I never start watching a new TV show that I'm told is highly entertaining without a fair amount of free time ahead of me. Being an all-or-nothing kind of guy, that gives me some buffer in case it's so good that I have the urge to binge.
When The Boys came out on Prime, I dismissed it as yet another lame superhero show in the vein of all the record-shattering movies that Marvel has been putting out in the last decade, milking its IP down to the last drop and creating the film equivalent of the stereotypical accountant: bland, derivative, and utterly boring.
Well, I should have known better. If Marvel's productions (not all of them, but most) are like a tepid CPA, The Boys is a rebellious teenage punk-rocker: irreverent, violent, individualistic and cursing like a sailor (I lost count of how many times the C-word is uttered).
But the appeal goes far beyond the veil of bloody violence, and un-politically correct speech. While these traits are refreshing, it is the satire of American crony corporate culture that is the show's best attribute. It is essentially the story of super-heroes marketed and managed by a giant corporation that treats them like the commodity they've become (in this universe, "supes" are a dime a dozen), with all the spin, abuse and cover-ups that the premise implies.
It's also an allegory about the dangers of leaving too much power in the hands of too few people. Indeed, these supes, with god-like powers can only be controlled by psychological means: preying on their deep-seated desire to be loved by the masses, ironically. More than once in the show, it is hinted at the fact that they could literally do anything they want in all impunity, public scrutiny and a drop in the ratings being the only thing that holds them back.
The writers spare no one, not even the main character, an anti-hero figure who's vowed to destroy all supes, is a complex character with his own inner demons and a penchant for utter destruction, regardless of the collateral damage.
While the show explores some really dark ideas and reveals characters with truly evil goals, it is not Manichean in its depiction of the good guys versus the bad guys, as either camp reveals itself to be much more complex than what appears on the surface, with each being capable of some truly evil shit, like the French character who's as hopelessly romantic as he is gratuitously violent (a brilliant Tomer Capon).
But the show hits on the nail a few themes that particularly resonates in our current societal climate, almost prescient, since it was released in 2019:
The relationship of the powerful to their own power and how far they're willing to go to stay in power, especially prevalent with god-like superheroes whom no one can physically stop.
The fact that reality often surpasses fiction.
Why we should never take things at face value and constantly ask "why", as people have a tendency to hide things and make themselves look better than they truly are.
It is a great example of a complex piece of fiction exploring all kinds of ideas, some of them utterly despicable. That free exploration without censorship is what makes the show interesting.
This is not a show for everyone. Its violence is some of the goriest I've ever seen, shy of horror movies, the dialogues are expletive-laden and the tone of the whole show is highly irreverent to the powerful. But it's very well written and has the best jokes I've heard in a long time, the characters are deep, complex people who change as the story progresses and it's also in a very strange way, one of the most optimistic dramas out there, as every storyline and every character always finds redeeming qualities in something.
It's very much a metaphor for life: messy, complex, always changing and impossible to fully comprehend on all levels, but that's what makes it so appealing.