‘The Boys’ Season 4 Episode 4 Review - An Awkward Reunion

Antony Starr, as the powerful, egotistical superhero named Homelander, seals his lips tight and stretches his facial muscles to smile like a megalomaniacal supervillain. He becomes a ticking time bomb for the Vought employees when he returns to that place where he was "manufactured." All the sugar in that cake he brings with him cannot hide the presence of salty emotions. Everybody puts on a false smile and uncomfortably greets Homelander. He, too, displays a faux friendliness. This truly turns out to be an awkward reunion. Homelander wants to get rid of his desperate need for love and validation. This is what he pledged to do at the end of the third episode. By the end of Episode 4, it seems as if he has succeeded in his mission. Without human emotions, Homelander will turn into a highly destructive weapon. It will be interesting to see what he will do in the upcoming episodes.

Speaking of successful missions, Sister Sage, the smartest person on the planet, manages to push Starlight's buttons and makes her look like an unhinged killer. She gives Firecracker a platform where, for six hours, the alt-right Supe influencer exposes Starlight's "dirty secrets." She even reveals her medical records. Coming from the smartest person on the planet, this strategy doesn't seem very smart. Instead, the other characters are rendered dumb so that Sage can achieve her goal. The writers push Starlight towards extreme anger to move the story forward. Nothing on the screen comes across as the work of an intelligent individual. Sister Sage is only as clever as the show's writers, and they have run out of creative juice, which is evident from the fact that The Boys has nothing new to say about America's greed, capitalism, and the right-left war.

The one imaginative element of this show continues to be its violence. The spilling of blood, the cracking of skulls, the explosion of heads looked fresh at first. Now, even this comes across as a cheap trick to excite the audience. The Boys, though, still manage to invent bizarre scenarios to spice up the violence with (sometimes uncomfortable) humor. Take the scene from this episode where a man is forced to masturbate in front of his colleagues and Homelander, and when he fails to do so, his male sex organ comes in contact with Homelander's eye laser. The Boys can be the smartest person on the planet when it conjures such deranged moments, but you know there is a problem when you feel that this is all the show can offer us. There is only so much of a look-how-I-will-blow-up-this-character routine the audience can handle (at least, those who want their cinematic food to be better than a teenager's wet dream about all the ways he can be brutal).

Homelander's age is catching up to him. Butcher's health is deteriorating. Then, there is Hughie's father, who is seen lying motionless on a bed in a hospital. There is something here about physically weak father figures desperately wanting to connect with their sons. Another thing that becomes common between all three of them is that they now possess superpowers. Butcher, well, butchers a man inside a vanity van, and Hughie's father receives a Compound V dose. It will be interesting to see Simon Pegg tearing limbs apart. Or will he simply, with great speed, read more books and call his son to have a discussion about them?

Final Score- [5/10]