joel. And he sneaks out to meet Annie (Erin Moriarty), the girl he dated before realizing she was a supe named Starlight, the most recent member of the Seven.
In Butcher’s absence, Hughie is desperate to prove himself, and to step up as a leader—a Harry Potter, or as Frenchie says in his inimitable accent, perhaps a Katniss. And to be fair, the plan he and Annie come up with to steal a sample of Compound V and leak it to the news media (to show that Vought is genetically modifying children into becoming superheroes they then control) is a good one. All Annie, increasingly disillusioned with her Taylor Swift-as-superhero cosplay, needs to do is blackmail Gecko (David Thompson), another supe from her “Capes for Christ days,” who is basically prostituting himself out to an S&M audience. (That scene is extremely fucked up and yet also feels entirely believable in this world, which is a real demonstration of the tonal swings The Boys nails so well.) With Gecko agreeing to get Annie a sample of Compound V, she and Hughie feel like they’re finally one step ahead of Vought—and one step closer to revealing the truth.
Ah, to be that young! To be that innocent! Because what Hughie and Annie are unaware of is how many others, with far more power and influence, have their own motivations regarding Compound V. Homelander think he’s secured a win for the Seven by getting them into the U.S. military, and strong arms former publicist Ashley (Colby Minifie) into being his mole in Vought’s executive branch. (Starr’s Batman-like growl of “Ashley, look at me,” reminded me so much of Glenn Howerton; both actors are phenomenal at switching between casual smugness and blistering rage.) He believes his reign at the top of the Seven is untouchable—until new member Stormfront (Aya Cash) waltzes into the picture, live-streaming her way through her first official appearance and negging Homelander and Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) in the process. When Homefront goes to Vought CEO Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito) to complain about Stormfront and try to gain some leverage, he’s shook by how easily Edgar swats him aside like he’s nothing. To everyone else, Homelander is America’s supe Jesus; to Edgar, he’s a nuisance, and a replaceable one. Vought is a pharmaceutical company, Edgar informs him, and supes are a byproduct—not the end goal. (Is threatening Homelander the right way to go? I would think not, but you don’t cast Esposito in a role post-Breaking Bad that doesn’t utilize his “Fuck off, I own you” energy.)
And Homelander, Edgar, and Vought overall aren’t the only shady actors running around, including the supe terrorist who dropped a boat, killing some of the human traffickers with whom Frenchie was unknowingly working, and who possibly left behind that piece of origami that Kumiko recognizes. And the Church of the Collective, represented by Carol (Jessica Hecht), who seems very much like a cult leader intent on recruiting former Seven member and Annie’s sexual abuser, the Deep (Chase Crawford).
With so many potential enemies, the Boys need a leader—and in through the door saunters Billy Butcher, back at last. “He’s too much of an asshole to die,” the crew had agreed, and they were right. “Daddy’s home,” Butcher smirks, but is he enough?
Stray observations
- Hello! I’ll be reviewing The Boys for you every week. Garth Ennis’s Preacher is my favorite comic but I could never get onboard with the TV show; on the flip side, The Boys in comic book form eventually turned me off, while the show has kept me intrigued. As long as I deactivate the part of my brain that says, “Isn’t this show being on Amazon an inherently hypocritical endeavor, given the nature of Ennis’s frustration with mega-corporations?”, everything will be fine!
- Programming note for you: Recaps for episodes two and three will post at 12 and 1 p.m. CST, respectively, on Saturday, Sept. 5, because Amazon has embargoed certain plot points until then.
- I suppose that Amazon budget, though, allows for flexes like starting your episode with the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy For The Devil.”
- Great sight gag this episode: Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell) using the stuffed bunny to taunt? or maybe play with? the kid in the terrorist safe house.
- The Lava Falls the Deep was drinking looked tasty, and made me want to rewatch Zodiac.
- A-Train update: Still in a coma!
- Quick! Can you name one Ansel Elgort movie and one Alden Ehrenreich movie? Could Annie?
- “Pressure” by Billy Joel, which played during the montage of Annie and Huey getting ready to meet, is actually a bop!
