I’ve noticed a troubling pattern in Hollywood.
A show premieres, and it’s well received. It procures a dedicated fan base, and gets them invested. And while they may throw in subtle left wing propaganda here and there or take a few digs at the right wing, it’s the kind of thing that most of the people they’re targeting can roll their eyes at but continue watching. In other words, it isn’t very consequential.
But then, maybe around season 3 or 4, something changes.
I’m not sure if it’s arrogance/a power trip, or it’s what happens when a show gains enough traction, and bigger names start getting involved. Maybe it’s something else entirely. But for whatever reason, like clockwork, show after show falls into this trap.
After a few successful seasons, all sophistication and subtlety goes out of the window, and what was once a coherent and interesting plot becomes a hodge podge of left wing dogma. Suddenly a show you started watching because it was funny or clever or suspenseful just becomes a source of reddit-tier rambling and communist catharsis. The show loses everything that made it special and worth watching.
I haven’t personally watched these shows, but I’ve heard that This Is Us, Bridgerton, Orange Is The New Black, Brooklyn 99 and Grey’s Anatomy have all gone down this path.
And the season 4 debut of The Boys indicated the same tragic trajectory.
Even when the show embraced an overt political agenda in Season 2 with the “Nazi/alt right” storyline, it was still entertaining. It still had some kind of artistic integrity, even if it was dwindling.
I’ll admit, the new episodes had their moments. I laughed out loud when Homelander said “no means no, this isn’t the Neverland Ranch” and during Will Ferrell’s filming with A-Train for a movie where he plays a white savior basketball coach trying to get a troubled kid off of the streets.
But overall, I feel like the show is rapidly approaching the point of no return, where viewers are forced to abandon it because it just isn’t good anymore, and the showrunners are too preoccupied with making political statements and chasing a 12 year old boy’s idea of “shock value” (IE as much gratuitous gore and nudity that they can fit in each hour).
Watching it, I wondered if the people in charge of this show actually were tired of it and hoping to tank the ratings and get it canceled, or if they genuinely believed in what they were producing.
In the first two episodes, they introduce a southern Q-anon superhero with lackluster powers, a black woman whose superpower is being the smartest (and most insufferable?) person in the world, a gay kiss, a gay orgy, a close up of a male anus, and male full frontal. And of course, they’re drawing even more literal comparisons between the show’s villain to Trump and Hitler. And that’s just what I could remember off the top of my head.
The reactions to the newest season and the reactions to the reactions have been equally predictable.
The audience ratings so far have been abysmal and the worst in the history of the show, because anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see that it’s in rapid decline, devolving into some progressive pervert’s therapy session instead of advancing the storyline in a meaningful and imaginative way.
But if there’s anything the last decade or so of discourse has taught us, it’s that not everyone has two brain cells to rub together.
I’ve come to the unfortunate realization that the more often someone uses phrases like “media literacy” the less probable it is that they have any real understanding of it.
There’s a vocal minority of midwits on Twitter that insist anyone with a poor reception to season 4 is a right winger that was too inept to notice the show had been making fun of them the entire time.
But that’s not what’s happening.
The American right has been living in a world where their political adversaries dominate every aspect of culture and day to day life for over a decade now. From entertainment to education to technology to medicine to corporate life, the Left has dictated the standards of social acceptability for as long as most of us can remember. And as a result, right wingers became all too accustomed to going along to get along. They wrote papers they didn’t agree with to pass their classes in college, they sat silently in diversity and equity trainings at their jobs, they avoided posting their extremely reasonable beliefs on social media for fear of the implications both online and in the real world. And I don’t blame them. As someone that has always been vocal about what I believe, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about how much easier and simpler my life could have been if I had kept my views to myself.
Only recently are we starting to see a major attitude shift in the political right – because we’ve seen what a disaster our silence and “tolerance” create. With the boycotts of companies like Bud Light, Disney and Target leaving a lasting impression on executives, for the first time in years we’re seeing decision makers dial back their DEI initiatives and their unhinged political programming.
But because of the way things have been for so long, we have a much higher threshold for left wing messaging in media than we should. We’ve gotten used to watching shows and movies written by people that clearly hate us, because it’s pretty much all there was to watch.
But as much as we’re used to a base level of ridicule and mockery in what we consume, we have our limits – and shows like The Boys are pushing well past them.
It’s one thing to ignore a joke made here and there at your expense during a well written show; it’s another to be scolded and belittled week in and week out for something tenuous, juvenile and sloppy.
Shows like The Boys aren’t receiving piss poor reviews because conservatives are too stupid to understand when they’re being made fun of; but because the libtards in charge care more about using every opportunity possible to stand on their socialist soapbox than doing their jobs well.
what do you think?