I just wanted to hear the thoughts of some comrades. I feel like the whole show is a dagger pointed right at the heart of amerikkkan culture and capitalism.
I'm not the most savvy on catching all the themes or lib brain worms that find there way into media, but it speaks to my disdain for the culture. The cynical narcissism of the supes (and holy shit their sexual pathologies), the capitalizing on things from every angle, the military jingoism, the soulless use of humans for capital, the commentary on the rot at the heart of the beast, and the religious cults preying on people. It hits for me, and I hate it all at the same time.
Anyway, hope ya'll have a great Christmas or holiday, at least a break from the meat grinder.
Edit: Oh, and the fucking rainbow capitalism, it's pretty spot on.
It fell of and became a lib show about muh trump, SA haha funny and gross-fetish softporn. The first seasons were good.
The first three seasons were well crafted while still being obviously Left sympathetic (how anyone missed this is sort of sad). The show ran out of steam artistically and pivoted to just shitting on the Right - which I'm all for messaging-wise but the show was better to watch earlier on.
I still think The Boys and Andor are the most revolutionary shows of the current era. And they still miss a lot of marks because the writers obviously don't have much political critique except to say, we dislike fascists because they can be too mean. But it's better than nothing.
Andor is pretty cool, they even plan to pay homage to the odessa step massacre next season.
I think it's awful sadistic gore porn. Whatever it's supposed to be a critique but it feels like you're supposed to have some kind of libidinal response to it. I couldn't watch past the ear-popping scene in early season 2.
Yeah, the gore especially really turns me off to it. I've seen some wild stuff, but some of the death scenes are over the top. I feel like I'm watching some bootleg grindcore.
I appreciate that when the writers learned that they had a right wing fan base, they discarded subtlety and went hard in the paint to hammer into their heads that the nazis are the bad guys. Unfortunately the show was already running out of steam at that point and it showed the limits of how lib the writers are.
It's sadly very lib. Extremely pro-CIA and the military. Also plot-wise it really starts to tread water in S3 IIRC with nothing major happening.
On the other hand, it was cool when they beat a nazi to death, so I'll still keep watching that garbage.
They really need to kill homelander or make his ascendency to dictatorship complete and they won't fucking commit.
It's a common problem with these shows that are trying to do satire of Trump and his particular branch of politics
They can't kill the Trump analogue, because killing is bad, so they always get them arrested and put on trial
With Homelander, this presents a particular problem, because he's literally too powerful to be arrested and when they came up with a method to depower him, they came up with a last minute cop-out to not do it
So of course, the show has been grinding it's wheels and not making any actual progress in scope
At least the comic had Homelander lead an open rebellion against the government, which ends with the supes getting plastered with depleted uranium rounds and Homelander having his brains ripped out by Butcher
If memory serves it seems like Homelander's rebellion started in the season 4 finale, no? I would love to see butcher finally end homelander
I basically do not remember season 4 aside from
spoiler
the farm with the super animals and Butcher having super-cancer that makes him evil
This is a testament to the show losing it's panache, but also to the strength of my personal stash of edibles
spoiler for season 2
spoiler
stormfront, or whatever that woman's name is, the one that has s*x with homelander, she is like a nazi from the old old times,
Oh, I didn't know they kill Stormfront, pretty cool, the character is horrible. The actress is a smoke show and plays an incredible sociopath. I find it pretty funny that she was once named Liberty which turned into Stormfront after a bunch of media laundering. I felt like that was a pretty funny nod.
The last couple seasons have been pretty bad. It's like all gross-out stuff purely for the sake of itself, and the plot is repetitive and meandering.
I gave up in season 3, because the whole appeal seemed to be how gross or "surprising" each episode could be.
Oversaturating gross-out & gore sounds inline with the comic, unfortunately.
Why do they need to be limited to the worst excesses of the source material?
It's so over the top with the gore that I don't think I'm going to watch the next season.
Shame, I've enjoyed it so far. Is there a cut off where I should just leave it?