- The Boys is not at all the type of show that gets nominated for, let alone wins, Emmy Awards, but Starr’s clipped, dismissive delivery of “Nope. It’s saving America. It’s Americans that are gonna keep us in the fucking Army, not the fucking world” during that Vought focus group to discuss “super terrorists” vs. “super villains” is better than, say, anything Jason Bateman has ever done on Ozark. Do not at me!
- Mother’s Milk always has the best outfits (especially for a guy hiding out in a basement), and his Black Panthers’ Peoples’ Free Food Program is particularly good.
- Are you a Fresca person or a La Croix person? Which product placement this episode spoke most to you?
- “An extra grand, I’ll let you chop off my dick”—dear reader, I screamed!
- Congresswoman Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) is definitely this show’s stand-in for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but hey, it can’t be worse than how Space Force did it.
- “Ethnic, or female, or fingers crossed, ethnic female!” Ashley is a white feminist, guys!
- Stormfront is from Portland. Note that.
- Homelander warming up Madelyn’s frozen breast milk with his laser eyes, tonguing it, and then chugging it. Do not note that, please forget that, goddamn.
87 Comments
I loved also how they merged the MCU with the DCU. The 7 are the JL, but we saw Daredevil in this episode – had no chance against psychopath Superman – and they spoker about Captain America (called here “Soldier Boy”) during the war. And we got the revelation that Vought is at the same time Disney (movies and TV shows), SHIELD and Hydra (it’s like as if SHIELD and Captain America were created by Red Skull), and a pharmaceutical company.
I agree with you. The comic book became seriously repulsive fairly quickly. The show seems to have toned down Ennis’s excesses to a tolerable level for now.
I mean he rewrote 9/11 in 2005.
See, I think that’s one of the strongest things about the comic. But I appear to be very unusual in that I quit Preacher for roughly the same reasons people quit The Boys, but I read all of The Boys and liked it, with reservations, until the end.
I couldn’t even read the wiki plot summary for the comics I was so grossed out by it, the show definitely captures the evil on a much deeper and more clever level.
Yeah, that show’s gone to some lengths to rein in Ennis’ worst impulses. It always amazes me that that guy loves and respects Superman as much as he does. He can write some great stories…when he decides to come up out of the grime and muck. Such a strange writer. I read The Boys in its entirety when I was younger, enjoyed it a bit for what it was, but season one of this show was an improvement in every way.
I feel like 90% of Garth Ennis’ writing can be summarized by the fact he grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and basically learned to laugh at explosions happening a block away
Still would like to see an appearance by Jamie the hamster.
Yeah they kept the right themes (and I think often grow them out better than the comics did) and toned down the ‘dark and gritty for dark and gritty sake’. It is still dark, it is still morbid, and it is still bleak – but in service of the themes not just because it can.
The comic got really good as of issue 16 and only got better. The show is OK, but nowhere near as good.
Preacher was and remains one of my favorite comics, and I think his run on Punisher MAX is some of the best storytelling that character has had, well, ever; but yeah, Ennis definitely has a bad habit of being very giant-balls-in-a-wheelbarrow (apologies to Bill Hicks) Manly Man in his writing way more often than is healthy or readable.
SPOILERS BELOW, IT IS MY SUPERPOWERI have a doubt…Okay so, Homelander and Blindspot. First, the show unpacks how ridiculous but oh so typical of identity politics appropriated by corporate profit motive it would be to try to shoehorn a “differently abled” superhero into the Justice League……but it’s Daredevil who is a badass and was created and deliberately positioned in a more small-scale and personal universe of TV’s New York’s Hell’s Kitchen (TM) for the purposes of good storytelling, so are you pointing out that Daredevil is orders of magnitude less powerful than Superman because I mean duh that’s point……but then Homelander immediately cripples Blindspot superpower, presumably for life, and not only that because he’s Asshole Superman, Homelander explicitly refutes the claim that “differently-abled” people make just as good superheroes… because that is what he would do, he is a psychopath……but in this context, are we… are we reading this as the show telling us blind people actually AREN’T as “good” as fully-sighted-and-hearing people? Hell no, OBVIOUSLY, the writers they were poking fun at how lame Daredevil would seem if he was in the same room as Superman, and Superman was an asshole, because I mean all you need to do neutralise this blind person is also make them deaf! Ha ha ha ha! It’s edgy! Look at how much blood there is, it’s obviously a cartoon!Does it make a more nuanced point than just having Homelander yeet out a manhole cover from in front of Blindspot so he falls in the sewer and dies? Technically yes!I’ll still watch the season at least twice tho, I mean obviously.
