Just finished watching The Boys and, the usual shit aside, it's actually a rather compelling show, though I am not sure whether intentionally so or not

Basically, when you strip away the dead weight, it depicts the rise, fall and resurrection of neoconservatism

I'm not sure whether or not this is intentional because it sort of stumbles into it by one of the oldest pitfalls any movie or show can have:

The villains are far more compelling than the heroes (in the usual sense of these terms, as the "official" designations are flipped)

The Boys themselves are fairly uninteresting and flat, basically the most cliche team of anti-heroes (figuratively and literally) you could have

Motivations range from "supes nicked me missus" to "gotta help an old friend with one last job and settle a score"

Ho-hum, riveting

The Seven is where it's at, in particular Homelander and the people closest to him. Season 1 might as well be called The Homelander Show

Homelander himself is basically the avatar of neoconservatism: An amalgamation of Superman, Dick Cheney and John Ashcroft

Basically he's the facade of Superman with the megalomaniac nihilism of Cheney and the religious monomania of Ashcroft (except for himself, as it turns out) underneath

Even his name seems to be an obvious reference to the at the time notorious Department of Homeland Security

The corporation The Seven and Homelander work for, Vought, is essentially a cross-section of corporate America with a focus on the military industrial complex and other security state darlings

It is, essentially, institutional backing and the GOP thrown in one in season 1

Season 1, being Homelander's show, is full blast Bush administration nostalgia (by which I don't mean approval of it)

Homelander is on top of the world, huge evangelical festival, Arab terrorists capturing a plane with, among other things, box cutters (wink wink) etc

The plane incident in particular was interesting because first it's Arab terrorists doing it (one of those We Don't Do This Anymore things now which was ubiquitous in 00s TV shows) and because Homelander allows the plane to crash to use the event for his own purposes

(Essentially, the point being made is that Bush allowed 9/11 to happen, which is what the plane incident is in this show, to exploit it)

His own purposes being basically announcing the War on Terror at a huge evangelical festival to ever-increasing approval and fervor

The first season ends with a prisoner extraction from a black site (cough Gitmo cough) and Homelander, increasingly paranoid and frustrated at losing control over people and events, lashing out against the people closest to him (ie the DHS/security apparatus targeting Americans)

Season 2 heralds the arrival of Stormfront, a subtly-named superhero who is basically the avatar of right-wing ethno-populism (ie Trump as seen by libs)

Fast-talking, quick-witted, irreverent, skillful at using social media, gleefully trash-talking Vought and Homelander himself

She quickly becomes the darling of half of the people as she thrives on amped-up divisive rhetoric, channeling popular anger

This is the main difference between her and Homelander, who is still stuck in "we're all in this together" post-9/11 patriotic unity mode

This tension between the two comes to a head when he shows up at an anti-Homelander rally after a video showing him callously leaving collateral damage in the wake of one of his missions in the third world surfaces and causes an uproar

He goes there to deliver his "we're all patriotic, God-fearing Americans" shtick but is heavily rebuked by a crowd he no longer understands, a disastrous PR blunder which leaves his reputation heavily damaged, upon which he relents and seeks out Stormfront's help

The two enter a rather tumultuous, questionable relationship. Not only do they literally exchange blows while fucking, but they're in it for quite selfish reasons

Stormfront wants Vought and the institutional backing/legitimacy it brings and tries getting it through Homelander

Homelander, meanwhile, needs Stormfront to keep from fading into irrelevance in an environment which is deeply divided on the issue of superheroes (though he is made uncomfortable by her racial views, often wincing and feeling embarrassed when she expresses them)

They try to jointly raise Homelander's son, and while he provides the "material backing" (ie teaching him to use his powers) she provides the ideological one (ie who he should use them against)

(I shit you not, PewDiePie is name-dropped during all of this)

Some superhero bullshit happens, zap punch wahoo, and Stormfront is defeated and Vought greatly diminished, though Homelander survives and is once more the most popular hero, joined by the "good" heroes who defeated Stormfront, "rehabilitating" him or his image at least

Homelander's son is whisked away by the CIA, presumably to raise him "right" so that he may use his powers for "good" ends, even though the entire show basically has a through-line about how no one single being/institution should have such overwhelming power

Right-wing ethno-populism defeated, neoconservatism rehabilitated, and the fearsome power it wielded at its zenith looming large on the horizon, threatening to return but with an updated, "morally just" cause and paintjob is where we leave the show for now. Sound familiar?

Correct, there's basically an AOC-esque character who leads an incipient left-populism but is revealed to be sinister and dangerous, manipulating things and stepping over lots of bodies to her own end while being the darling of all the "sensible" people https://twitter.com/evrythingstays/status/1332816205971943432?s=19

Interestingly enough, there is no "Obama administration" in the show

We go from Homelander and his first 9/11 straight to Stormfront and her second 9/11 (a massacre she orchestrates) then to "AOC" and her third 9/11 (a super terrorist attack on congress which she commits)