Not gonna lie, as a Supernatural fan I was waiting for Mark Sheppard to show up as Crowley after the title of this episode appeared – alas, we didn’t get a Crowley cameo. From the reviews, some people were critical of this episode that “nothing happened to move the story forward” but I 100% disagree. This episode gave us the kind of insights I crave the most – the emotional and psychological ones. It didn’t move the story forward a great deal if the ‘story’ is ‘get the V1’ but to me the fascinating story is that of the characters and their relationships, and we got A LOT of insights about that.
WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE BOYS EPISODE 5.04!
How to Sell a Lunatic as the New God
Samaritan’s Embrace is bankrupt and Homelander is convinced he’s a God, and those two things work together to make a dark statement about religion and power as The Boys continues to reflect some of our darkest reality in a truly disturbing way. Homelander continues to fascinate me as he uses his hallucination of Madelyn and the delusions of grandeur that followed to move ahead with his plan to be the savior of the world. He’s still very much obsessed with his own family though, the episode opening with him sadly looking at a phone of him and Ryan and then accusing Firecracker of smelling like Soldier Boy (which he’s absolutely correct about).
He tells Firecracker that he was visited by an angel who foretold his destiny.
Firecracker: Well praise be – what is it?
When he answers ‘God’, she thinks he means serving the lord, but he quickly corrects her. He won’t be serving the lord, he’ll BE the lord. The messiah.
Homelander is making sense of his tragic life and all its hardships as the price he’s had to pay for being special and destined to be god, and he’s convinced Firecracker saw it all along and she’s not about to dissuade him. Therefore, he informs her, he’s chosen her to spread the word – since they control the media.
Homelander: Jesus would kill for our marketing.
Firecracker: WTF face
(This is a theme throughout the episode, which is peppered with small humorous moments like WTF faces to break up the too-close-to-reality darkness).
We get a typical The Boys scene intended to make most people say ‘ewww’ with Ashley and Oh Father, who married for PR but have discovered that she loves punishing him and he loves being punished, so they make enough noise to disgust the guards at the door and send his ball gag flying with enough force that it breaks the wall when he screams in ecstasy, ‘Back Ashley’ enjoying the show as voyeur. She reads his mind when he’s unguarded though, and realizes that the church is bankrupt.
Just then Firecracker shows up and gets to deliver a Soldier Boy-worthy gross line – “Dang, smells like a wet shit in a Waffle House in here”.
I admit that got the “ewww” the show was going for.
Some of the Seven minus Homelander and Soldier Boy meet at Vought Tower to brainstorm how they can make Homelander being God palatable to the masses.
Worm: What we need is a good story, who’s read Joseph Campbell?
I like Worm. Bring him some tasty dirt, someone.
The PR lady, on the other hand, does not like Worm, saying no wonder his last film got a low rating on the AV Club (which is a real thing and a nudge at fandom ala what Supernatural used to do in its meta episodes, so it made me smile).
Worm: I had to service fourteen main characters and cross over a bunch of assholes – you try to make a good finale out of that!
(Writers getting meta and putting a writer character into the canon, it’s the series’ last season after all and Kripke has spoken openly about being worried about fan reception of the series finale – he didn’t write the ending to Supernatural, but that finale certainly came with a range of reactions!)
It’s Firecracker who comes up with the idea that they need a church that preaches America and convinces the masses that the real American hero is Homelander, and he’s their savior. The Democratic Church of America. Voila, kill two birds with one stone, rescue her hubby’s failing church and find a way to get people to accept Homelander as god.
I am sincerely shocked that doesn’t exist with exactly that name already, to be honest.
Fathers and Daughters
A variation on the theme of fathers and sons that has so characterized this season and this show, Annie pays her estranged father a visit. I know some people thought this was a needless detour but I loved exploring her backstory more and finally knowing what the real story was with her dad. Turns out he’s remarried and Annie has a half brother, Mason.
Annie: WTF face.