Hi folks! Welcome back to our weekly recap of The Boys. This week’s episode is named “The Female of the Species” and we meet maybe the most dangerous member of the team. Let’s dive right in!
1. Butcher’s background and his fight against the militarization of supes
At the beginning of the episode we are introduced to Becca, Butcher’s missing wife, then he wakes up and has breakfast reviewing some kind of surveillance tape of her from 7 years ago. And then, he visits his friend Susan at the CIA. He shows her that A-Train and his girlfriend Popclaw are using V-Compound and makes a plea for her to make something about the fact that Vought wants superheroes on the military.
Given what we know about them, his plea is absolutely justified, and this is a great analogy for real-life America. The only means of survival for gun manufacturers is to create the need of guns, which they do so stoking fear of foreign countries, creating unnecessary wars, and fear of foreign people, creating an obsession with the 2A. How do congressmen allowed to be that owned by companies? How can we make America a safe country for everyone?
It’s sad to see this version of supes, corruptible by money, and it’s sad to think that, with the world we have right now, The Boys often is the so called “most realistic” take on superheroes.
2. The Female
Following the lead Popclaw gave them, the team goes to a hideout to find V, if they have some of the compound, they might get some funding form the CIA, how nice! But they discover a Japanese woman locked in a cage, with which, for some reason, Frenchie empathizes and opens the door.
She gets out and fucking destroys her captors and flees, so, the team has to look for her and find her before someone of the Seven does so. They follow her steps to a grooming salon and then to Penn Station.
There, Frenchie tries to help her, telling a goddammed awful story about his dad and how he also kept trying to flee back home, only to be interrupted by the rest of the team, he fights with Mother’s Milk and Butchers solves the problem by… *checks his notes* enlisting the careers of the Spice Girls after they breakup? Why was that effective? Hahaha.
Well, the important thing is that The Female is a victim, she was probably experimented on and her abusers want her death before becoming evidence of her actions, her primitive and violent reactions are just part of the effects caused by her suffering.
3. The date
Hughie has a date with Starlight, but at first, he seemed off, like guilty of lying to her and fearful of being discovered that he murdered Translucent. The date goes well after a while, we see how Hughie still has panic attacks and, after finally embracing the fact that he might have feelings for Starlight, he sees Robin.
It’s interesting to see how Hughie is slowly being dragged to the downward spiral that being part of The Boys means, he has panic attacks, he is full of guilt after the death of Robin and he killed a father. But he is trying to overcome that, he snaps off his fears and acts, he is coming for you supes, and you wouldn’t like angry Hughie.
4. Fuck Homelander
HO-LY SHIT! You know how I have been saying to you every episode that I’m scared of Homelander, because I didn’t know how was he going to act. And then, my expectations were just wildly surpassed. You see, I was expecting a sudden violent act, like the beheading of Sitwell’s baby or a very gory murder of Deep just for fun, and then, Homelander calmly left a plane crash.
He got to the hijacked plane, killed the stereotypical terrorists (I was going to say something about this, but then a white guy just provoked hundreds of deaths at the end of the scene), told everybody his empowering bullshit like “no, you did it!” and then, he fucking destroyed the airplane controls and left them on their own.
But not just that, he used the tragedy he himself caused to push Vought’s corporate agenda of superhero militarization, fucking unbelievable, real villain shit, just like in real life. I just can’t wait to see how The Boys deal with him.
Continued below5. The Deep
Well, let’s finish this text with a less Grimm idea: At first, I didn’t understood why in the world we would have scenes with a rapist that were kinda aimed at making us empathize with him, but then I understood that the scenes obviously weren’t meant to do that, instead, we got to see Deep’s attempts to save a dolphin he definitely had sex with to show us how pathetic of a man he is. He is underappreciated on the Seven, he is a joke and little of a man. His first attempt at redemption, saving a dolphin, goes stupidly wrong, but at least he is trying to save people.
BONUS: It’s weirdly nice to see the contrasts that they do in the show, for example, at the quietest, most introspective scene of the episode, the Bowling storyline, we have a fuck-ton of lens-flare, while the scenes with actions don’t use this technique. You can also see contrast in the music selection, while you would expect a lot of heavy music, this episode featured upbeat J-Pop and the Spice Girls. This is not your usual superhero show.
And that’s it for this episode, now that we saw the first half of the show, the team is finally formed and I just don’t know what to expect of the coming episodes, but I know that it has been a great introduction to this world so far. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 105, “Good for the Soul”.
