This show was interesting to watch because of the content of the storyline. The Boys was a show that demonstrated how superheroes can also be evil and that it exists within everyone. There was a group of regular people that were affected by these superheroes which ultimately led to the genre moving away from it’s conventions. This show contained action, comedy, drama and of course this was a superhero genre as well. A review from the New York Times summarized this fact when they stated, “The visual takeaway is still people in tights who can fly and shoot lasers out of their eyes, the wrinkle being that we’re rooting for the guy fighting back with his wits and a crowbar” (Hale). In each episode, there are different storylines, but together, this quote summarizes it. The superheroes are actually the villains in this story. Since this is part of the whole plot, there are elements of postmodernism that are very visible to the audience. Each episode is different in terms of what happens, but they connect well enough to keep you hanging. 

For the first episode, it started off with main superheroes or as they’re called, Supes, on a rescue mission and resolved the issue quickly. Everyone was admiring them for their kindness in saving the day. Then it transitioned to the main character, Hughie Campbell, who is seen as this weak guy who doesn’t want to stand up for himself. His girlfriend was the one always telling him to stand up for himself by asking for a raise and being more independent. They clearly show that they’re in love. Everything was okay and Hughie was starting to take action for the sake of his own life. Then everything changed out of nowhere when he was talking with his girlfriend outside. She was slightly on the road when a superhero with the ability to move fast named A-Train, ran into her which turned into an extremely graphic scene to watch. Hughie began to feel this great resentment after this Supe did nothing but offer an apology. Hughie was contacted by this guy named Billy Butcher who was also affected by the main Supe of them all, the Homelander. They wanted to get revenge, but Hughie was hesitant. 

The second episode was about capturing a Supe named Translucent and Hughie making the decision to kill him off or not. Another main character named Starlight was introduced as a new edition to the Seven which consist of the main superheroes that were controlled by Vought International. Starlight was a girl with a big dream to be in it. Everything she thought it would be, turned out to be wrong. She was sexually abused by The Deep whose powers are controlling water. There were several stories going on in every episode. It ended with Hughie killing the Supe. For the third episode, you can see that Homelander, the main Supe, had one weakness and it was wanting affection and attention from the vice president of Vought. Hughie was still trying to find ways of getting revenge with Butcher against A-Train. He knew that A-Train was using a drug to make him faster than other people with his powers, so he wanted to expose him. Meanwhile, Starlight was expected to change her image to a more celebrity style which she detested. For the fourth episode, the boys which consist of Hughie, Butcher, and this smart man named Frenchie, were still trying to find evidence of A-Train’s drug use, but it started to turn into something more. While they were finding the source of the drug, they found this girl with powers so strong that no one could get past her. She killed everyone she saw. They tried catching her because Frenchie felt like she was more than a murderer. Also, Homelander and Queen Maeve let a plane crash because the pilots died. This is where you can see there careless and villain side. Queen Maeve felt awful because she really did want to be a hero, but they can only save if it’s in the interests of the company. 

For the fifth episode, Hughie goes to a Christian gathering where a famous pastor named Ezequiel will preach the gospel. He goes just to get closer to the Supes to know more about this drug that enhances their superpowers like steroids. He finds out that this pastor knows about these drugs and has handled them. Hughie also started hanging out with Starlight after recognizing her as a regular citizen. He was trying to use her as a way to get information, but he ends up really liking her because she isn’t a regular Supe with bad intentions. For the sixth episode, since Starlight exposed The Deep for sexually assaulting her in the last episode, there was a wave of hate towards him. He had to apologize, but the managers were angry at her for starting ‘drama’. In this episode, we also find out that the girl that killed everyone in her way actually had a sad backstory that sounds suspicious about the Supes and this drug. In addition, we find out that the Homelander never had a family and grew up being surrounded by scientists constantly experimenting on his body. Towards the end, we see that Hughie ends up falling in love with Starlight as they kiss in a bar. For the seventh episode, we see that Butcher is very resentful towards the Homelander because his wife cheated on him with that Supe. He will stop at nothing to somehow face him. Starlight found out that Hughie was behind Transulent’s murder. Meanwhile, Hughie faced A-Train after he was basically the reason why A-Train had to kill his girlfriend. The next important part was that Homelander found out that Butcher’s ex-wife was not dead, but somewhere taking care of their child. Apparently, she was pregnant with Homelander’s child, so she had to disappear from the map. The episode ended up Starlight being angry with Hughie and telling him that she didn’t want to see him anymore. 

