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If you thought Hughie Campbell had a lifetime of trauma foisted upon him thanks to superheroes and compound V—from his girlfriend getting crushed to death like a slushy by A-Train on the streets, to having to euthanize his beloved father after the bloody fiasco in the last episode, and a whole lot of other crazies in between—he is in for more nightmarish experiences that will give him PTSD for seven lives. So yes, “The Boys” Season 4 Episode 6 delivers plenty of disturbing scenes, including the usual violence, gore, and some newer sexual kinks weird enough to compete with the “Herogasm” episode from The Boys Season 3, yet nowhere close to being as entertaining or grossly funny. It just feels a little tiredly tried and tested now.
Titled “Dirty Business,” episode 6 opens with Hughie (Jack Quaid) and friends mourning his father’s death, before getting back to business—the vigilantes plan to infiltrate and spy on a high-profile meeting hosted by Tek Knight (Derek Wilson), who’s a degenerate parody of Batman—a playboy billionaire who loves to exploit the poor and is extremely racist. “You cannot even fly,” Homelander (Antony Starr) mocks him at the party, which felt like a dig at Batman, although everybody sure seems to appreciate his money.
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Almost all crucial characters are at the Tek Knight party, where Homelander, along with Sister Sage and Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit), plan to set the ground for a political coup of sorts. The Boys drug Webweaver, a Spiderman knock-off, and Hughie slips into Webweaver’s tight superhero suit to gain entry into Tek’s convention. There is one light comical moment where everybody, including Kimiko (who’s been sulking otherwise due to Frenchie), makes a joke about Hughie’s Webweaver get-up. But once Hughie gets into the Tek Knight mansion, the jokes begin to run thin, despite featuring a sex dungeon filled with endless possibilities of all sorts of humor. One of the most un-funny sequences of this season has to be a prolonged emergency situation where Kimiko tries to communicate with a character through books, which would’ve been very entertaining under different circumstances, but is simply poorly timed and annoying in this episode.
In a minor surprise, Annie AKA Starlight and Firecracker (Valorie Curry) have yet another mini-confrontation, after their high-profile face-off from episode 4, where Annie loses her shit and almost beats Firecracker to death. Valorie Curry’s been having a good run as the white trash propagandist Firecracker, whose superpowers might be whimpering weak, but she makes up for it with her sheer determination to be in the spotlight. This edition of “The Boys” sees Firecracker finally soar in Homelander’s good books, courtesy of the season’s most madcap twist yet, which will immediately make a thousand questions pop into your head. But the writers do us a favor and make Homelander ask our questions, and Firecracker explains it all. It’s a world of evil superheroes, so anything is possible.
While a lot of the pop culture jokes and digs continue to be on point, the political satire was quite stale, monotonous and just plain boring. When Neuman makes a supposedly sharp, cutthroat pitch for herself, I wanted to be as lost as Sister Sage eating cake in the background. But this is “The Boys”, so you cannot even munch on snacks, unless your appetite isn’t affected by repulsive scenes. Neuman’s pitch was as simply redundant as “rich people run the country, not politicians”. Okay then.
Meanwhile, Butcher (Karl Urban) and Joe Kessler (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) work on torturing Sameer Shah (Omid Abtahi) to make the superhero-killing virus for them. After watching him as the ruthless Negan in “The Walking Dead,” Jeffrey Dean Morgan feels wasted in his cameo, even though he delivers all his lines with wicked bad-boy gusto. The episode ends with a major revelation about his character doesn’t come as much of a surprise, but should thrill a lot of pop-culture enthusiasts since it’s a nod to a cult classic all-boys film, which I won’t mention to keep this review largely spoiler-free. But you’ll know what I mean when you watch it.
The biggest question of the season remains: will Butcher and the Boys get their hands on a virus powerful enough to kill Homelander? They sure aren’t anywhere close to the endgame yet.
You can stream “The Boys” on Prime Video.
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