Remember all those middling comments about season 4 of The Boys, how it was a little much sometimes, and the various stories felt like they weren't really tied together, and the characters felt incomplete? Yeah, so Gen V isn't like that at all.
Gen V fucking rocks.
I actually did watch Gen V before I started season 4 of The Boys, which was mildly important. Gen V introduces a couple of small-time characters that show up in The Boys, and while you don't really need to know the full extent of their backstory, it does help to give some explanation as to why these two random attractive super-powered people showed up here, what their powers are, and why they would side with Homelander in all of this. But that's not what makes Gen V worth watching.
Gen V takes place largely at the Godolkin University School of Crimefighting, a perhaps overly self-described college setting where aspiring young heroes try to prove their mettle and become fully established "heroes" (as much as anyone in the mainstream becomes a hero in the world of The Boys). The protagonist is a young woman named Marie Moreau, who has the power to control blood, and who has a predictably horrifying backstory. But admirably, from this trauma comes a desire to do good in the world, something that's not so easy to come by in the world of The Boys, and something that sets her against some powerful forces.
While Gen V does a good job of creating questions about every character's... well, character, those questions make the heroism of the protagonists even more impressive. There are the customary betrayals and turns, and some of the worst folks at the beginning of the show end up as some of the folks you're rooting for at the end, but it all feels so naturally written that these characters do exactly what you believe they would do. One problem a lot of shows have is that people do things that make no sense. A betrayal happens because it's "entertaining," but when a betrayal isn't earned, it just feels like a way to get a cheap, short-term pop. It's the difference between season 3 of Game of Thrones and season 7 of Game of Thrones, full characters versus fragments. Gen V has full characters.
The show isn't perfect, as there are a few characters who feel kind of flat, too flat for The Boys universe. But then you get a scene like the one where Sam attempts to evade capture from a military response team, and you know this production team knows exactly what they're doing. I won't describe it any further than that, to avoid any sort of spoilers, but if you've seen the show, you know the scene I'm talking about. It's just perfect.
I'm looking forward to the second season. The writing for these characters is I think at least as strong as any season of The Boys, and I'm hopeful that a second season can keep up that prolific performance.
One final tragic note: Chance Perdomo, who portrayed Andre Anderson, one of the main protagonists in the show, was killed in a motorcycle accident in March of 2024. The character won't be recast. I don't really have any other notes on that, I just felt like it would be weird for me to not mention it in this article.
No comments:
Post a Comment