20220709-boys_season_3.txt
Spoilers, obviously.

I've been watching The Boys on Amazon. Season 3's finale was posted on
Friday, and I was disappointed, but not just because of the finale.

So the season involves accidentally rescuing Soldier Boy (Captain
America + Superman + intense nationalism) from Russians holding him.
His big thing now is that he can remove a superhuman's powers. That's
actually a good twist. There's various investigation and frankly way
too much poking fun at the "real world" of politics and social justice
and other nonsense with absolutely no subtlety at all. TV shows are
supposed to provide an escape. Movies, too, unless they're
specifically going to cover certain subjects. The Boys just doesn't
understand or doesn't care about subtlety. There were a ton of gross
moments, too. I've watched A Serbian Film and feel like most of that
movie was easier to watch than the shrinking man's misadventures.
What's worse is it's pointless. At least A Serbian Film was supposed
to be brutal and you knew what you were getting. They finally added
female nudity but it was terrible. All the nudity in The Boys seems to
be for shock value and nothing else. It's just not great or fun to
watch. I mean I guess that kind of stuff has been there all along, but
this time it was worse.

The characters are mostly just getting worse. Ryan is a fucking idiot.

Homelander is one of the few that stays relatively the same. Butcher
goes nuts and actually gets superpowers despite hating superhumans...
and now he becomes one in the name of killing Homelander. It's hard to
fucking care about Hughie and Starlight's relationship. Starlight
seems even more in the background now.

She finally uses her powers in the finale, but that's about it. She
might as well be a normie for 7 of 8 episodes. Hughie takes temporary
V, too, and can teleport himself and other people but not clothes. I
don't really care all that much. It has little to do with the plot
other than a few rescues. Mother's Milk (MM) hates his ex-wife's new
husband who is a total douche nozzle. MM might be the best character.
He (kind of) avenges his family's death to Soldier Boy (who is
defeated but doesn't die at the end of the season).

Kimiko loses her powers and gets them right back. Frenchie might as
well have not existed. There was a storyline involving a Russian
mafiosa and them that doesn't really go anywhere besides sending them
both to the hospital. There's an annoying amount of musical numbers,
especially with Kimiko. Black Noir is terrified of Soldier Boy and
runs away, talks to his cartoon imaginary friends which gives us the
backstory of Soldier Boy's abduction, and then comes back to
Homelander only to be slaughtered by Homelander (supposedly as we
don't see any fight and Homelander simply says he's dead). And Maeve
was trapped to be a breeding machine for Homelander.

I'm forgetting stuff. Starlight's ex-boyfriend is trying out for the
Seven and Homelander kills him to send a message to Starlight. It kind
of backfires and Starlight ends up quitting. Vaught's CEO or president
or whatever is arrested or something and Homelander kind of runs
Vaught. The CEO's daughter is a head-popping superhuman that is
playing the political game hard and seemingly winning.  It's just such
a mess of a season with too many storylines and at the same time quite
a bit of boringness to make sure you don't care at all. Butcher is a
moron and alienates Ryan, causing Ryan to go with Homelander as his
new family.

A-Train kills a racist superhuman who kills and over-patrols minority
areas.

It's dumb. He gets the other guy's heart so he can run again. There is
just so much crap that you can't give a darn about most of it. There's
very little for me to get behind despite the fact that I've been
watching it for 3 years now.