I didn’t really see Homelander’s point though, because if you did the same shit to a regularly abled superhero they would also be out of commission
Not gonna lie I’m extremely curious as to what, but I don’t want to google it in fear of reading serious spoilers. You got a… sanitized example?
The comic book basically had analogues for all of the major published comic book superheroes popular at the time. The world’s version of Xavier was a pedophile who abused all of his ‘children’ and murdered those who were about to expose him. There were other things nearly as repulsive, but that was where I ultimately just bounced off The Boys.
… Yeah that’s a comic I’m definitely going to skip.
To expand on Reglidan’s example Xavier was a pedophile and he also forced the older X-Men to abuse the new recruits too perpetuating the cycle. It was really gross and I almost bounced off it at the same time but I binged it all in one go and then at the end just thought “what the fuck was that I just read”. As another example Hughie in the comic is Scottish and looks like Simon Pegg (that’s why they got him to play the dad) and when he goes back home for a bit he finds out his school friend is trans and she is treated like an enormous joke. Now the comic originally came out between 2005 and 2012 so you might think Ennis has changed a bit but he has a miniseries of the boys coming out at the moment with the exact same style jokes and shit.
Ennis depicts nearly all the superheroes acting in the most depraved and repulsive ways; they’re basically hedonists that rape, kill, and destroy their way across the planet in the most brutal and graphic ways possible. An arc has all of them on a secret island having orgies and snorting dried and ground up menstrual fluid as drugs, as Homelander just on an impulsive whim, destroys an airliner full of innocent people. And that’s not even getting into his version of Batman that is depicted as a sick nympho who fucks a vagina shaped meteorite. Or his version of The Martian who rapes and murders the trans prostitutes in the brothel he frequents. It goes on and on.
For these reasons, Ennis decides that all supers must die in the most horrible, gruesome ways. Butcher and The Boys kill nearly all of them in most depraved and repulsive ways, literally tearing them limb from limb in some cases and showing it in the most graphic way.And its too bad, because there is a great message about corporate greed, government corruption, racism, sexism, and etc in there, but it gets drowned out and muddied up in all of the excessive sex and violence that sometimes gets passed off as humor. I did like the comic by the way and finished it.
I never read the comic, but saw some synopses of it, and it is almost amazing that they even tried to make a show out of this, not alone they really edited the worst bits to get a pretty decent show out of it. It is dark nihilistic stuff
Ennis is a complete douchebag who occasionally has some good ideas that he can’t help but fuck up in execution. Smirking at and outright trolling your readers is trite and played out.This show is an example of how to improve source material.
The first three episodes were pretty fun, but I wasn’t hungry for more at the end of episode 1 and 2, but I liked the time they spent with where everyone is. The end of episode three however, you can tell the shows about to get real intense. Also Aya Cash is amazing, and this role made me miss ytw’s Gretchen up until you realize this gals not quite the loveable fuck up that Gretchen was.
Yeah, I don’t want to provide any spoilers because it wouldn’t be fair to get ahead of the post, but Aya Cash was great with the “Gretchen” vibe until…
Y’know, I believe in a world where Erin Moriarty’s one of the country’s biggest stars.
One of the things that amazes me about random streaming/cable shows is how often they find some random, fairly unknown actor who turns out to be great. Anthony Start is amazing and yes, so is Erin Moriarty (who i mayor may not have a TV crush on.)
Forgot to mention that Aya Cash is another one of those actresses. She was so ridiculously good as Gretchen in Your the Worst that I wondered how come we’ve never seen her before and why wasn’t she getting more roles as well as Emmy nominations for her acting
Antony Starr. Check him out in Banshee, a crazy, violent, fascinating show.
If you think Anrhony Starr is random and unknown, you need to seek out “Banshee” post haste. It’s bug fuck nuts.
To be fair, it may not have been a rating smash but Starr has already been the lead in a series – Banshee.
