The Boys (2019) s03e04 – Glorious Five Year Plan

Following the conventional (Dan O’Bannon) wisdom about second acts ending with things in the worst shape for the heroes… it’s hard to imagine how “The Boys” will further ratchet the situations before the season finale. Everything has gone wrong across every storyline, gloriously so. No pun intended.

There are two main plots, two subplots. Or like, one and a half subplots because one of them is the hard cliffhanger. The episode’s also got an incredibly dangerous soft cliffhanger, but only one life or death one.

The Boys’ plot in this episode is a Russian field trip. They’re looking for the gun the Russkies used to kill Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) back in the eighties, intending to turn it on Antony Starr, which ties in with Erin Moriarty and Starr’s superhero plot. “The Boys” is incredibly precisely constructed this episode; Meredith Glynn gets the script credit, her first “Boys” as writer (she’s an executive producer this season). It’s a really good script; some of the supporting cast gets short scenes, but they’re good short scenes, and they build.

Now, Jack Quaid knows Karl Urban is juicing with the superhero serum. His morning begins with Starr humiliating him—Starr’s just decided he’s dating Moriarty to raise his points–and, when they get to Russia, the anti-Homelander Russian state media is running the story making fun of Quaid for getting super-cucked. Seething anger builds in Quaid, leading to big decisions.

While Quaid’s still good, he’s not great with the anger stuff. Not sure if it’s a limitation of the script, Julian Holmes’s directing (which is otherwise good), or just Quaid not being able to do it, but when he’s got to be angry, he’s throwing a tantrum. There’s a “cute” quality. Too much Meg Ryan, perhaps. Though my good lady wife pointed out Quaid got his dad’s Innerspace butt.

Anyway.

The subplot to the Boys is Tomer Capone and Karen Fukuhara getting increasingly sick of Urban, to the point even Laz Alonso’s concerned about morale. Fukuhara’s excellent this episode. Capone’s good too (thank goodness, last episode’s stumbling was momentary), but Fukuhara’s great. She’s got to assassinate some Russians in trade for superhero-killing gun intel.

Meanwhile, Moriarty and Dominique McElligott (who’s not in this season anywhere near enough) are putting together their rebel strike force to take on Starr once Urban, and Quaid bring back the state-of-the-art bang bang. Moriarty enlists ex-boyfriend Miles Gaston Villanueva in what ends up being an excellent subplot for both of them. So much of “The Boys” hinges on the casting and Moriarty’s in that essential group.

The superhero plot is more behind-the-scenes drama than epical plot; Jessie T. Usher is getting into it with returning team member Chace Crawford, whose evil Karen wife (Katy Breier) knows how to get into Starr’s good graces at Usher’s expense. Then there’s some more for Colby Minifie to do as the team’s executive liaison.

The superhero subplot involves superhero company CEO Giancarlo Esposito and his secretly adopted, secretly superpowered government official, mole Claudia Doumit trying to run damage control on Starr. It’s another excellent subplot, with series-best acting from Doumit and season-best from Esposito.

Then, of course, the episode also gives Urban and Starr a bunch to do. No wasting the transfixing scenery incinerators here. They both get excellent spotlights, multiple ones for Starr.

It’s an outstanding episode. I’m looking forward to seeing how things get worse because of the incredible creative skill involved, but I’m also dreading them because of the taxing emotional investment. “The Boys” is—even more than witty, gross, hilarious, icky—heavy. It’s always very, very heavy.

Gloriously so.

The Boys (2019) s03e03 – Barbary Coast

We’re firmly in season three with The Boys now, with this episode setting up a couple longer storylines and a few immediate ones. First, the world’s reacting to Antony Starr going megalomaniac on live television—the white men positively responding because they’re garbage—and Erin Moriarty discovering she no longer has any leverage thanks to her better ratings.

Of course, her ratings don’t matter since a more unhinged Starr’s giddily sharing his plans for a scorched Earth (literally) with her.

So while Moriarty’s dealing with going from a position of power to Starr’s prime target for abuse, Jack Quaid’s busy getting back into it with Karl Urban, Laz Alonso, and Karen Fukuhara. Tomer Capone takes a personal day to deal with ex Jordana Lajoie’s problems, only it turns out that plot will feed directly into the next episode.

It’s an unfortunate subplot, mostly because director Julian Holmes doesn’t seem to know how to break Capone out of his worse acting impulses. As a result, Capone’s scene opposite Lajoie was like a spoiled madeleine, reminding of his weaker performance earlier in the show.

Capone and Fukuhara are both getting sick of working for Urban—who’s recovering from his superhero serum this episode, unable to control his heat vision, and irate about it. Capone’s better with Fukuhara than without, especially since his side quest involved a lot of kink-shaming for comedy with his Russian dominatrix crime lord former boss, Katia Winter.

Everyone but Capone goes to Laila Robins, who’s hiding out with Cameron Crovetti since Starr lost it last episode. Unfortunately, there’s not enough bridging material between Starr declaring his hostile superiority and everyone reacting to it or everyone discovering Claudia Doumit works for Giancarlo Esposito. Neither Doumit nor Esposito show up in this episode, with Esposito sorely missed in Moriarty’s plot. She keeps hearing what Esposito would tell her about Starr, who’s got all sorts of schemes to make her miserable, whether it’s bringing ex-boyfriend Miles Gaston Villanueva onto the superhero team for drama or even bringing back Chace Crawford, who assaulted her and kicked off the show back in the first season.