Episode eight was the last one of the season. Basically, Starlight found out that her powers didn’t come from evolution and she wasn’t exactly born with it. All Supes were created by scientists with a special drug that is injected inside newborn babies. Parents make the decision and pay for this injection for their child. Starlight felt like she was no longer special, but just a guinea pig who has been lied to. She confronted her mother for lying to her. Another thing that happened was that Hughie made up with Starlight. In the midst of this, he had to rescue his friends, Frenchie and Mother’s Milk, one of the Boys, from prison after being detained being part of Transulent’s murder. Then, Starlight fought A-Train which ended up in him having a heart attack. After this scene, Butcher cornered Homelander in the home of his lover, the vice president of Vought. He placed bombs on her and held the device to set it off. Homelander risked the life of the vice president’s baby without caring and killed the lady himself to prove to Butcher that he didn’t have a weakness. Butcher pressed the button and set an explosion. He woke up on a yard and when he got up, he saw his wife’s son get out to see Homelander in front of the yard. He then told the boy that he was his father. Butcher had a confused look and only said his wife’s name and that is how it ended. 

It is important to talk about the production information which includes the show's creators, cast, and popularity. Originally, this movie was actually a comic that was created by Garth Emnis and Darick Robertson. The person who developed it was Eric Kripke who worked for Amazon. This all happened in 2016 when Cinemax decided to make a series of this show. Executive producers such as Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen were part of making this TV series. There were about nine producers in total. As for the co-executive producers, Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson actually had the job because they were the original creators of the story.  The producer was Hartley Gorenstein along with editors such as David Kaldor and Nona Khodai. The camera set-up was actually single-camera. There were not multiple set up. The production companies that handled this series were mainly Sony Pictures Television, Amazon Studios, and Original Film. As for the cast, there was quite a variety of characters to make up this story. The main character was Jack Quaid as Hughie Campell. He was the one with the girlfriend who was killed by A-Train. The next character is Karl Urban as Billy Butcher who is basically the guy that tells the Boys what to do. He hates Homelander for being the reason why his wife disappeared. He hates all of the Supes. Erin Moriarty played Starlight who was the new edition of the Seven. Her only intentions were to only to do good for the world and use her powers for genuine kindness. The Seven was made up of Antony Starr as Homelander, Dominique McElligott as Queen Maeve, Jessie T. Usher as A-Train, Chance Crawford as The Deep, Alex Hassell as Translucent and Nathan Mitchell as the Black Noir. Another important set of characters would be the Boys, of course. Hughie and Butcher are part of it. The ones that I didn’t mention as much were Laz Alonso as Mother’s milk who wanted to leave the group for the sake of his family’s safety and Tomer Capon as Frenchie who acts with no mercy, but for the right reasons. Karen Fukuhara who played Kimiko was also part of the Boys technically, but she was more of a mystery that needed to be solved since she didn’t communicate directly. The last character that impacted the storyline was Elisabeth Shue who played Madelyn Stillwell, the vice president of Vought International.

As for popularity, this show was really advertised all over the place. Because it was shown on Amazon Prime, they were able to advertise it by making the first 6 months free to students. The hype was quite big for all of the new up-coming shows at the time that The Boys came out. Once it did come out, critics jumped at making reviews. Forbes came out with an article saying that, “As it currently stands, The Boys has an 8.9/10 rating on IMDB. This makes the 36th highest rated series in TV history on the site, but perhaps more importantly, it is both Amazon’s highest rated series and the highest rated superhero show on TV, including all the Marvel and DC universe series” (Tassi). This is all based on votes from the audience. The show was pretty popular when it came out due to how much it was advertised. Also, the show was different compared to most superhero movies which grabbed the attention of superhero lovers. 