They're probably thinking of S03E06 or S04E03. It definitely starts to suffer from "prestige TV" anti-spoilers pacing, where a lot of random subplot antics might be ongoing, but the main arc just stalls out for the first 6 episodes or so AND THEN ALL OF A SUDDEN THE PLOT MOVES (but not that much), etc., so all the showrunners have in the interim is gross-out gags. They painted themselves into a corner pretty early on and had to keep ratcheting up the ick factor to outdo themselves every other episode, so it gets into some deeply fucked up territory very, very quickly.
I thought it was fine. I came into it with low expectations, and found myself binge-watching all four seasons over a couple of weeks. Bottom line, it's self-aware capeshit that lampoons the fash and its own capitalist overlords to the extent that it's allowed (something something subsuming critiques of capital unto itself), and is about as crass as your average early 2000's Vince Vaughan or Tom Green summer gross-out flick (well, maybe on the same level as Van Wilder). The writers seem to be well aware of this because they skip breaking the fourth wall and start kicking down walls we didn't even know we had yet, e.g.:
Season 4 Spoilers, [CW: self-mutilation]
Sage's superpower includes the ability to survive massive brain injuries with no real repercussions because she regenerates brain tissue in a similar fashion to what we have seen with other supes' bodies, with the key difference that, for Sage, it's limited to only her brain. By the time she is part of The Seven, she is so fed up with her cohorts' juvenile hijinks that she, much like the viewer, frequently feels the need to shut her brain off for a few hours and just chill. We do it metaphorically as outside observers, but she has to repeatedly perform frontal lobotomies on herself just to tolerate being around the rest of her team. Antics ensue, POWER DYNAMICS, etc.
I thought the self-lobotomy bit kind of hit a little too close to home; if you're stuck in "Marxist materialist analysis mode" 24/7 and then have to go to a work picnic or family reunion or something, you know exactly what I'm on about.
I don't remember exactly, I just know the last couple seasons at least have been pretty egregious. The most recent one in particular is really bad. I've swapped over to hate-watching it.
I really liked the first 3 seasons. Season 4 is just spinning in circles with a plot and arcs that leaves people in the same place they started. Until the very end of the season. I'm pretty sure it was confirmed that Amazon offered them 5 seasons when they planned on 4 so they spun their tires for the bag.
The last season was a bit too on the nose with the political commentary for me
Does anyone else find it boring
not tryna be a downer it's just very boring to me
I watched the first two seasons? It wasn't bad, but I can easily imagine it getting extremely stupid
I enjoyed it, but it feels kinda same. Like it’s clearly just hitting the same 3 satirical points over and over, but also it needs to do MORE each season so they’re like coming up with new and more extreme ways to do “haha what if a superhero exploded your dick” jokes.
For the cultural commentary, idk when the comics were written originally, but the whole thing kinda feels like repurposing radlib commentary on the bush era for the trump era. Like I feel like even the more faux religious types don’t present like they do in the show, I feel modern religious conservatism is less evangelical and somehow even more peasant brain-y. Like people should be getting mad about witchcraft or completely insane numerology more.
I grew up around a lot of those religious types that it's specifically pointed at. It feels true to life in my experience ngl.
Seconded. I lost my shit at that scene in S01E05 when Ezekiel did the televangelist youth pastor bit because it was entirely too accurate. It was just missing "Our God is an Awesome God" and the Treatler Youth promising you free pizza and then you get there and there's no free pizza.
I am thankful I grew up Jewish. The worst it gets is "our G-d is a mid g-d, but hey it's the one we got?"
I grew up Catholic and my family was so racist that when I thought Judas was the main figure in Judaism (like how "Christ" is the Main Character in "Christianity"), nobody corrected me for like 3 or 4 years.
It's almost right---Judas is a romanization of Judah which is a common name because Judah is the patriarch of one of the most important tribes of Judeah and the namesake of Judaism. But that's actually kind of charming that you thought Judaism was named for the Christian figure of Judas!
I'm glad you were able to overcome your reactionary upbringing. That takes a lot of work and courage.