…which was super duper awesome.
I’m working my through it now, so to me it *is* super duper awesome!The ‘sheriff’s’ track record with the ladies is so outlandish it’s verging on a running joke.
It’s a great, great show. In my top 10.
At least the premiere also answered the fate of Madelyn’s baby. How did the baby get so far away?
I appreciated that they cleared up the fate of Madelyn’s baby. I wonder if Butcher will ever admit he was willing to blow up a baby (and himself) in a futile attempt to hurt Homelander?Now that Annie’s got some fashion wigs, she needs to take a few lessons from The Americans and invest in some funky covert ops wigs.
I’ll always star an Americans wig reference.
I’ll always star an Americans reference.
I’m 3 seasons deep into The Americans rewatch – those were some bad wigs. Not as bad as Arrowverse wigs but bad nonetheless
I didn’t feel like he was attempting to harm Homelander with a bomb. He probably knew it wouldn’t do shit. BUT, he would rather die in an explosion than let Homelander have the satisfaction of killing him, babies be damned.
Hmmm, that does make sense.
Well, these were the best 3 episodes of the show. The satire is much sharper this time around, and it’s clearly committed to exploring its character dynamics with as much tension as possible. Though the lingering taste of the excellent third episode might be swaying me a bit, I think we’re in for a much stronger show this season.
Halfway through Homelanders eulogy I was already laughing uncontrollably.I love the blood guts and gore but the satire in the show and black comedy is right up there. The way Mr Edgar and the others were deciding the fate of the country in their ivory tower while taking food orders. Mr Edgar’s talk with Homelander and then Homelanders marketing sit in were my favourite scenes. Hilariously applicable to and very accurate to our own circumstances.Happy that ‘Ashley’ is back, thought she was an underrated in the first season despite the small role. Things ticked over nicely and I was glad for more introspection from the characters..The show has alot of style but there is alot of substance too.
Translucent’s empty glass coffin (they have to presume he’s lying there- we know he was blown to bits) is a hilarious visual. As were fans’ old pics and selfies with a disembodied costume.
Out of sight, never out of mind. There was a little dent in the coffin floor to give off the perception he was laying there.
Don’t forget the slide shows of his childhood, including what I thought was a photo of his bar mitzvah
“Is threatening Homelander the right way to go?”I think Homelander has just enough awareness (at least for now) to know that if he fries Mr Edgar, it won’t help him because like Lee Marvin in Point Blank, there’s always someone higher up the tree at Vought and he can’t just keep killing everyone without repercussions that will cost even him dearly.Still, you’d need to have nerves of steel and then some to deal directly with an increasingly unhinged Homelander just in case he loses his mind far enough to not be thinking about consequences because even that’s not going to help you personally if he loses it in the moment.So that’s why you cast Giancarlo Esposito to sell just that.
if he fries Mr Edgar, it won’t help him because like Lee Marvin in Point Blank, there’s always someone higher up the tree at Vought Also because Mr Edgar is presumably getting used to it by now.
This might be dumb and it’s coming someone who’s never read the comic books but I find Homelander in the tv show to be fascinating because he is basically, as he says, a god. He’s so powerful that he can basically do whatever he wants at any given moment. So the usual tough talk TV drama scenes have this added element (especially when he’s talking to a non-supe) that he really could instantaneously kill the person he’s talking to and get away with it. So, for Giancarlo Esposito’s character to turn around and coolly stand up to Homelander like that takes incredible balls. He’s one of the few villain on cable/streaming services that truly lives up to all the tough talk.
I’m sure I’m reading too much into this, but this also strikes me as an analogue to any POC interacting with a cop. I can easily buy that the dark-skinned Edgar has had plenty of experience staying cool in the face of aggressive, sociopathic white men who can kill him on a whim with no real fear of repercussions. It’s the end-form of the concept of ‘cool’ which is based on black people HAVING to be calm when dealing with the white oppressive overclass – and one more part of black culture cheerfully co-opted by whites.
Actually and i;m downright surprised, but yes i canBaby DriverSolo: A Star Wars StoryNow, do Dylan McDermott and Dermot Mulroney!
