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 7 “Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker” (B)

The opening scene of this episode was rather ominous, with one man listening to Stormfront’s rhetoric and then killing the deli owner because he thought he was a supe, and that wasn’t even the worst thing that happened. Hughie was understandably upset about having to stay with Lamplighter and watch really terrible porn featuring The Seven, and once he found out that Starlight had been apprehended, he thought he was doing the right thing by encouraging Lampligher to be a hero and save the day. While they did manage to get Starlight and her mom, it also provided the perfect opportunity for Lamplighter to find a different way to atone for his sins, which meant the star witness for the trial was no longer alive. Maeve feeding Black Noir an Almond Joy because she knew he had a tree nut allergy saved Starlight’s life, and if it wasn’t clear before, she’s obviously one of the good ones while the other Seven members are much more sinister. Seeing John Doman’s Dr. Vogelbaum come in to testify in the trial was a promising thing, though that hope immediately dissipated as heads just starting exploding. It’s likely that it’s Cindy back again, presumably eager to take anyone out that she can even if the real villains are the people she should blame. After Maeve begged Ashley to be a human being for once in her life, she was the voice of panicked reason, yelling at Homelander and Stormfront for not doing anything to save the people who were being taken out in the courtroom. The casting for Butcher’s parents was pretty great – Lesley Nicol from “Downton Abbey” as her mother and John Noble from “Fringe” as his father. I know that the season finale is Emmy-nominated for its writing, so I’m definitely intrigued to see how this saga continues to play out.