Summary: Maeve is forced to do pride awareness scenes in the movie courtesy of Homelander. Angry with him, Maeve goes to meet Deep with a plan to bring down Homelander. Ashley contacts Homelander when a video leaks of him killing an innocent in a poor village, with the public claiming he is a war criminal. Homelander is furious about this and goes to a protest where he tries to make a grand speech, but the crowd is not receptive of it. Homelander almost kills them all, but is able to control himself and leaves. Homelander goes to Stormfront for help and she improves his PR. Later, they hook up. Kimiko is doing paid murders for Cherie, upsetting Frenchie. Butcher calls Hughie and says he is retiring, and he goes to see his aunt and his dog. MM and Hughie track him down to help him get back to normal and they learn that Becca refused to come back with him. Black Noir arrives, and together they hatch a plan to defeat him. Butcher is able to call him off by threatening to leak images of Ryan to the public, leading to Edgar telling Black Noir to let Butcher live. Starlight looks through Stormfront's laptop to find more information but she's caught. Stormfront tells her that she knows she leaked the information on Compound V.
The Good: Homelander continues to be the best thing about this show. The entire opening sequence with him is masterful, perfectly showing us what happens when he is in control. In season 1, Maddy was able to reign Homelander in, so he was beloved in the community without even a hint of controversy. But now that Homelander is in full control, he's successfully tanked his reputation in just five episodes. The cell phone video of him accidentally killing an innocent is hilarious (complete with a small moment of him expressing disgust at being in a third world country). Add on his hilarious reaction when Ashley shows him the footage ("so they're all starving but one of them's got a f*cking cellphone"), and it's a literally perfect encapsulation of everything wrong with this sociopath. But on top of that, it's just a really funny scene. Of course, Homelander rapidly goes off the rails when he sees how bad his reputation is now. His failed speech to the protestors is a standout moment, complete with a horrific imagined massacre (see: Best Moment). It builds up perfectly to Homelander sacrificing his pride and accepting help from Stormfront so that he can get his reputation back. Of course one thing leads into another and the episode ends with a laughably over-the-top supe sex scene that is simultaneously gross and hilarious. Basically, "The Boys" in a nutshell. Butcher's story is quite good as well. I don't think that he ever would have imagined that Becca would not want to be with him anymore, so he takes it quite hard and debates leaving everything behind. But he has friends who will stand by him, and Hughie and MM refuse to let him take the easy way out; Butcher's going to keep fighting because it is quite literally the only thing he knows how to do (evidenced by Judy's comments about him). I really liked this story because it was a natural way to reveal more about Butcher's backstory. He went to visit his family (and his dog, amusingly named "Terror") specifically because he was in a bad place, so this was the right time to explore what makes him tick, and having Hughie and MM learn more about him also makes them view him in a different light. Hughie understands now that Butcher does care about him, and this seems to have fixed their relationship. What makes this story better than last episode's road trip has to be the involvement of Black Noir and Judy. Yes, this is a good story, but it also manages to be extremely funny because of Judy's character, and extremely tense since Black Noir is patiently waiting to kill Butcher. The eventual confrontation is dramatic and exciting, and it made for a great climax to the episode. The reveal that Edgar views everything through Black Noir was a good one, and it was engaging to see him make the decision to spare Butcher to prevent another Vought catastrophe. The rest of the episode has several other good aspects. I loved the satire of the MCU with the "Dawn of the Seven" movie being a clear parody of "Avengers", pointing out how ridiculous and cheesy those movies are. I got a lot of laughs out of the scenes on set. Starlight continues to grow in interesting ways. She is much better at lying than she was before, and her brief confrontation with Stormfront at the end was very intense. Frenchie and Kimiko are relegated to the background, but it was sad to see Frenchie finally give up on her out of frustration when he sees her choosing to go down a dark path. Lastly, have to point out the several fantastic little things that I enjoyed. The dialogue was very good in this episode. Judy telling Hughie he's holding Terror's "f*ck pig" is great, as is Butcher calling Black Noir "gimp c*nt" and then later giving his dog a Homelander doll with the instructions of "f*ck it". Line delivery is everything for these moments. I was also amused by Stormfront's drink being labeled "Storefront", a fantastic subtle joke. And I have to credit the directing for focusing on the colour orange so intently in A-Train's scenes (Stormfront's drink, Ashley's suit) as a clever way to constantly remind him of Shockwave's presence and his own impending retirement. The Bad: Stormfront having such a simple password is unbelievably stupid. She's so secretive and mysterious, but she has the world's easiest password to guess? I don't buy that ever happening. The Unknown: Why is Kimiko doing paid murders now? Will she continue to do this? Is this going to lead to her and Frenchie distancing themselves from each other? What happened to Lenny? Did he die? How did he die? Was it a supe? Is this why Butcher refuses to forgive any supes? Maeve is now actively going to try to bring down Homelander. What will she do? Is she going to reveal what happened on the plane? Apparently Black Noir works directly for Edgar. Why? Is he another plant, just like Stormfront? Who was Stormfront on the phone with? What will come out of her engaging in a relationship with Homelander? What did Starlight discover from Stormfront's laptop? Stormfront reveals that she knows Starlight leaked the Compound V. What does she plan to do with this information? Best Moment: The sequence with Homelander imagining himself killing everyone out of rage. He's such an unstable character that I believed he actually did it for a second, and I was floored. Despite it being a cop-out, this was a fantastic way to show us how easily Homelander could ruin everything during one of his temper tantrums since he was so close to doing this for real. Character of the Episode: Homelander. Conclusion: This was another good return to form. This episode had tension or comedy in every scene, and there was a real sense of momentum as the episode went on. Hopefully the next episode bucks the trend of every other episode being subpar. Score: 67
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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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