PT Brainum: Blog

The Boys

'The Boys' is a Prime Video TV series from Amazon. It is full of profanity, sex, blood, & gore earning it's MA (Mature Audience 18+) rating. Also, it's fantastic, full of dark humor and excellent storytelling. The concept is similar to Watchman if you are familiar with that movie/comic, but as a comedy. A hilariously dark and bloody comedy.

I'll endeavor not to provide any spoilers, but it generally takes place in our world, where like our world, every person is their own brand of asshole. The exception is that in this world the last half decade or so has seen the appearance of Supers. Those that go into the hero business seem to work for one company, Vought, who manages them, promotes them, and generally considers them a product that they sell via advertisements, endorsements, and action movies. Their top team 'The Seven' work out of their main office, while the rest work out of smaller offices across the country.

It's a dark comedy because these Supers, like regular people, are flawed but unlike regular people, are unbound by the rules of society. The Boys of the title is a group of people who are out, for various reasons of their own, but primarily revenge, are out to make these indestructible icons pay for the crimes they have committed.

The cast is excellent, the acting perfect, the scripts unique and perfectly executed. Even during the slow scenes the cinematography is beautiful.

The little scenes of these characters in daily life, mixed with the monstrosity of the evil displayed is so perfectly balanced that I was kept guessing who the real bad guys are the entire time, that coupled with the great music, the perfect comedic timing, and cinematography, well it's just a sheer joy to watch.

Season 1 was 8 episodes, about an hour each. It was released in July 2019. Season 2 is expected to begin September 4th 2020.

Cast: Karl Urban, Elisabeth Shue, Erin Moriarty, Antony Starr, Dominique McElligott, Jessie T. Usher, Chace Crawford, Nathan Mitchell, Laz Alonso, Jack Quaid, Karen Fukuhara, Tomer Kapon
Creator: Eric Kripke, from the comic by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson

Things I didn't like: The usual Hollywood 'gay is ok!' trope seemed tacked on as some sort of lame boilerplate agenda. I don't know if I'm just tired of hearing it, or it's just that it really did feel tacked on for no good reason.
The explicit nudity is nearly all guys. Yes, naked invisible men too, yet we see little to none of any naked ladies. I guess Game of Thrones spoiled me.

Spoilers may be (definitely are) below:

My favorite super character is the pseudo Aquaman known as 'The Deep'. He begins with what seems to be the true villain of the series, yet ends up as simply the adorkable misfit. And yeah, he gets his too.

Karl Urban is fantastic, it took me an episode to figure out he played Dr McCoy on the Star Trek reboot. He was great in that too. He pays a 'no fucks given' character to the T, the final scene leaves so many questions that I'm looking forward to seeing them answered in season 2 this September.

If you don't have Prime, then you can find it here after you start up your most powerful ad blocker: https://projectfreetv.fun/series/the-boys/

I wouldn't try torrenting it, or anything else, it's not secure or private. I'm not advocating piracy, but I've heard that the dmca doesn't apply to streaming. Not a lawyer, you're responsible for your own ass, like usual.

So I watch a lot of TV. I've been thinking about writing a few reviews about some of my favorite things, hopefully brining attention to stuff you might have missed. Is this something you might be interested in reading?
PT

I started this series many years ago, simply doing research, combining events, technologies, and letting my mind imagine perfect choices. It began with two thoughts, grief over my father's Alzheimer's diagnosis, as I contemplated the years I spent with him in Oklahoma as a child.
The second event was my contemplation of the do over stories. It seemed that as soon as the main character changed anything, all his memories would be increasingly less helpful. It led me to try to imagine what knowing the results of actions would be like, and finally what would be required for a human to have true foreknowledge, a sort of Omniscience.
I finally began writing the story December of 2018. It went well, and I'm very pleased with the results. After part 4 or so I had an editor and that helped immensely.
While writing part 8, my father died. Suddenly I couldn't write anymore. It was a struggle to finish that section, and it's not as long as I had intended. I did my best to give it a good ending, at least for now.
Yes there is more story, John's not dead, just off on a new adventure elsewhere. Someday i hope to tell that story.
First though I'd like to go back, recompile all 8 parts, into a single combined story, adding new material, particularly dialog, which I find difficult to write, and breaking the parts into chapters.
I'll let you know when I start that project, but it'll be a while. Next up will be a re edited version of micro gates, I've got stuff for a sequel, but not a good plot for it yet.
Thanks for your votes, comments, and error reports. It's been a great five months, and i really appreciate everything all my readers had to say.
PT Brainum

I've renamed part 7 to better reflect that it is both part 7 and part 8. Just waiting on old rotorhead to finish the edit of 8 so i can post it. I've also adjusted the table of contents to better reflect this.
PT

Happy April 1st. Part 7 has been submitted for posting. It has been broken into chapters that will post during the next weeks. The first 2 chapters have been submitted, because chapter 1 would look like an April fool's prank without chapter 2.
The break up is to ease readability, and allows me to add in part 8 to the end of 7. As some of you know i stopped writing because of a personal tragedy while working on 8. I've wrapped it up, but it's not the complete part I had planned. While I hope to do more with this later, for now my muse is unavailable.
If chapter 1 fails to answer any long standing questions you have about events leading up to this point let me know so I can get them answered. The first chapter had long been my planned big reveal.
PT