My critical approach to this series is based on the structure, story, genre, context and the orientation towards the whole aspect of the show. I can see that it really tried to be different from other superheroes. They were able to accomplish this through the critical approach I am taking. I’m looking at the way the story flows and how the characters approach each other as well as their own identity. The questions that I think best analyze this show include talking about the way scenes build upon one another. The connections between the scenes are of great importance, too. For the story and genre, it is too apparent to ignore the conventions that make up the genres of this story. The audience’s expectations are surrounded on standard superhero plots, but this story is different from most. The question on whether there are heroes or villains is really not a question because it’s a superhero movie. The interesting part of this question would be identifying the stages of hermeneutic code. There is definitely an enigma, a delay, and of course a resolution. The context of this show is another thing to keep in mind especially when talking about the societal and cultural values of the show. With the Supes always being in the spotlight, the program has to find a way to either challenge or reinforce the values. The characters and events in the program sometimes reflect real people and events when it comes to resentment, betrayal, and friendship. The last aspect that I thought about was the critical orientation I have about the relationships in the program. I found some to be intriguing, such as the relationship between Homelander and the vice president. Now, I will be explaining these aspects in depth. 

The structure involves talking about how the scenes build upon one another. Episode one ended with Hughie getting attacked by Translucent, the invisible man, in the store where he was working in. He was practically saved by Butcher. In the next episode, Hughie was fleeing from the whole scene with Butcher in seek of help from another guy. This created the Boys because they were helping each other flee and outsmart Vought. Each episode started off where it ended. Therefore, it was good to binge watch because there were connections between each scene accordingly. It was like there were cliffhangers all of the time. The most intense one was the last episode because it left you in shock after realizing that Homelander was the father of Butcher’s wife’s child. 

The story and genre of this show is shown through the conventions of the genre. The genre is action, drama, superhero, and comedy. The conventions for actions include violence, on-going plot and a lot of things happening at the same time. Drama is all about emotions, excitement and unexpected series of events. Comedy is all about comic relief, laughter and expecting funny reactions from the audience. Superhero is about villains and good guys having a problem between each other which risk the fate of the world, the environment or people’s lives in general. The general conventions of a superhero show are all about them being great and for the people. The Boys does not do that. The superheroes are actually villains who don’t care about anyone, but themselves. They only want what’s best for them. They also save for the benefit of Vought. Other than that, they think they’re entitled to the joys of life because they’re superior. The Deep showed this twisted side when he harassed Starlight by threatening her position in the Seven:“‘...at least until the hero she’s loved most since childhood, the Deep (Chace Crawford), unzips his pants and makes clear that Starlight is expected to perform actions in addition to saving people from burning buildings. Superheroes are disgusting is the bottom line there.” (Vanarendonk). Starlight thought the Supes were good people with genuine good intentions. In this show, the humans are the ones trying to stop them from abusing their power. The boys are the superheroes.  Just as the Collider put it, “But even the worst parts come with a sense of wish fulfillment; as awful as it is to see and recognize a world run by all-powerful assholes, it’s thrilling when you realize The Boys is really about how ordinary people can fight back” (Mancuso). The main hero for this show is Hughie. He wants to avenge his girlfriend’s life after being wrongly murdered on accident. If only A-Train expressed true guilt, then a lot of things could’ve been avoided such as discovering that the Supes are not something natural, but created by scientists. Hughie is not your average hero either. He's a scared, weak human who doesn’t know how to cope with his actions properly. He’s always afraid to stand up for himself. From the beginning, he didn’t even want to ask for a deserved raise. Yet, throughout the show, his confidence and bravery levels increase to get revenge and justice. 

The stages of the hermeneutic code are quite visible for this TV series. The first one is the enigma. This develops throughout the story, but at first it’s about what would Hughie do after A-Train killed his girlfriend. The delay would be all of the events after such as capturing Translucent and killing him. This made a problem for Hughie and the boys because they had to flee from being discovered. There were a bunch of other plots happening such as realizing that the Supes were a product of a chemical in their blood injected when they were babies. A RollingStone’s article put it this way:  “Who, it should be noted, aren’t the squeaky clean heroes everyone thinks they are. And given that the team’s press liason Madelyn Stillwell… needs to squash rumors about a mystery “steroid for supes” causing P.R. problems, the squad has a license to do whatever it takes to keep the opposition quiet” (Fear). Also, finding out Kimiko’s backstory and the way Hughie would handle his relationship with Starlight. Another delay would be Butcher’s revenge plan for the disappearance of his wife. He blamed it all on Homelander when in reality there was more than that. The resolution would be that Hughie was finally able to confront A-Train and realized that he didn’t want to kill him after making him kill his girlfriend since she told them about this steroid drug. They were even at that point. Butcher was able to confront Homelander, but he ended up seeing his wife in a home, raising Homelander’s son. 

