An Alternate Reality: The Boys are Back In Town (Season 2 Starts)

In a time when cowardice is proclaimed the equivalent of courage (wanna debate, anyone?), stimulus checks hang in limbo and Neo-Nazi adages infiltrate schoolroom sorcery, "The Boys" makes perfect sense. What's right? What's wrong? What goddamn difference does it make?

Actually, it makes a ton of difference, for the reliable thread of Amazon's show (based on Garth Ennis/Darick Robertson's DC/Vertigo comic-book series) is to seek, confirm and expose the truth (discern virtue from deceit). Season 2 (of which there are now three episodes to view, with more to arrive on following Fridays) continues that tradition, toying with concepts found in such aligned works as "Watchmen" and "Brightburn". 

As should be no surprise, what manifests is disturbing and dark-humored, but more so the former than the later: mostly it's messy like some drawn-out splatter effect in an H.G. Lewis flick. How could the sentiment be otherwise, with an emblematic protagonist who's really an antagonist, even if he does sport the sacred designs of Kal-El and Steve Rogers. (He's called Homelander, by the way, and played by the versatile Anthony Starr; and his prime elbow-rubber in "heroics" is Dominique McElligot's Queen Maeve, a stunning, alternative-lifestyle Wonder Woman knockoff, though maybe not quite as ethical as her inspiration. Get the picture?) 

Right off the bat, Season 2 hits its dubious, Supe Seven ball right out the park, sailing it into foreign lands, for it appears that these uber-fueled individuals are global pawns for an implied "Rollerball", each created more to please their masters than protecting the common citizenry. In other words, the good-guy-vs-bad-guy angle is a lark, except that there are genuine good guys in this twisted plot. They're just popped-out-of-the-womb humans, unlike the callous, Compound V phonies they wish to defame. (For a wee tit-for-tat, the sides sometimes blur, thanks to Giancarlo "Breaking Bad/Saul" Esposito's Mr. Edgar, who isn't afraid to remind Homelander of his synthetic flaws {and foibles}; Aya Cash acts as the boss' outspoken {and therefore down-to-earth?} Storm-inspired Stormfront; and Chase Crawford's doleful Deep milks big-time empathy, for we all know a Supe isn't really rotten if he sheds mere-mortal tears.)

Karl "Dredd" Urban portrays the real-deal, head-honcho good guy, Billy Butcher. He's an embittered, Bondian Batman/Punisher of sorts (even though Nathan Mitchell's Black Noir might, in fact, occupy that part) and administers white-knuckled virility into his crusade to bring the Supes down. As such, he and his "boys" (played by Jack Quaid, Karen Fukahara, Tomer Kapon and Laz Alonzo) are labeled as bad, if only for fake-news differentiation.  

So far, Season 2 doesn't seem as shocking as the first (the series' established harshness is too familiar at this point), but its morbidity still proves entertaining in its expected, warped way. 

I generally don't like shades of gray in my action/adventure sagas (case in point, Kathleen Kennedy's reconstructed "Star Wars" or the way AMC's "Preacher" turned out: the latter, incidentally, culled from another Ennis title, also co-produced by Seth "Green Hornet" Rogen). "The Boys", however, at least attempts to distinguish good and bad with a deeper line drawn in the sand and a little Billy Joel to give it a healthy second wind. 

For me, it's all part of the concept's specialized scheme, and as long as the meticulous balance prevails, I'll be accepting of the good, the bad and the ugly, maybe even enough to look forward to the preordained Season 3.