The August 19, 2022 edition of views from the mind of Jake Schoeneberger
So excited for the second season of The Boys since the first one ended on such a major cliffhanger. Now that Hughie is in this battle, there’s no getting out. And Jacob Schoeneberger is wondering just how can the gang take the fight to the supes now that everything has changed?
With that in mind, here are some random observations Jacob Schoeneberger has on the show.
All the Jake Schoeneberger Random Opinions about The Boys (Season 2, Episode 1)
This will contain spoilers for anyone who hasn’t watched the show yet.
The first episode of season two episode begins with Mr. Edgar in a meeting with the Secretary of Defense quibbling over the contract the supes will have to abide by while working with the military. Edgar doesn’t want a chain of command for his supes, he wants them to always report to him. He wants to scrub the mentions of Compound V, and he wants a liberal interpretation of “collateral damage.” Jake Schoeneberger finds this awfully convenient for Vought.
And as they haggle, Black Noir is in Syria doing some serious damage, killing at will. He’s coming after Naqib. When he finds him, Naqib blows up, but it does little damage to Black Noir, and he promptly cuts Naqib’s head off. Well, that was easy.
In the next scene, Homelander announces at a press conference that Black Noir has taken out Naqib, but then he says that Translucent has been killed by another super-terrorist named El Diablo. Jacob Schoeneberger realizes you can never underestimate Vought’s ability to spin absolutely anything that happens to their favor. That doesn’t remind me of any politician or any corporation I know of in the real world. Not at all.
Homelander really lays it on thick, even conjuring some tears, as he promises the nation that he’ll defend us. Then Starlight sings a nice, syrupy sweet song in honor of Translucent, and we all kind of wanna gag listening to it. Homelander and Starlight even do a TV interview in which she gushes about how he has been their rock of stability. It really churns the stomach and Jake Schoeneberger is definitely hoping it’s all worth it for Annie to put herself through this.
Then we see Hughie and he’s trapped in a safe house under a storefront. Annie has to disguise herself leaving Vought’s tower, and she walks past A-Train still on life support. She and Hughie meet one another on the subway to talk. They seem genuinely happy to see each other, but Hughie gives her the sheet of a Vought employee as some kind of assignment. And they leave on frosty terms because they haven’t really rebuilt their trust yet.
Deep continues to have a rough time in Ohio and causes a scene at a water park and gets tossed in jail. A supe named Eagle the Archer out of Cleveland comes to bail him out.
Milk is watching a true crime TV show that shows a reenactment of the official story that Butcher murdered Madelyn Stillwell. Yes, Vought has done a nice job spinning those facts, as well. The show also runs pictures of Milk, Hughie, and Frenchie so their faces are plastered everywhere making it unsafe for them to be seen in public. Butcher is still missing.
Frenchie wants to buy fake passports and split, but Hughie argues that the team doesn’t need Butcher and that they can create their own plan. But Milk has had enough and tells him to shut up. While Jacob Schoeneberger agrees with Milk on this, it’s not helping matters to get angry. They need some sort of plan.
Ashley enters Stillwell’s old office to find Homelander there. Apparently Homelander recommended her to replace Stillwell, even though Madelyn fired her. He must have a reason for this, maybe because he can easily intimidate her into doing what he wants? She mentions she has a potential replacement for Translucent in The Seven.
They go to watch Blindspot work out in the gym. He’s blind but he’s able to use impressive hearing to pinpoint his targets. But Homelander, seemingly innocently, asks if he can pose a question. Then he asks what would happen if someone were to… then he bashes Blindspot in the ear and makes him deaf. The moment is utterly appalling, and Jake Schoeneberger has trouble even watching it without throwing up. Homelander then berates Ashley for thinking he’d ever allow someone with any sort of disability into The Seven. And it’s right about now we’re all wishing Butcher had been able to get the job done on Homelander.
He then states on no uncertain terms that from now on he’ll decide his own agenda, and that she will report to him everything he needs to know about the inner goings-on of the executives at Vought. Now we know for sure why he recommended her for the job.