Compounding Esposito’s absence is his character appearing in a flashback. Urban found out something Robins hasn’t been telling him or The Boys, so he confronts her about it, and she does a story time with a flashback. The flashback itself is pretty good, although Sarah Swire isn’t nearly as good as Robins; Swire plays the younger version. But then Justiin Davis does an Esposito impression in his performance as the young version of that character, and it does not work.

The flashback’s revelations also put Urban in an even worse place, meaning he’s going to take everyone else with him—young and old—to that place. It’s a confined episode, but with a lot going on and lots of smaller season three plot setups. The stuff they can do without all the guest stars.

The episode does more with man’s inhumanity to man than gore, though there’s a harrowing sequence for Crawford and Starr, where Crawford (or maybe just the audience) discovers his wife Katy Breier is a villain in the making.

Then Jessie T. Usher gets a somewhat surprisingly proto-storyline with brother Christian Keyes. It’s a packed episode and mostly fine, but it doesn’t have the wow factor of the previous couple. Instead, it’s all either setup or exposition; there is some great “Boys” humor before everyone has a bad day, though, with Quaid needing help calling in sick to work.

Moriarty’s easily the episode standout, even as she’s entirely reactionary.

Lost in Space (2018) s03e06 – Final Transmission

Yet another short episode. And it’s got a huge dramatic beat in the latter half, but not for the cliffhanger. In fact, everything after the dramatic beat just serves to reduce the impact of that beat. It plays very awkwardly, which isn’t director Julian Holmes’s fault, just the script’s. Katherine Collins gets the credit; as per her usual, there’s a lousy sappy monologue from one of the cast members. It’s worse than usual because it’s not in dialogue but pre-recorded monologue, so they’re trying to edit to match.

Despite crashing on a bog planet—Dagobah without matte paintings—for once, the space-camper is almost ready for flight. They just need to clean things up and wait for Ignacio Serricchio to arrive. He’s busy walking with his pet chicken in a long shot. Maxwell Jenkins and Toby Stephens go up top to watch him approach and have a painful conversation about Jenkins getting older. I think he’s as tall as Stephens or taller, but I don’t remember them mentioning it.

There’s a better check-up scene between Molly Parker and Parker Posey, harkening back to their original bonding scenes in the first season. It’s okay, but a reminder the show never really gave the two of them anything to do together.

Then we get some earth-shattering news (well, not really) about how the Cylons found Earth in the first place (and when), and it changes everything, meaning Jenkins is going to have to go out and have a showdown with the alien boss. There are a handful more revelations (“Lost in Space” really does go with “It’s okay to enslave artificial beings”) before the huge dramatic beat and fallout. The fallout is everyone scrambling to get to the next episode so they can have their narrative stakes and eat them too.

The episode features Stephens’s worst acting on the show (I’d say so far, but it’s almost over, right… this season’s it). A lot of it is the script’s fault, though the show has never written Stephens’s character to suit the performance, so what can you really do about it. We’re in the final three episodes, not much.

What’s so much worse about it is when the show acknowledges the deficiency—Parker Posey comments on it this time—only it never improves.

There’s also some middling acting from Jenkins, but it’s big swing stuff—embracing his Messianic possibilities—so it’s easier to let it slide. The Stephens stuff isn’t even disappointing; instead exasperating and tedious.

The episode resolves one of the show’s longest-running “mythology” arcs, and it’s the weakest weak sauce. You’d think with so much activity on this arc, they’d have something better planned for the finish.

Lost in Space (2018) s03e04 – Northing Left Behind

So far, this season has had fifty-ish-minute episodes. This episode’s only forty. It’s got a couple things to do, and it does them expediently, which makes it a bridging episode of sorts.

While the kids are safely in spaceflight, thanks to Taylor Russell and Russell Hornsby, their parents—half a galaxy away or whatever—are in more danger than before because the evil robots know where they’ve got their spaceships hidden. So it’s going to be a countdown to disaster episode for Molly Parker and Toby Stephens. They’re out of time (again) and have to prepare for imminent destruction (again), but they’re going to make sure the robots can’t get to their kids (again). Or to the Alpha Centauri colony. They’ve got to destroy all their records.

It ends up being a reasonably amusing Ignacio Serricchio sequence, where he gets to pal around with former boss and now subordinate and good friend Tattiawna Jones. We also get to see some other familiar faces, though not Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who I think got killed off offscreen so they wouldn’t have to bring him back.

Except the evil robots aren’t just satisfied destroying the adults, they want to get rid of the kids too, so when the kids get ready to fly to safety, an evil robot possesses their robot. Again, so convenient the robots have the technology to communicate across galaxies in real-time with no lag. It’d be such a pain for the narrative if they couldn’t.

But even if the kids do go save the adults, they’re still no match for the Cylon fleet, which means they’re going to need a great plan to succeed. After some character development masquerading as escalating action for Russell and Hornsby, Maxwell Jenkins takes the lead on the “saving the day” stuff. Because Jenkins isn’t just trying to save the adults, he’s also trying to figure out how he and his robot can go off on their secret mission.

Despite the stakes being weird—the adults burning documents like they’re expecting the SEC inspectors to serve them a warrant, the kids bickering like a Disney after-school special—once the episode gets going with the sci-fi action suspense, it does pretty well. Julian Holmes’s direction is outstanding on those sequences.

There are some decent reuniting moments, and the cliffhanger setup is appropriately harrowing, even if it does just get the show right back to its… end of season one ground situation? Makes you wish someone would just say, “Oh, no, we’re lost in space… again!”

Another notable item—there’s finally a gay couple in “Lost in Space.” They don’t get names, they don’t get dialogue, but they do get to embrace each other, waiting for the robots to blast them out of the sky, just like all the straights in a montage sequence.