The context of the story that stood out was the way the program challenged mainstream societal and cultural values. There were many times that this occurred. For example, when Homelander let a plane crash, the audience was shocked that a superhero allowed this to happen. Queen Maeve wanted to do something about it, but for the sake of Vought, she couldn’t do anything to ruin their reputation by saving only one girl on the plane. Culturally, the program mocked Christian principles which play a big part in many American’s lives. They knew the audience contained people with these principles, but they still challenged it by making the pastor gay and fake. He did not practice what he preached and was into drugs as well. The characters and events in the program most certainly reflected real people and events. There was a lot of betrayal to think about such as when The Deep harassed Starlight. Everything she thought about the Supes was destroyed. Her mother lied to her about the way she got her powers. She thought God gave them to her when in reality, it was just a drug they put inside her when she was a baby. Then, she also found out that Hughie was using her to get closer to the Supes for revenge. Also, Butcher thought his wife was killed, but in reality she had a lovechild with Homelander and was hidden from the world. With all this, there is a lot of resentment involved. Starlight was angry at her mother. In the real world, a lot of parents tend to keep secrets from their kids to only reveal them later in life. Another example of resentment was Hughie’s view of the Supes after his girlfriend was murdered by A-Train. He was a big fan of him and other Supes. When someone admires someone else and then that person does wrong to someone they love, there can be a deep resentment. Some people live with that feeling for a long time and never overcome it. There are a lot of friendships that formed. Hughie and the boys develop this relationship with each other to have their backs. When Frenchie and Mother’s Milk are in jail, Hughie was not about to let them face the consequences by themselves. He was determined to save them. 

The next part is the critical orientation that I have towards this show. The relationships I found intriguing were between Homelander and the vice president as well as between Homelander and Queen Maeve. Homelander’s weakness was thought to be his love for the vice president. In reality, he just liked to be babied around by her because he never had an actual family. At the end, he ended up killing her which questioned his actual feelings for her. He did give hints that he hated her for controlling him when he had the power to kill her in less than a second. As for Homelander and Queen Maeve, he controlled her from being an actual hero. Of course, she was also controlled by Vought. But in one scene, he made her get close to him as if they were a couple in front of many fans. She had to listen to him to maintain her status. This speaks loud for females because males tend to shut down women from being themselves by threatening their statuses just like the Deep threatened Starlight.

This show was quite interesting to watch. I analyzed each episode twice and I tried to get the most out of them. It was quite a ride and it contained so much information in each episode. The most important scenes were talked about in this essay. I feel that this show was really all about exposing the truth and letting people know that the people we most admire are sometimes the worst. They keep this high profile in front of regular people, but behind the scenes, they are something else. This program was an interesting one and I’d recommend it so far. I would definitely watch the second season to shorten this up. 

Works Cited

Fear, David. “'The Boys' Review: What If Superheroes Broke Bad (Again)?” Rolling Stone, 26 

July 2019

Hale, Mike. “Review: 'The Boys' Deconstructs the Superhero, With a Light Touch.” The New 

York Times, The New York Times, 26 July 2019.

Mancuso, Vinnie. “'The Boys' Review: Amazon's Razor-Sharp Superhero Satire Is 'Watchmen' 

for a New Age.” Collider, 24 Sept. 2019, 

Tassi, Paul. “'The Boys' Is Amazon's Highest Rated Original Series Ever On IMDB.” Forbes, 

Forbes Magazine, 9 Aug. 2019

VanArendonk, Kathryn. “The Boys Transcends the Dark, Gritty Superhero Slog.” Vulture, 

Vulture, 26 July 2019