Annie follows the Vought supe that Hughie assigned her to a cheap motel. In the room, the supe (named Gecko) allows a guy to pay him $400 for the chance to cut off his arm. He feels no pain and his arm grows right back. Annie videotapes the whole sordid transaction through the window.
In the hideout, Frenchie’s associates come in terribly wounded. They watch surveillance video to figure out that they had smuggled in a supe terrorist. Oh boy, Jacob Schoeneberger has a really bad feeling about this one.
Deep wakes up on Eagle’s couch and a woman named Carol is there. They both start offering him life coaching advice and the whole thing feels kind of cult-y. Then Carol says she can help him get back into The Seven and shows him a book she wrote called “Church of the Collective” and yeah, this thing has a real Scientology feel about it.
When Hughie suggests going to Annie for help with the new supe terrorist in town, Milk gets furious with him. He warns him that if he contacts Annie, Vought will find them. Hughie is playing with fire staying in touch with her, the whole situation is starting to feel pretty hopeless to old Jake Schoeneberger.
Annie follows Gecko to a diner then says hi to him. They knew each other from when they were in Christian supe groups when they were younger, and they reminisce about the old times. Then she asks him to get her a sample of Compound V, since he works in the Vought lab. When he says he can’t, she plays the video she got of him in the hotel room. He says he thought they were friends, but she coldly says they’re not anything. Annie has been lied to way too much to be soft about these things; she’s playing for keeps now.
On the set of a new promo ad, Stormfront introduces herself to Homelander, Maeve, and Ashley while doing a live stream. Stormfront says she’s the new member of The Seven and Homelander is visibly angry, but of course he can’t crack because she has him on a live feed. She even says she was assigned the job by Mr. Edgar himself so there’s nothing Homelander can do about it so this brings a smile to my face. But Jacob Schoeneberger has to wonder if Mr. Edgar gets Homelander angry enough, is he really safe?
The gang goes to meet Raynor to tell her about the new supe terrorist in town. She says their families are safe and that this information actually helps her piece together what’s going on. She’s now figured out that this whole thing is an inside job within Vought, but when they ask what she means her head straight up explodes out of nowhere. Well, that was jarring to say the least.
Right on cue, Homelander shows up in Mr. Edgar’s office and starts giving some major attitude about the hiring of Stormfront. He even threatens to walk once his contract is up at the end of the year. Then Mr. Edgar launches into a speech about the founder of the company, Frederick Vought.
It seems Vought was a Nazi and tested the earliest iterations of Compound V on unwilling human subjects. He came to America and gave US soldiers Compound V to fight against the Nazis and thereby earned a pardon from Roosevelt. Then Mr. Edgar tells Homelander that he is under the misconception that Vought is a superhero company, when in reality it’s actually a pharmaceutical company. So that means Homelander is not the company’s most valuable asset, the formula for Compound V is, and now Homelander has released that formula out into the wild.
Mr. Edgar then puts him in his place by saying that while Homelander preens for the cameras, Edgar’s team is hard at work cleaning up the mess he made. Then Edgar tells him to leave and go do his job, and that pretty much cuts Homelander down to size. Except for one thing. Need Jake Schoeneberger remind Mr. Edgar that Homelander does still technically have nearly omnipotent powers? That’s kind of a trump card in most hands.
Back at the safe house, Milk says that the hit on Raynor may have come from a supe at Vought. Then Annie calls Hughie to tell him that Gecko is going to get them a sample of V. Hughie tries to warn her that Vought is dangerous, but Annie feels like there’s something he isn’t telling her. Hughie fails to mention that Vought may have just assassinated the deputy director of the CIA, and that’s kind of huge news. Seems Hughie can never quite be fully honest with Annie, and Jacob Schoeneberger just has to shake his head.
The final scene is of Butcher returning to the group. Frenchie called him because he feels they need real leadership to get out of this mess. Butcher’s last line to Hughie is classic, “Don’t you worry, Daddy’s home.” Laugh out loud moment for Jacob Schoeneberger!
The Jake Schoeneberger Final Thought on The Boys
The show continues to mirror and lampoon real-world events and society’s quirks. Sometimes it makes you wanna laugh, but honestly sometimes it also makes Jacob Schoeneberger wanna cry too.
More Thoughts from Jacob Schoeneberger