I watched all 15 seasons of Supernatural of my own free will (glutton for punishment) and was hyped to see Padalecki and Collins share the screen with Ackles again. Regrettably, I am not entirely immune to key jangling. But while their performances are amusing, they’re somewhat dampened by all the other surprise cameos in the segment, which feels a bit like This Is the End redux. “Celebrities saying stuff that is wildly out of character with their public image” was funny 13 years ago (I also enjoyed This Is the End!) but it’s grown stale, and season 5 has been so filler-y already that it’s just more noise in the mix. Seth Rogen, Kumail Nanjiani, Will Forte, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Craig Robinson…love all those guys, but this schtick is tiresome.
Maybe if I rewatch this season later on, I’ll feel differently. It’s hard to say. I can only express how I feel week to week at the moment, and seeing The Boys fall into worn millennial comedy tropes when it used to have so much edge has got me grinding my teeth into a paste. Your mileage may vary, though. Perhaps I am being too much of a curmudgeon this week!
I’m also having a hard time buying into Soldier Boy’s conflicting feelings for Homelander. One minute, he’s happy to torture him, the next, he’s feeling a weird kind of love for the tyrant. Soldier Boy once saw his own grandson as little more than collateral damage, but is ultimately just fine getting behind Homelander’s plan, despite clearly finding it insane. Is Soldier Boy working his own angle here? I guess we’ll find out. If he’s not, it comes across as though they’re writing the character around whatever actions the episode calls for. Not great!
At the start, I mentioned that I only found one of episode 5’s “one-shots” truly engrossing, and that would be Firecracker’s. As a people pleaser who’s found the ultimate person to please (and one who has become utterly unenamored by how she pleases) Firecracker cuts such a tragic figure in The Boys. To be clear, she absolutely sucks, and there’s no defending her actions, but watching her go through the turmoil of being Vought’s propaganda mouthpiece has been genuinely painful because it’s painful to watch anyone who might have once had good intentions bury them under a mountain of fascist bullshit. You may even have friends or family members who have done so.
What do they really get out of it in the end? They are simply more wheel meat for the tank, regardless of whether they appear to have any perceived weaknesses. The assholes they worship will never save them because they only care about themselves. Though Ashley may yet find some redemption in this season, Firecracker is too far gone. She died as she lived, desperately trying to hitch her star to a black hole. Getting sucked into oblivion is a fitting end for her. But I don’t think I’ll ever forget that final image of her dead body slumping off the wing of an eagle.
The Boys has certainly never been subtle.
