It's funny that they lampooned Boyle's smarmy virtue-signaling theater, considering the whole mission of the episode was smarmy virtue-signaling theater. In past seasons I got used to B99 addressing sensitive issues tactfully, but this effort was beyond clumsy. It was less of a storyline and more of a checklist of real-world-relevant topics about which the writers wanted to pat themselves on the back. There's one scene with masks and social distancing so we all know how covid-responsible the production was, followed by a scene which is useless except to justify not using masks anymore, then we start aimlessly wandering through the guilt-trip checklist. If not for a bit of comedy from Jeffords, and Holt dropping a reveal that will affect the rest of the season, this episode would deserve less than 1 star.
Reviews
5 Reviews
The Boys
(2019– )
Not as impressed as most people
9 September 2020
I haven't seen a lot of the show, but what I have seen has failed to grip my interest. The dialogue just feels so incredibly contrived. If you try to bring some sort of cinematic gravity to every single line, you end up with a string of non-sequiturs instead of conversations that make sense. As far as I've seen, the writing is cumbersome and puts me off.
Wow
26 June 2020
Warning: Spoilers
Long story short, everything that other people complain about is everything that made this episode great. Really every episode to this point has set the formula: create conflict, then Team Avatar finds a way in the nick of time and thwarts the attack. The season 2 finale follows the formula, then just when you think Aang is going to apply what the guru taught him and become some sort of god, and just when you think Zuko is going to consummate his season 2 development and become a good guy, they both fail and the enemy wins. The twist is frustrating in the moment, but it makes the viewer that much more interested in the rest of the story.
Good episode, but...
27 May 2020
I'm failing to see why people are so universally regarding this as one of the all-time greats of the series, on par with Ricklantis Mix-up and the like. It's conceptually similar to Rick Potion #9 and Edge of Tomorty (Morty uses Rick's work to chase his shallow adolescent impulses, ramifications be damned), but it's different in that it altogether lacks a B plot and that it ends with a simple callback joke instead of a significant revelation. Maybe people are so nostalgic for the early seasons that they're losing themselves over any semblance of a return to the almighty, perhaps somewhat cruel Rick and his totally loyal, totally ignorant sidekick, rather than watching them spar as if they're on relatively equal footing. Anyway, I wouldn't call it the GOAT by any means, but it's a very entertaining episode.
A Classic R&M Hot Mess
10 May 2020
Warning: Spoilers
With 3+ seasons down and ostensibly 6+ seasons remaining, this show faces a tremendous challenge to not lose its luster. With so many episodes, the setting-conflict-resolution formula involving the same core characters can easily get stale. One of Harmon/Roiland's preferred devices for stemming that tide is to obfuscate what's actually happening to our main characters, to blur the lines of real and unreal. For example, some of the most memorable episodes of the series so far have involved other versions of Rick and Morty from alternate dimensions, Rick being trapped in a simulation inside a simulation inside a simulation, Rick escaping prison by swapping his consciousness into other bodies, flashback scenes depicting memories of events that never happened, etc.
Episode 4.06 takes another brilliant dip from that well, sending us on an amusing and occasionally disorienting zig-zag between real time and storytelling mode, and eventually leaving us with the implication that exactly nothing we just watched has truly happened to our real Rick and Morty. Yes, the episode is a self-aware parody of the show's storytelling formula, and in a certain sense also a parody of how emotionally invested people can get into things that don't matter, but it's another example of the clever tricks Harmon and Roiland have up their sleeves to continue to keep viewers on their toes.
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