“The Boys” crossed a line, and it wasn’t “funny” at all

Updated 06/24/07, see updates below.

The young has always been a show that was out to shock and disgust its audience, so it’s no wonder they keep pushing the proverbial envelope. I’m not a prudish person, but this show often grossed me out quite a bit, although in the past that was (mostly) a good kind of gross.

It was mostly funny, although early in the series, Starlight (Erin Moriarty) is sexually assaulted by the superhero The Deep (Chace Crawford). This scene was deeply disturbing, and it should be. It was a tough scene, but it was there for a reason: Starlight got her first taste of how vile the Seven really were — though not the last. She soon realized that even golden boy Homelander (Antony Starr) was a villain.

In this week’s episode of The young, However, it takes things too far, and not in a good way. There’s shock value and there’s shock value. Season 4, Episode 6 – titled “Dirty Business” – is only shocking in its lack of empathy for victims of sexual assault. Warning, spoilers!

It’s weird, because last week was the first time this season that I really thought to myself, “This is finally going to be good.” The episode had a lot going for it, from flying “supe” sheep to a hilarious parody of Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe. “Get woke, get yoked” is one of the funniest and most absurd things this show has ever done, and the ridiculous “woke” product placement in this episode is classic The young.

But in episode 6, everything falls apart when Hughie (Jack Quaid) learns the adage “never meet your heroes” the hard way – just like Starlight did in season 1. This time, however, the sexual assault is treated with the nuance of a freight train hitting a brick wall.

Content warning.

My colleague Paul Tassi has already explained in detail why this scene is so messed up, so I’ll just refer you to his summary and critique. I want to talk about the author’s intent that makes the whole thing so much worse. As far as I could tell from watching the scene and its aftermath, The young played Hughie’s suffering for laughs. I was a little appeased by his emotional breakdown afterwards, but it turned out I was wrong: Showrunner Eric Kripke called the scene in an interview with diversity.

The interviewer asked the same question I would have asked: “Let’s start with the sex dungeon part of Tek Knight. How did they come up with that idea? And why put Hughie in this situation now – to beat him to the ground by having his childhood hero sexually abuse him after his father has just died?”

Kripke’s answer is:

Well, that’s a grim way of looking at it! We think it’s hilarious. Tek Knight is, of course, our version of Batman and we really wanted to play with that cliche: Batman’s fascist undertones as a really rich guy who preys on poor people and then profits off of incarceration. So that was one. Tek Knight was already set up as a freak, so we were halfway there. Then the idea came up that he should have a Batcave – but let’s be honest, the Batcave would be a sex dungeon. So, even the real Batcave is just this one side of a sex dungeon. It’s really grim and there are rubber suits everywhere. It’s not that much effort to add a couple of dildos and then a weird urinal that turns into a face mask.

And there’s a great storyline in the comics where Hughie goes undercover disguised as a superhero. That was a story that Jack had always asked us to do. So part of that is always being careful what you ask the writers to do. Then we finally had this Webweaver character and the idea of ​​Spider-Man going down to get tickled in the Batcave is just too good to pass up. I’m sorry, I just couldn’t let that fall by the wayside.

Kink tickled? Sorry, that wasn’t “kink,” that was completely consensual. The fact that the show’s creator sees it as “hilarious” and dismisses it as some kind of fun dungeon sex scene is more disturbing than the scene itself.

When asked if Amazon ever said this went too far, Kripke replied:

“I love that it’s just such a perfect setup that he doesn’t know his own code word. It’s like a beautiful comedy setup that he’s trying to figure it out the whole time.”

Not knowing your own code word is about the least funny thing I can think of, and I’m absolutely baffled that someone in charge of a major television series could be so insensitive.

This wasn’t just a “shock moment” in my opinion, any more than Starlight’s attack was, but it’s bizarre to see Kripke treating the whole thing as just a fun scene and not something to be taken very, very seriously. Compare his comments to what he said about Starlight’s scene at the time:

I wanted to get it right. I had a lot of conversations with a lot of women, some of which were very painful. And I did my best to get the bullshit out of the way and just let them talk and not try to steer it one way or the other. And then, ultimately, well, kind of boil it down to Starlight’s experience, both in that moment and afterwards. Then when it came time to bring in Erin and then Chace… we went through that process again. Because the actors actually have to live it and play it. And that’s why I’ll say this: I’ve never worked this hard or stressed this much about a scene in my life before or since. Because if I did that wrong, it would not only have been a failure as a scene, it would have been hurtful. And I felt that pressure and responsibility the whole time.

Imagine if he said the Starlight scene was “hilarious” and dismissed it in the same way he dismissed Hughie’s horrific scene. There is a huge stigma attached to male victims of sexual assault, and instead of dealing with it seriously, The young only reinforces this stigma. It is hypocritical and beyond disgusting. I would call it a disgrace, but that is not strong enough.

Reprehensible. That’s the word I’m looking for.

Imagine again if this scene wasn’t Hughie, but Starlight or Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara). Then compare how this show handles such a devastating moment to Netflix’s recent miniseries baby reindeer, that dove headfirst into how trauma can destroy your life. How terribly disappointing.

To update: Here you can watch the creator of the show and some of the cast members joke about this scene in the most bizarre way possible. It’s like it never occurred to anyone during the production of this scene that it was even a sexual assault. Just wow.

Update 2:

Many people go out of their way to defend this scene. One common defense I’ve read is that Hughie knowingly put himself in that situation, so it can’t have been consensual. Another is that both Tek Knight and Ashley thought he was Webweaver, and so they believed it was consensual. That may be the case, but I don’t think it changes anything about what happened to Hughie, who definitely wasn’t planning on engaging in any sexual activity when he went in dressed as Spider-Man’s Adjacent.

Another point I wanted to comment on is how tiring it is when every single Supe is a sexual pervert, and not even in a way that’s relevant to their characters or powers. At least earlier in the series the writers tried to make it make sense. For example, Translucent was a peeping Tom because he could turn himself invisible. The Deep is into sea creatures. Now the series seems to want to keep upping the ante. There’s a sense of desperation in it, which is kind of sad.

It’s also kind of sad that Hughie didn’t even get an episode to mourn the incredibly tragic death of his father, and instead they threw him into this gross-out scene to make him laugh.

Finally, I have one last question: Did this season advance the plot in any meaningful way? Generation V introduced the superkilling virus, but The young didn’t really advance the story. It was all about wasting time and shock value, nothing else.