I mean, I was 5 at the time
Pattern recognition and its consequences
"Our God is an Awesome God"
all it takes is reading those words and it instantly starts up in my head, even though it's been almost 25 years since I had to hear it in person
Bottom line, if your best friend introduces you to a dude named Zander or Parrish or whatever and said dude immediately starts freaking out and claiming that your Magic: The Gathering Revised Edition Pestilence card burned his hand with the power of Satan, and oh by the way would you like to come to our study group where we play ping pong and eat pizza, THERE IS NO PIZZA. THE PIZZA IS A LIE.
...I'm still pissed off at that weirdo cult for taking my friend away from me. It's hard to take someone seriously after you've seen him -- and a room full of other teenagers -- pretend to speak in tongues for half an hour while a keyboard player holds a drone chord in a shitty P&W song.
That’s fair, it’s more that they’re less the focus of the cultural zeitgeist, and Republican Party and their media arms are less focused on them currently like they were around 2000-2008. It makes it feel a bit dated in some ways. I don’t really mind it, it does give it kind of a cool vibe because it feels like a throwback to 2006, while most of the show being very much in the present. The show feels like current me and teenager me brainstorming a show and that’s not really a bad thing. As I said I did enjoy it, and think the first few seasons are great, more got tired of it over time than anything.
kinda feels like repurposing radlib commentary on the bush era for the trump era
Its is exactly that, the comics written by Ennis were his anti bush outlet plus his way of criticizing 00s superhero comics from DC/Marvel via being really edgy
The TV show changed a lot of things in the adaptation (for the better, to be clear, the comics are absolute trash and Garth Ennis is a hack), to the point where I'd say all the social commentary is new. IIRC faux-religious supes aren't even a thing in the comics, because they're too busy having two arcs where the entire joke is "Hey Professor X and Batman having all these child sidekicks is kind of weird, huh? What if they were pedophiles?".
(for the better, to be clear, the comics are absolute trash and Garth Ennis is a hack)
Love Sausage
Also his runs on Hellblazer, Hitman, and Punisher are legitimately great
His stuff for Judge Dredd is fun too, like having the Irish mob have guns that shoot potatoes at lethal velocities
I'm on season 2. I've heard they get crazy ham fisted with it because the creators wanted to give an emphatic fuck you to incels who think that Homlander is cool and good.
Yeah, I had the benefit of season 3 not being out, so I just finished all the episodes at the time and never really felt the need to come back for the new seasons. I never finished the Amazon produced seasons of the Expanse, either, so maybe it's a Bezos channel problem for me lol
Is the fake AOC character funnier or more embarrassing to watch in 2024? I'm genuinely curious
I thought it was pretty hilarious when they did that, but also when the incels still didn't get the hint after being beaten over the head with it. I have at least two techbro coworkers like this.
Maybe you could do some story time posts? People like that can't exist without being entertaining.
I telecommute whenever possible specifically to avoid those dipshits. One in particular is a chronic crop-duster and will stand there and spew Trump-isms while smelling like he shat his pants. Instead of "power-cycling a server" or "restarting a webservice," it's "draining the swamp." He ends every thought with "Right? ...Right?" like he's a late night talkshow host and we're supposed to cue up a laugh track and clap like seals after he just rambled incoherently for 7 minutes on a Zoom call. What takes it from "eyeroll-worthy" to "I hope you buy a Tesla and it takes you on a swift trip to Valhalla" is the casual and not-so-casual misogyny. Main highlights that I can think of off the top of my head are blurting out, "WULL THAT SEEMS ABOUT AS USEFUL AS A DEGREE IN WOMEN'S STUDIES! HAR HAR HAR" and ranting about the corporate dress code being amended to allow women to wear leggings at the office. His take on The Boys, though? Homelander is so cool! He's the hero!
I came here to chime in that it gets worse as the show progresses. The good guys need to be the bad guys, which yes in a trope in season 1, becomes too much in the last season.
spoiler
Like how starting in season 2, the CIA becomes the objectively good guys.
There are still good critiques of Amerikan culture at the series progresses. But one must live with that 👆 bullshit in the show.
