Emmy Catch-Up: The Boys

Every year, I watch the six submitted episodes of every series I don’t regularly watch that’s up for one of the Emmy series prizes. Last year, I started watching the entire season of each show to get a better idea of the quality I missed, and I’ve decided to continue that this year.

The Boys: Season 2, Episode 5 “We Gotta Go Now” (B)

It seems like it is truly impossible to keep a secret in this show’s universe, and that’s detrimental since the more powerful bad guys are the ones who find out about them and try to exploit them right away. Starlight knowing that Stormfront used to be Liberty pales in comparison to Stormfront being very aware that Starlight leaked the Compound V news, and Stormfront can do much more damage with what she knows. Having Homelander and Stormfront allied together is truly terrifying, and while it’s a good thing that, at the protest, Homelander didn’t laser half of the crowd to death as he imagined doing, he now has someone who’s a much better strategist on his side, and the two of them will surely inflict as much damage on the world as they did while they were having destructive, violent sex towards the end of this episode. I don’t know much about Ashley but she’s one of the more intriguing characters to me, put in an impossible position but determined to perform well in her job regardless of any moral concerns, like A-Train leaving the Seven and Elena not wanting to be part of a publicity stunt she never volunteered for and which completely compromises her identity in every possible way. I like the casting of Goran Višnjić as Alastair Adana, the figurehead of the Church of the Collective, and I’m curious to see if the Deep returns to the central narrative or remains merely the featured player of the commercials and background TV monitors. I recognized Shawn Ashmore from “Animorphs” and “The Following” as the prisoner Stormfront called who I’m sure we’ll learn more about soon. I don’t think I needed to see Kimiko rip someone’s face off, but this show seems to delight in that kind of gore.