MIDNIGHT REVIEWS The Boys Season 4 Episode 4 Review
Midnight Reviews features reviews and thought pieces written and edited by a parent, at night, after bedtime.
The Boys Season 4 Episode 4: ‘Wisdom of the Ages’
Series created by: Eric Kripke
Featuring: Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr
Synopsis: New member of The Seven, Firecracker (Valorie Curry), starts stirring things up in relation to Starlight (Erin Moriarty). Billy (Urban) starts seeing some… interesting side effects from his time taking Compound V.
Review: Another show could be accused of trying to get rid of Homelander (Starr) in episode four of The Boys. The previous episode ended with him telling himself he had to go back to where it all began, and so the most powerful piece is taken off the board just as things start heating up.
But certain scenes since the start of this season, the tension built early on here, and Homelander’s efforts throughout the episode, suggest that he probably doesn’t care about what else is happening. He isn’t happy with being the most powerful human in the world and his efforts and his focus are legitimately elsewhere. Here, we see Homelander trying his darndest to shed his humanity.
These scenes are effective and don’t deviate too much from the tone set by the show since the very beginning, equally bloody and perverse. It can hardly be called a spoiler to say that the phrase ‘Maniacal laughter’ gets copied and pasted a lot by the subtitle editor.
Unfortunately, the results are mixed.
The tension comes from the fact that, whilst Homelander is the most powerful human on Earth, he’s going back to the people who had the power, the ability, and the moral failings to create him. Starr fully enables us to read his mind as one moment he has complete power over these people, the next he doesn’t know what to do with them.
There’s a hilarious hard cut as a crowd chanting ‘USA! USA!’ gets replaced with a despondent Homelander, in full costume, sat in the lab where he was once tested. It’s so clear from the creative choices made that while Homelander going to his birthplace (as he sees it) might be the thing to do, he has absolutely no idea what to do once he gets there. Here we have this stick of dynamite wandering around, wondering what he should do next.
We also have a lot more from Erin Moriarty as Annie January. Previous episodes haven’t exactly given Moriarty much to do, but there’s plenty of opportunity for her here. Unfortunately, the results are mixed. The moment where she’s beating someone to a pulp, before catching herself and all the cameras pointing at her, is a hard-hitting moment where we’re fully invested, with the catharsis, the power and the shame she feels all on display. But a scene that captures Moriarty in close-up as January’s secrets get revealed to the world feels rote in comparison.
The Boys feels like […] Billy Butcher.
In a similar way, Frenchie’s (Tomer Capone) story plays out in an entirely predictable way. It feels like some time to make a cup of tea in between the more interesting scenes. This isn’t down to Capone’s performance, as when he is given the time to do anything else he’s as funny as he is downtrodden and quick-witted. Kimiko’s (Karen Fukuhara) storyline is likewise gifted with mixed moments, but the revelation found in episode four at least adds a layer of complexity not afforded to her storyline before. And there’s a great job done making her office supplies tool-up scene amusing.
Apart from attempted character moments, The Boys this week shows a probably accurate reflection of how difficult it is for a government to deal with a multinational conglomerate gone bad. The problem, as stated before, is that satirising a nation’s dealings with the terrible companies found therein is tricky when the posters all say ‘Amazon Prime’. In this way, The Boys is less self-aware, more embarrassed under a spotlight. It’s hard to process this element of the show and come out the other side feeling anything more than dirty.
During these moments, The Boys feels like one of its main characters, Billy Butcher, slowly evolving from a mouthy, uppity piece of dirt into the harbinger of doom that it now wants to be. But it never, ever takes a real pot shot at itself and its masters, and for that the show proves it can’t avoid baring it’s Achilles heel.
The Boys is available to stream on Amazon Prime.
Matthew D. Smith likes to overshare his views on movies and TV shows whenever and wherever he can. Indulge him, and follow him on Twitter or listen to the podcast he co-hosts with Leslie Wai.
