The Boys Went After MAGA and Both Sides Lost

I have been a huge fan of The Boys on Amazon Prime since season 1.  I was completely unfamiliar with it when I first checked it out in 2019 and have loved the first three seasons.  The acting, especially from Antony Starr (who I’ve been saying deserves an Emmy nomination since season 1 and telling my friends to watch Banshee), is great. The violence is startling, but often with the intention to startle or produce dark laughter. The show’s sex and nudity are often the same.  And the tone, just beneath the surface of the show, has been that of a healthy skepticism of heroes, patriotism and other virtues that are often only skin deep.  And then season 4 happened.

Season 4 of The Boys has seen a lot of on-line outrage from the MAGA bros who, unsurprisingly made up a percentage of the viewers.  I think I may have heard dark comedian Anthony Jeselnik once say in an interview (apologies if it was a different comedian) expressing some contempt for his fans in that some seemed to appreciate the darkness or edginess of the jokes, but not the actually craftsmanship of the humor.  So the on-line chatter during and after season 3 was how many bros did not seem to appreciate that Homelander, played by Starr, was a real evil presence.  He was not an anti-hero. He was the villain. Engaging and terrifying to behold, but a clear villain.  It seemed that much like the Jeselnik fans mentioned before, many men were not getting the nuance(?) of Homelander and were just gravitating to his American flag and his strength.  They liked the edge, but did not see or understand the substance.

Well it seems that the creators of The Boys took the bait and to paraphrase Kirk Lazarus in Tropic Thunder: You never go full MAGA bait.

I have made this analogy before, but it is one of my favorite to make so here it is again.  In the early 2000s as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera battled for Disney-Teen-Bait-Grown-Up-Pop-Star supremacy, Spears released I’m A Slave For You where she danced with a snake and showed off her sweaty, flat stomach, which intrigued a lot men, including her dance choreographer (but that led to Timberlake’s Timbaland’s Cry Me A River (ft. Justin Timberlake) so net positive!).  This left Aguilera in a bind. She had the better voice by a factor of 50, but sex sells and Britney had walked up to the line so many times, first the age of consent with her schoolgirl debut then to the edge of decency with Slave.  So Aguilera came out with Dirty, which I loved as a song and a video, but grinding and boxing in assless chaps was too far and it was more mocked more than masturbated.  Victory was Britney’s.

Similarly, the creators of The Boys, seemed so outraged at the stupidity of the MAGA bros portion of the fan base that they decided to go full MAGA attack. The sweaty Britney abs of seasons 1-3 were gone and in season 4 they put on their Aguilera Assless Chaps (TM) to “own MAGA.”  “Owning the libs” was a phrase used by MAGA at first, but then used derisively by the Left whenever the GOP had something backfire (“letting your kid get killed by AR-15 to own the libs” would be an extreme, but accurate hypothetical example).  But in an effort to correct, make clear or “own” the MAGA bros this season went too obvious and too heavy handed with everything that all subtlety was lost and I even found myself rolling my eyes by the end of season 4.

Homelander is obviously a Trump-like figure and thankfully the writing and Starr’s performance maintain enough artistic distance that it’s obvious, but not heavy-handed.  But the outright references to real politicians, GOP phrases, QAnon quips and a character that is admittedly modeled on Marjorie Taylor Greene (then don’t make her so hot please!) it felt like the show abandoned its artistry for some of the season and went into obvious political attacks.

Here’s the thing – the show was and is immensely popular. And season 4 was good. it was just markedly worse than the greatness standard set by the first three seasons.  But finding out MAGA bros are dumb and don’t understand nuance in art (even if it is still a fairly clear allegory) and being surprised or angry is an odd response.  By making art like this, you clearly already know that.  But you still got goaded into laying it on so thick and spiteful that you diluted the quality of the product.  So MAGA bros lose because they realize that their favorite show is actually a “woke” attack on them, but the show also loses because by going after the folks you hate, the people who understand and love the show for the right reasons received a weaker season.

And on a smaller note, the Jeffrey Dean Morgan twist was too obvious.

Looking forward to the fifth and final season whenever it is ready, but artists shouldn’t let fans or algorithms dictate what they make. But that can be understandable. But letting the idiots who hate what you stand for alter the show is even worse.  Let them be mad and dumb. Keep The Boys great.