Drama
Revival
Revival brings the dead back to life. But while they don’t chomp for human flesh, violence and the supernatural follow them anyway.
What if superheroes weren’t, y’know, heroic? What if some were just plain old jerks? Only jerks that could crush you into jelly?
Well, you’d have Amazon Prime’s The Boys … and a lot of other revisionist superhero movies and TV shows, too, but we’re talking about The Boys. Because, as you likely gathered from the title, the show is linked to the actual show we’re reviewing.
In the universe of The Boys, most superheroes aren’t born. They don’t fly in from different planets or get bitten by radioactive insects. They’re made, using a super-secret chemical manufactured by Vought International.
And while Vought has successfully created a bevy of superheroes through said chemical, called Compound V, the results are incredibly, deeply, goopily problematic—whether you’re looking at the actions of the superheroes themselves or at the Plugged In review of the show.
The Boys Presents: Diabolical gives us some ancillary, animated stories set in the universe of The Boys. Some feature characters (often in supporting roles) from the originating TV show. Others introduce us to entirely new ones: a sensitive Vought scientist who develops an attachment to his laser-eyed subject. A bunch of disaffected teens who are given Compound V as babies but develop lame superpowers—then decide to take it out on their parents. Etc.
There’s no real narrative thread that runs through each 12- to 15-minute episode, other than Billy Butcher’s bulldog, Terror, appearing in his own very short vignettes to introduce each episode. These are stand-alone stories, all told with different characters, voices and animation styles.
In fact, outside Compound V itself, these shorts share only one thing in common: They’re ridiculously, often loathsomely, unhinged—sometimes to the point where the originating series looks like a Little Golden Book by comparison.
Such is the aptly named Diabolical’s intent, of course. It spoons us its ludicrously extreme content with a certain evil-eyed glee.
Admittedly, the show comes with a certain deranged pedigree. Many of the stories feature well-known actors and comics—sometimes writing the stories, sometimes providing voices, often both. From Seth Rogen to Awkwafina, from Don Cheadle to Simon Pegg, Hollywood is well represented.
And the problems are, too.
This animated show seems to understand that cartoon blood and gore aren’t quite as disgusting as they would be in a live-action feature—so the show tries to make up for that in sheer quantity. Most episodes contain pretty much every foul word in the book, and you get the sense that the writers are even now perusing the dictionary looking for more.
And while The Boys seasoned its own delirious muck with some serious issues, Diabolical has no such highbrow aspirations.
But perhaps most galling is this: While this is, without question, an animated series with extreme adult content, the episodes themselves seem to acknowledge that adults know better than to watch the show. Rather, most feature teen protagonists and are meant to appeal to a teen audience.
Who knew that The Boys in the title didn’t just refer to the original show’s cadre of superhero fighters (that is, they fight to expose superheroes). It referred to the audience, as well.
A scientist for Vought International sadly closes the books on one of his “subjects.” And while the baby’s superpower was impressive (shooting lasers out of her eyes), she never could master it. (The lasers only shot when she sneezed.) But when the scientist realizes that the baby’s going to be killed, he risks both his job and his life to smuggle the child out.
Written in part by Seth Rogen, the episode sounds sweet, and it even looks it … for a while. Done in the style of an old Looney Tunes cartoon and without a stick of dialogue, the first few minutes feel relatively mild. Then the lasers start shooting.
Countless Vought security operatives are sliced apart in various ways by the deceptively cute baby. Heads explode. Holes are shot through various chests (revealing various internal organs and bones). Blood pours on the ground. One operative has his skull smashed between a gorilla hand and the apparent camera. Others are turned into ash.
A Vought leader—endowed with a comically enlarged brain—has his skull laser-sliced in half (along with the brain inside), and the guy tries to retrieve that missing half of his gray matter before he expires. Blood pours. Intestines spill. Etc.
Other characters die as well. A truck driver is bloodily smashed into a wall. (The scientist slips on the resulting pool of blood.) Someone is tied into a knot. Piranhas skeletonize a living horse and bite off someone’s nose. A character gets harmlessly smashed in an elevator. A bulldog urinates on a bullseye target.
On the upside, the episode is completely free of dialogue, so no profanity to count!
The episode title really explains the entire short, but just to offer a bit more detail: The “supes” in question appear to be teens for whom Compound V granted lame superpowers. One can turn into any animal—but his mind goes completely bestial, too, eliminating any strategic advantage. Another is just a tongue: “100 percent muscle with no bones,” the narrator tells us. Another is gifted not with super speed, but with super slowness. And because their parents had them all injected with the compound in the hopes of the kids developing really lucrative superpowers, all were abandoned—left to live out their lives in what amounts to a Vought-staffed orphanage.
You can understand why these teens would be a wee bit upset with their moms and dads. Still.
The parents are dispatched with extreme prejudice and horrific amounts of pain and gore. Two are electrocuted while having sex in a hot tub: Their eyes pop out and their skin fries. (And while we don’t see anything critical, the sex scene contains plenty of movement and noise.) Another set is killed by the parents’ son, whose head is a gigantic speaker that can only play Hootie and the Blowfish. He turns up the volume until his parents’ eyes and ears gush blood. The kid who can turn into animals transforms into a shark and eats his genetic donors; the kid who only moves in slow motion strangles his father verrrrry slooooowly. And another awkwardly-powered supe—a guy whose testicles are always, literally, super hot, burns his father to death with his personal addendums. (The murder is hidden behind a paper-covered window.)
We could go on, but that gives you the idea.
A few other things to note: Some teens have not just useless powers, but problematic ones. One is said to ejaculate ranch dressing. Another has a set of breasts where his face should be. Another is a ghost (and a nude one, though she’s defined only to a Barbie-Doll level). One wayward father watches as two women kiss and sultrily eat shrimp while dressed in bikinis. Some characters drink liquor. We also hear five f-words and six s-words, along with “a–,” “b–ch” and misuses of both God’s and Jesus’s names.
The episode was written by Awkwafina and stars the actress/comedian as a teen girl desperately trying to fit in with two bullying friends. When the friends force her to buy marijuana for them, she not only gets the weed, but a vial of Compound V. Naturally, she takes it herself.
The next morning, the teen noisily defecates in the bathroom (We see her pull her panties down, and a green-gray cloud rises from around the toilet) and excretes a sentient, somewhat insecure piece of fecal matter. The two become friends, with the girl combing the fecal matter’s stray bits of hair and pasting false eyelashes on it. (The bit of poop also dons a bikini top, though I hardly would qualify that as sexual content.) And though the girl wants to call her new BFF Georgia, she insists that her name is areola. The girl eventually discovers that she has the power to control (and sentientize?) fecal matter in general, and when she fights with a supe in a sewer, she uses that to her advantage.
The supe is grossed out and decides of his own volition to leave, but the poop does collectively punch him in the eye with some sort of hard implement. A shark bloodily devours someone, leaving just a pair of hands and forearms dangling from a rope. Someone gets beaned with a refurbished iPad. The girl does buy her friends marijuana, but she refuses to smoke any. (Her friends debate whether you’re supposed to smoke the stems or not.) After she takes Compound V, she mutters to herself, “I really hope that wasn’t meth.”
The girl’s friends call her a “loser and a “wet tampon,” and when they think that she needs to use the restroom in one of their houses, the girl says, “If you have to poop, go in the back yard like last time.” Characters say the f-word 20 times and the s-word another eight. (We also hear “b–ch” once.) An obscene gesture is also flashed.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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