Minor correction (but funny!):
When Homefront goes to Vought CEO Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito) to complain about Stormfront and try to gain some leverage, he’s shook by how easily Edgar swats him aside like he’s nothing.
I personally want to hear someone mock the two characters together by saying Stormlander, myself.
Isn’t this show being on Amazon an inherently hypocritical endeavor, given the nature of Ennis’s frustration with mega-corporations?So which network or streaming service should this air on that isn’t owned by a mega-corporation, pray tell?
I get your point, but Amazon seems like the ickiest option one could choose for such a message.
Isn’t this show being on Amazon an inherently hypocritical endeavor, given the nature of Ennis’s frustration with mega-corporations?Ennis devotes what feels like HALF AN ISSUE of The Boys to the time Huey went down on Starlight who had not realised she was starting her period, so he answered the door to Butcher and the others the next morning after a few hours sleep and… ha ha you guys… his beard was bright red!That’s definitely a thing that happens, Garth Ennis saw a woman in a book once, at least he was pretty sure it was a women, she had a woman’s name. Look at how good I can draw tits now.And of course, despite drawing Huey’s face covered in menstrual fluid, the dialogue has Starlight (or Annie in that context I guess) saying “Giggle! Looks like we had a bit of a… timing issue!”RICK MYALL VOICE: They’re called Peawiods, Vyvyan, and evwybody has them!My point being that Garth Ennis and his anti-corporate sensibilities can get fucked… ON HIS PERIOD! ZINGA!
That’s certainly . . .a response
that was your point?!
Oh WOW. HEAVY.
UHF?
you don’t cast Esposito in a role post-Breaking Bad that doesn’t utilize his “Fuck off, I own you” energy.What I don’t get is why a man of color like Stan Edgar seems to be so indifferent about creating superhuman white nationalists like Homelander and Stormfront in the first place? Even if he couldn’t care less what happens to any other people of color, you’d think he would be at least a little concerned that at least two racists could fry him with lightning or heat vision.
What I don’t get is why a man of color like Stan Edgar seems to be so indifferent about creating superhuman white nationalists like Homelander and Stormfront in the first place?Imma gonna say… money.
That’s what I was thinking watching him on screen. He knows and doesn’t really care what Homelander and Stormfront say or believe because they make the company and by extension him a lot of money.
Sure, they have superpowers, but he too wields a sort of power over them as well. Sorta like his company can always create a new Homelander if need be, and raise them to be more compliant and less of a dipshit than the current.
And I’m gonna also say he seems like the sort of careful and prepared fellow who may have an insurance policy or even an “insurance policy” prepared for this sort of eventuality.
I would imagine that having white nationalists as your bitches would be fairly gratifying to a powerful, evil person of color.
I’m assuming it’s the same energy that gets people to vote for the Leopards Eating Faces party thinking that they won’t be one of the people getting their faces eaten.
Read the original comics to understand why. But to simply sum up, he didn’t create them. The corp did. He just manages them and keeps them under control.
He reminds me of Obama. A person of color who has been responsible for some major war crimes. But hey: America, am I right, fellas?
More than likely Edgar his some secret superpower or ability to neutralize Homelander threats. He was way too calm in that exchange.
I am just sad they are going to go the SJW route and eventually have Stormfront buttfuck the Depp for asking Starlight to suck his dick. Someway the girls are getting payback. And what is worse, telegraphing having Kimoko kill Stormfront with her just standing around while she killed her brother and the 5 minute stare at the end. And making it obvious the only one that can kill Homelander is his son. Still, the show is entertaining as fuck, as a good Super Villian™ like Homelander makes the show.
Zombie Herman Cain comes to mind.
You could say the same about Elisabeth Shue’s character, she was very indifferent to the sexual abuse women were being subjected to under her watch. I think it’s the commentary that often times marginalized people view money as a way as “buying into male whiteness.” If they play by the rules white men created and play them better they think they will get something out it. But at the end of the day they only get something out of it as a individual and eventually these same white men will just change the rules to continue to marginalize. Changing the rules completely is the only real way to win.
