The Boys -- What I Thunk Of It, With Spoilers

I liked it fine enough, but not nearly as much as a lot of critics and most of my nerdy friends did.  The set-up, via Heroes-As-Narcissistic-Politically-Motivated-Assholes?  Actually not that original, but still a cool idea!  The performances?  Mostly good, except for Karl Urban's inexplicable, terrible attempt at a cockney accent.  (Which I assumed a New Zealander wouldn't struggle with, but then again his dialogue was obviously written by an American high on bad Guy Ritchie movies.  That is, all of them.)

Things I did like?  Starlight's performance as the country-girl who quickly loses all illusions as to what's really going on.  (Apparently the source material is even more brutally rape-y.)  Homelander coming off not just as an arrogant jerk, but a truly psychopathic asshole.  A generally believable scenario where the interests of humanity are co-opted by corporate and government greed.

Things beyond Butcher's terrible lines that I didn't like?  I mean, I didn't hate The Deep's fish-out-of-water stuff (see what I did there?) but tonally, and even acknowledging a need for some comic relief, it felt like a different show.  And while the first half of the seasons sets up some interesting arcs, the second half seemed to want to generate ten new ones as bait for a second season.  (Something a lot of shows do these days, granted.)  And what about that terrorist super, The Captain?  Homelander flies all the way to Syria but doesn't confront the most pressing threat?  And the whole existential crisis of heroes being made, not "touched by God" or what have you?  Very under-cooked, especially with a sympathetic Christian character like Starlight.  And finally, why did Homelander kill the woman he's obviously, deeply, and creepily attached to as a Freudian mother-figure?

At the end of the day sure, I'll watch a second season.  But I'm not exactly dying for more.  I think people got swept up in the obvious excitement of the first few episodes and kind of let their critical guards down for some poor writing in the second half.