The Boys Season 4 - How To Destroy Your Audience

One of the recurring questions these days is, "Drinker, you tough-talking, charismatic gunslinger with a dark past, when are you going to review *The Boys* Season 4?" Ah, *The Boys*. Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. I used to be a real fan of that show, to the point where I awarded the first season a "Drinker Recommends" accolade. Truly, what higher praise can one bestow upon a work of art these days?

At a time when the superhero genre was already becoming stale and played out, *The Boys* came along to completely tear up the rule book. Funny, violent, irreverent, and wickedly subversive, it featured a complex and well-written cast of heroes and villains, plus a whole lot of characters in between. The story brutally skewered everything from fake corporate activism to our obsession with celebrity culture, media manipulation, and cultural warfare. It was everything you could look for in a show like this.

I kind of checked out after Season 3, partly because I was burned out on superhero stories, even those subverting the genre, and partly because I saw where *The Boys* was heading as a creative property. The complex, nuanced, multifaceted characters were slowly morphing into simplified parodies of themselves. The central storyline was becoming trite and predictable, and the biting satire was becoming more overt and partisan with each season, parroting the same predictable talking points as every other Hollywood product. Basically, *The Boys* just wasn't cool or interesting anymore. It wasn't fighting the power; it was the power. It wasn't raging against the machine; it was part of it. What was once rebellious, subversive, and irreverent had become just another mouthpiece for the safe, corporatized, hollow, and performative activism it once so brutally mocked.

So, I wasn't exactly brimming with excitement at the prospect of sacrificing another eight hours of my increasingly limited lifespan for the new season. Frankly, I've got better things to do with my time. But hey, maybe they managed to turn things around. I mean, *Stranger Things* was drinking at The Last Chance Saloon for me after a disastrously bad Season 3, only for the showrunners to listen to fan complaints and come back with an absolute banger of a Season 4. Maybe we'd actually get something similar here.

So, off to Rotten Tomatoes I went to check out the reviews. Not the critic reviews, of course, because nobody in their right mind gives a damn what those shills have to say about anything anymore. I'm talking about the audience reviews, which are the only semi-reliable barometer for quality these days. And... oh. The audience scores had been gradually declining from an all-time high of 90% in Season 1 to 75% by Season 3, which is kind of in line with most shows, to be fair. But there's no denying that Season 4 absolutely fell off a cliff. Good Lord, I don't think I've seen a fan base turn so hard on any show since *Game of Thrones*. Look through the reviews and you'll see page after page of absolutely brutal rants all saying basically the same thing. The general consensus is that the show seems to have sacrificed writing quality and smart characterization in favor of simplistic shock value and cheap political point-scoring. In short, the writers have become more interested in getting their own personal ideology across and "owning the chuds" rather than actually telling a good story. And well, that sort of strategy never really pays off.

Naturally, I was curious to get the other side of the story, so I took a look at a recent interview with showrunner Eric Kripke in The Hollywood Reporter. He had this to say about accusations that the show had become too partisan: "I clearly have a perspective and I'm not shy about putting that perspective in the show. Anyone who wants to call the show 'woke' or whatever, that's okay, go watch something else. But I'm certainly not going to pull any punches or apologize for what we're doing. Some people who watch it think Homelander is the hero. What do you say to that? This show’s many things, subtle isn’t one of them. So if that’s the message you’re getting from it, I just throw up my hands, you know?"

Why do I feel like this is rapidly becoming a tale as old as time? A show gets popular and goes mainstream, the writers get a little too overconfident and think they can use it as a platform for their own personal hang-ups. The fans start to push back, and instead of taking that criticism on board and responding in a constructive manner, they just say, "Go watch something else, you dicks." Kind of reminds me of this idiot who did her level best to tank the American comic book industry and then had the balls to berate her own customers for not loving what she was doing. "If you don't like my politics, don't buy my book," right? Was me told. Do go on, girl. Enjoy yourself. It’s the entertainment equivalent of that kid who takes his ball and flounces off home because everyone else won't play the game the way he wants them to. It's this weird, narcissistic sense of entitlement amongst creatives these days that everyone should just unconditionally support and agree with them because they’re such paragons of wisdom that there’s no possibility they could ever be wrong about anything.

The problem, Eric, is that other people don’t always think exactly the same way we do. They don’t always share our beliefs, par our opinions, mirror our viewpoints on every topic. And that’s okay because people are allowed to have different points of view. A smart, humble, and creative writer finds ways to bridge the gap between all these different groups through the unifying concept of good storytelling. A bad writer, on the other hand, tries to hammer home his opinions on his audience with sheer brute force and then gets angry and resentful when they push back against it. I'll let you decide which one you used to be and which one you are now.

Also, it’s interesting watching the discourse around *The Boys* on social media, which I can best summarize as: "The Boys used to be smart and fun, now it’s all about pushing politics and nothing else." "Cry harder, chuds. Don’t you know this show was always making fun of people like you?" Sheer nonsense. Okay, let’s get this over with. Yes, most people with functioning brain cells knew exactly what this show was and where its political sympathies lay. Nobody in their right mind looked at Homelander as a misunderstood hero that represented the voice of the masses. Nobody looked at Stormfront and thought, "You know what? She’s got a point there." Nobody clapped and cheered when The Deep forced himself on Starlight. And it’s complete gaslighting to suggest otherwise.

The show was never particularly subtle about its politics or what it expected its audience to take from it. The difference, though, is that for the first couple of seasons at least, it was actually fun and entertaining because the creative focus was still on the story and characters. And believe it or not, people can be surprisingly receptive to your political ideas when they're smartly presented and wrapped up inside an entertaining product. People can empathize with characters that embody ideas they don’t normally support as long as those characters are well written and likable. People are even capable of laughing at themselves when you point out the more absurd or extreme elements of their worldview, provided you do it in a way that’s actually funny and insightful. In each of these cases, though, the primary focus should always be on entertaining your audience instead of lecturing or pandering to them.

And I think this is where *The Boys* has finally come unstuck. The more strident and blatant your messaging becomes, the less entertained people are going to be, and the more of your audience you end up pushing away. Instead of uniting them with entertainment, you end up dividing and alienating them with politics. And well, I hope it was all worth it, Eric. I hope it was worth tanking your franchise, tarnishing your legacy, and turning your own customers against you, all for the sake of some cheap political theater that’s going to be forgotten as soon as your show’s over. I hope all those pats on the back that you and your fellow writers have given yourselves make you feel better when the show inevitably gets canceled.

I know I don’t think I will be watching Season 4 of *The Boys* after all. Quite frankly, I’ve got better things to do, and I suspect you do as well. Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for today. Go away now.