Summary: Butcher meets with Mallory who gives him information on Liberty and Becca's location. Butcher gives the information to MM and goes to get Becca. He meets her and they share a night of passion, but she tearfully refuses to run away with him, knowing that he will never accept Ryan. Butcher leaves but he is seen on camera by Black Noir who is after him. MM and Hughie depart to find out about Liberty and Hughie brings a sad Starlight along for the trip. They meet an old African-American lady who witnessed Liberty killing her brother years ago and she has been silenced by Vought. The lady reveals that Liberty is Stormfront. Kimiko is distraught and Frenchie is heavily doing drugs. He tries to kiss her to comfort her but she rejects him. Kimiko tries to attack Stormfront at a rally but Frenchie stops her. A-Train is officially kicked out of The Seven. Homelander publicly outs Maeve as gay on television. He grows increasingly frustrated by Stormfront appealing to the masses better than him. He has an epiphany that he doesn't need people to love him and he kills Doppelganger, who he was having transform into Maddy to play into his fantasies.
The Good: Homelander is still a remarkable character. Edgar describing him as a "man-child" is proving to be extremely accurate with how he behaves so irrationally. He gets so angry over the tiniest, most useless things, and Antony Starr plays him so over-the-top that you seriously consider that he is behaving like a child. Homelander is also proving to be laughably bad at everything corporate. It's amusing to see his "saving America" slogan already being dragged through the mud, and his comments about diversity getting flamed by the media. Furthermore, the way he handled breaking bad news to A-Train was horrifically terrible, and he may have just created an enemy for life with how poorly he dismissed him. Then we add on the creepy fantasy moments with Doppelganger, which he is only able to overcome by outright murdering him. It's interesting that he has listened to Stormfront about not caring about what others' think, but this makes Homelander so much more dangerous now that he is pretty much uninhibited. This character shift was explored well and I'm excited to see where it leads. The road trip is pretty fun. There are some nice, fun moments throughout like the singing scene and Starlight commenting on MM's OCD. I also greatly appreciate that we got a look into MM's backstory, namely why he got into the revenge business, why he still does it despite being so vocal about hating it, and his complex relationship with his father. This was all great stuff, and it's good that other characters like Hughie and Starlight are also able to change their perspective on MM. I hope we get to see these relationships between the characters develop even more than this. Of course the main purpose of the road trip is to have Hughie and Starlight reconnect. Their relationship is well-written and a lot of fun, but it's clear that both are in so much danger that they struggle to stay involved with one another. For as much fun as this road trip was, it's a simple pleasure that they both can't afford to frequent. This melancholy emotion is captured wonderfully by the episode's end. As for the main plot, the Liberty reveal was excellent and I didn't see it coming. I have a million questions about it (see: The Unknown), and I'm curious to see where it leads. I liked Butcher and Becca's brief reunion. Their love for each other was captured brilliantly by the writers and actors, and even though they were in disagreement by the episode's end, I had no doubt in my mind that they still loved each other to death. They clearly accept each other's flaws and love each other unconditionally, but those flaws are preventing them from escaping together. The background comedy was very good. I got a chuckle out of the billboard saying "the baby you abort might be super", which is doubly funny after the Compound V reveal. The memes making fun of Homelander were all very well crafted and I thoroughly enjoyed going back to the episode and pausing to appreciate each and every one. The Bad: This episode is a bit of a mess with how many random events are sprinkled throughout with only a few cohesive stories throughout the episode coming from the road trip, Butcher, and Homelander. I felt the weight of it when watching the episode because I experienced whiplash with how often we would switch over to characters who hadn't done much in the episode but were now positioned in important scenes. It felt like nothing was given enough time to breathe, and the episode was moving forward like a clip show, spontaneously deciding what storyline to visit next. It was honestly quite exhaustive to watch, and with the episode clocking in at 70 minutes, I was feeling burnt out by the end of it. Hell, even structuring this review was a nightmare because of how many little story threads I had to address where I didn't have enough to talk about to write a complete paragraph. Compared to other episodes of the show, this one feels all over the place. Another thing that bothered me in this episode was how unconcerned the main characters were about being discovered. The Boys are all still criminals on the run, even more so now than ever before. So why are they utterly unconcerned with being spotted in public or recognized? Why is there never any fear? It bothered me in quite literally every scene. Hughie and Starlight meet in the quiet emptiness of Central Park at the start of the episode to keep a low profile, but then there are multiple scenes where they casually talk to each other in broad daylight, which is crazy to me. Especially with how Homelander literally just threatened to kill Starlight in the Vought building. This is Homelander! He could be watching or listening from anywhere, and Starlight is stuck in the city where she quite literally just saw him. She has very good reason to suspect that he would be following her, so having her take such big risks to speak with Hughie is incredibly stupid. It's doubly stupid when Starlight's main arc in this episode is how she is anxious and paranoid about everything after what she did. It's hard to buy into that when we don't actually see her being anxious and paranoid at all. Then we have Butcher, who casually breaks into a high-security Vought facility without getting caught. I haven't a clue on how he managed to get into Becca's car without being seen, and I have less of a clue how security did not notice him climb the walls when he clearly made no effort to conceal himself (he literally flips off the camera on the way out). If the characters don't face consequences for being careless like this, it becomes impossible to believe they are actually in danger when the show wants to show us a suspenseful scene. The writing needs to be better than what we are seeing here. Frenchie's storyline came out of nowhere and I did not like it. I'm not sure why he is doing so many drugs all of a sudden. I'm not sure if I missed a character moment last episode, but this felt so random and out of character for him. Even worse was his attempt to kiss Kimiko, which again came right out of nowhere. Having characters behave impulsively and spontaneously like this is not good storytelling, especially when they haven't demonstrated a history of doing that before. I also did not like the convenience of Frenchie tracking down Kimiko in the middle of a crowd to stop her from attacking Stormfront. Does he have superpowers too? The Unknown: Where has Stormfront been since Liberty's disappearance? Why did she disappear? What has she been doing? Why did she re-emerge now? How does she look the same as before? Is she immortal? Was she somehow frozen in time? How is Stormfront connected to what happened to Raynor? Was she the one who killed her? How? Why doesn't Black Noir talk? Why is he after Butcher? What will Butcher do to get Becca back? There's no way that he's just going to give up now and let her be. Why is Deep marrying someone? Who is he going to marry? Where will this story go? What will happen with Elena? How will her life and Maeve's life change after Homelander revealed her sexuality? What's next for A-Train now that he's been kicked out of The Seven? Best Moment: Homelander and Stormfront's brief confrontation was the most engaging scene. Two great actors playing off of each other beautifully while their characters come into conflict. Character of the Episode: Homelander. Conclusion: This episode progressed the story in interesting ways, but it felt like a bit of a mess with there being too many storylines crammed into this one episode. This felt more like a compilation of clips than a cohesive story. Add on some more moments of poor writing, and season 2 continues to be much more inconsistent than season 1. Score: 56
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
March 2024
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