The history of black people and other POC, particularly those at the higher echelons of money power, supporting white supremacy: from Kanye West to Candace Owens to Condoleeza Rice to Colin Powell, is pretty well established
I think it’s just too bleak, without enough genuine entertainment. Maybe i’m just too defeated by the world rn to enjoy it, but I like plenty of other dark entertainment, so I dunno.
It’s certainly a dark, cynical world view but it’s punctuated by moments of dark humor. That’s what keeps it watchable for me
For me it’s that and also the fact that they’ve done such a great job of showing the humanity of the main crew (Not so much with Butcher though). Huey is a given, but they’ve succeeded in making MM, Frenchy, and Kimiko characters you really want to see succeed and find some kind of happiness.
Stay away from the comics, then. And not just because it was written by Garth Ennis. According to the comments here, the show toned a lot of the stuff down.
Are you a Fresca person or a La Croix person? Which product placement this episode spoke most to you?
Ha. With a gun to my head, Fresca, I ‘spose. But the sparkling water brand I prefer is Clear American. They have fun flavors like Cotton Candy!
Those look like a ripoff of the classic Canadian beverage from the 90s Clearly Canadian. Even the name sounds bootleg (or was Clearly Canadian the knockoff???)
Without Madelyn Homelander is now stuck even more between being explicitly a fascist lunatic who could make everyone everywhere do whatever he wants, but also still cowtowing to public perception at times.
I really liked how they made sure we remember everything about The Seven and Vought Superheroes is fake. From the funeral being one big lie – that’s not how Trasluscent died, he is not in that coffin and Starlight certainly doesn’t meant this song – to Annie taking Starlight off – from breast pads to hair it’s all fake.
And then Annie walking around the city surrounded by the fake, overly-sexualised image of herself also reminding us superheroes are just a way to sell more products – from perfumes to war. And in the end Edgar and Homelander also remind us that the superheroes themselves are a product too.
And even superpowers and psychopathy aren’t enough to free yourself from capitalism. Even Homelander can’t break free. Even the good guys have to resort to blackmail. And even government officials can’t dictate the contract or survive clean-up operation.
Quick! Can you name one Ansel Elgort movie and one Alden Ehrenreich movie?
Baby Driver. Solo. Unfortunately, I can name even more for Ansel as I remeber who he is due to the fact he was playing Shailene Woodley brother (in Divergent series) and love interest (Fault in Our Stars) at the same time and it felt weird. Naming second for Alden is beyond me though.
Cohen brothers movie with George Clooney: “Hail, Caesar!”. He’s the cowboy actor who can’t get the one line right.
I also know he is in the new Brave New World but that’s a TV series not a movie.
“Would that it were so simple.”
Baby Driver. Solo.
Fucking phenomenal beginning. Love this show
The premiere should win an Emmy for not using “The Boys are Back In Town.”
Stormfront is also the name of probably the biggest white-nationalist website.
“Starr’s Batman-like growl of “Ashley, look at me,” reminded me so much of Glenn Howerton”It gave me Joker in Dark Knight vibes. I dunno if there’s just something inherently terrifying about a crazed white guy shouting “Look at me!”
“is better than, say, anything Jason Bateman has ever done on Ozark.”So we just randomly taking shots at Bateman now?
I like that Homelander’s casual maiming/killing of the Daredevil analog was not even mentioned. Who cleans up those messes?But by far my favorite wierdness about this episode, and S2 so far, is that the Boys are _the most wanted people in America_ and their photos are literally everywhere and they have made exactly zero effort to change their appearances. Who trained Butcher in spycraft? Anyone?
The Translucent memorial song was great.
After being fired for Starlight’s insubordination, Ashley Barrett is
surprisingly installed as Vought’s new VP. That makes her akin to a
comic book writer. In addition to wearing vibrant clothes, her new
initiative is to fill the empty slots on The Seven with more diverse
supes to broaden appeal. Homelander, in the role of the title’s editor,
violently kiboshes this & makes it clear she’s only to be his
puppet. This is also reflective of fans being outraged by “forced”
diversity both on & behind the page. (Or perhaps they really do
understand that if opportunities aren’t made for more diverse creators
& characters there won’t be any.) Executives often prioritize short
term sales boost stunts, represented by Mr. Edgar installing Stormfront,
to meaningful diversity initiatives.