Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Boys’ On Amazon Prime, About Two Guys Fighting Some Not-So-Super Superheroes

It feels like we’re swimming in superheroes these days, between the cinematic and television universes from DC and Marvel, we are watching a new superhero save people or get angry or get angry and save people every single day. The Boys, created by Evan Goldberg, imagines a world where those heroes are real, work for a Marvel-like conglomerate, and aren’t exactly squeaky clean. Read on for more…

THE BOYS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A collage of superhero action pictures come together to create a picture of “The Seven,” which is the vanity card for Vought Studios. Then a bus with the advertisement for a Vought movie pulls away.

The Gist: Vought not only makes movies, but it actually manages superheroes. They try to put a superhero in each city to keep the population safe and, oh by the way, help promote the entertainment properties the studio makes. It’s all part of the plan under CEO Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue), who is a ruthless negotiator when it comes to getting cities to pay through the nose for a Supe’s services. “The Seven” is a group of the most famous and elite Supes, and they’re about to make a young girl named Starlight (Erin Moriarty) a new member, which she’s been dreaming about since she was a girl.

Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid) works in a store selling audiovisual equipment, and he’s very much in love with his girlfriend Robin (Jess Salgueiro). When they have a little PDA outside the store, however, Robin is suddenly obliterated by the super-speedy Supe named A-Train (Jessie T. Usher), who runs through Robin so fast, all that’s left of her is her hands, which Hughie is still holding. Suffice to say, his anger at Vought and their Supes knows no bounds. The company tries to settle with him for a paltry amount of money; his dad (Simon Pegg) tells him he should take it, but Hughie wants at least an apology.

Starlight is introduced to the world by Stillwell as the new member of The Seven. She’s ushered into their meeting room by another member, The Deep (Chace Crawford). When Starlight tells him that she used to have a crush on him, he promptly drops his tights and asks for a blowjob. When her anger almost destroys the room, he blackmails her into staying silent, saying she can get kicked out of The Seven just on his say so, as he’s second-in-command to the uber-famous Homelander (Anthony Starr).

Hughie’s case draws the attention of Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), who claims to be an FBI agent. He shows Hughie that most Supes — with the exception of the squeaky-clean Homelander — are not as virtuous as they say, are hypocrites at best and criminals at worst. At the lair where the Supes can just let loose, he also shows Hughie that A-Train had no remorse over killing Robin, and may not have been trying to catch a bank robber, as he claimed. He asks Hughie to plant a bug in the Seven’s conference room in order to see what’s going on — which is when Hughie realizes that Billy isn’t a fed.

Our Take: There are some pretty big names behind The Boys: Evan Goldberg created the show with his producing partner Seth Rogen, and Eric Kripke (Supernatural) is the showrunner. All of them are steady hands who know how to guide a story, especially one like this that’s based on a comic series like this one is (Remember: Goldberg and Rogen brought Preacher and Future Man to TV). And the first episode of The Boys quickly establishes the situation without slowing the pace or overexplaining things.

It’s an interesting idea: Superheroes who are managed by a Marvel-esque corporation who aren’t all that super as people. It’s pretty obvious by the time The Deep drops his tights in front of Starlight that he’s not going to be the only one whose nose isn’t clean, and that Starlight is going to be the innocent through which we see just how awful The Seven are.

Hughie’s story, where he teams with Billy to become a vigilante squad against the Supes, is intruiguing because the Supes are thought of as heroes, and Hughie and Billy are in the minority who know the truth about how evil Vought Studios really is. They’re more worried about image than human lives, and no one who works for them is squeaky clean — even Homelander. But they’ll definitely be working against the grain, even though we know that they’re in the right.

It’ll also be interesting if Hughie and Starlight, who by chance meet each other in a park after Starlight makes an upsetting call to her mother Donna (Ann Cusack), fall for each other She’s out of costume, so he has no idea she’s a Supe. But it seems like the two of them might form an alliance, given her disillusionment with The Seven and his need to root out all the corrupt Supes.

The structure of how Vought works gives the show a lot of potential; it’s not just The Seven that has to be dealt with, but all of the Supes, and the fact that their activity is intertwined with the corporation’s profits (they even get points!) is a fun commentary on how much Marvel and DC are currently squeezing all the juice out of all of their characters, big and small.

Sex and Skin: One of the Supes, Translucent (Alex Hassell) can only become invisible with his clothes off, as he explains to Jimmy Fallon in a fake Tonight Show clip. He likes sneaking into the bathrooms of The Seven’s headquarters and being a voyeur. So after one particular incident, he reveals himself and we see everything. Yes, there’s full frontal in a superhero show.

Parting Shot: The mayor of Baltimore is on a flight with his daughter, right after getting a reduced rate on the services of Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell) because he told Stillwell that he knows about the bacchanal that takes place in their secret club. Homelander flies by and, with his laser vision, shoots the plane out of the sky. We told you no one’s nose is clean in this world.

Sleeper Star: Moriarty’s Starlight will be worth a closer look as she gets more disillusioned and adamant that being a part of The Seven isn’t the dream she once thought it was. For all we know, she may become a secret weapon for Hughie and Billy.

Most Pilot-y Line: We cringed a little when Stillwell told the Baltimore mayor that Black Noir matches their demographics. We know she’s evil, but why throw in racial undertones to that evil?

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Boys has potential to be a fun comment on our worship of superheroes and the companies that create them. It’s definitely in the right hands to accomplish just that.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream The Boys on Amazon Prime