Greetings, Programs!
Amazon Prime Video released The Boys last Friday to much praise. I was not familiar with the source material, so my take on the show has not been tainted by the comic version.
Initially, my first impression of this show when the first teaser dropped was that this was going to be another show like Powers. I was correct, and both shows have the same issue, and the issue is how “woke” both shows are, plus really bad looking costumes.
I won’t delve into Powers as it’s been a while since I watched it and my memory is a bit fuzzy on it. The biggest issue at the time was the race swap of officer Deena Pilgrim.
The show only lasted two seasons and I never took a look at the comic, which is still being published, by the way.
The Woke List
The reason for this list is to point out what is being added to media, some are blatant, some very subtle. I have been monitoring this stuff since the 90s and can spot it quite quickly.
This is not to say that the production of The Boys is bad, nor am I telling you not to watch it. I enjoyed most of it, but it could have been so much better if it had avoided the following:
- In Canada, episode 1 starts with a list of show warnings including an RP (Rape) warning.
- Hughie, who is powered in the comic, is a weak beta male in the show.
- Queen Maeve, is the token lesbian of the show. Her description in the comic shows no lesbian action on her part, in fact, she had a child with a member of The Boys named The Legend.
- The only member of “the boys” that is powered is The Female (of the species). In the comics, Hughie, Butcher and Mother’s Milk are also powered.
- Multiple scenes of full male nudity, minimal female nudity.
- The Frenchman has his balls squeezed by a female in public, no issues from anyone around.
- Butcher physically assaulted by Mother’s Milk’s wife due to her being angry at him.
- The Deep is sexually assaulted by a female, no repercussions, nor any RP warning for the episode. Nor was there for the date rape scene.
- A Christian group is shown as anti-gay while being led by a closeted homosexual.
- Black character gets profiled at a store due to his race.
Some of the items listed may have originated from the source material, but my gut tells me at least 60=70% have been added by Amazon.
On top of the usual woke insertions we’ve come to expect from all media, there were also gender and race swaps done.
Genderswap
Mallory is a man in the comic, was also an early test subject of Compound V, now played by Laila Robins in the show.
Stillwell is also a man in the comic, replaced by Elizabeth Shue.
Race Swap
The Frenchman is played by Isreali actor Tomer Kapon.
I don’t really have a problem with these cast changes due to not having a connection to the original comics. But I felt it important to point this out to you.
The promotional material did not escape this either:
Some readers here were hard on Amazon’s take on Jack Ryan for its level of “wokeness”, but I contend that it is more insidious on this show.
What are your thoughts?