Second and third episodes are when you know whether a new series is finding its footing and making good on the promises of its pilot or whether it’s floundering trying to live up to the world-making of its promising start. In “First Day” and “#ThinkBrink,” Gen V mostly sticks to what’s worked in “God U.” But in the process, it starts to show the many implausible plot gears it needed to have lubricated for this The Boys spinoff to stand on its own two feet.
One of the thrills of The Boys was how it grounded its gritty superhero stories, aiming to create an operatic satire of the genre while offering trenchant (if sometimes perhaps too cynical) political takes on everything from jingoistic propaganda to corporate/military malfeasance. Gen V, given its setting, covers less broad topics as it tries to use superpowers as all-too-blunt metaphors to illustrate college-age issues kids these days grapple with.
That’s how we get Marie (Jaz Sinclair) dealing with past trauma all while her power requires her to cut herself, how we witness Emma (Lizze Broadway) needing to fend off suggestions she has an eating disorder since she needs to purge to become little, and how Jordan (Derek Luh and London Thor) has to navigate a begrudgingly tolerant father who doesn’t really get their gender-bending power. (Couldn’t Jordan just choose to move through the world as a boy?) The metaphors are a little too obvious. And they’re deployed too bluntly.
GRADE FOR SEASON 1, EPISODE 3, “#THINKBRINK”: C
But they also take a backseat to the bigger story that’s afoot at Godolkin University now that Luke, a.k.a. Golden Boy, has killed himself after offing Rich Brinkerhoff. A PR nightmare for the school (and Vought International and also The Seven), “First Day” finds Marie and Andre (Chance Perdomo) reeling from that tragic moment, both unsure about what this means for them.
They shouldn’t have worried too much—as if the powers that be would miss on a chance to up their diversity brownie points by anointing them both “Guardians of Godolkin” and cannily leaving Jordan out of the equation, costing them the No. 1 placement they deserve. And so, just as she was fearing getting expelled, Marie instead finds herself becoming the first freshman to ever rank in the top 10 at the school, morphing into a micro-celebrity in the process (which comes with new tech, new wardrobe, and a new PR flak). Andre may be less thrilled (though his father, Polarity, is), mostly because he’s trying to figure out what Luke’s final words to him mean: “Your father has it.”
Turns out it’s a hint about a hidden phone that Luke had recorded a message on for Andre in case things got fucked up with Brink (which, you know, they did). In the phone (stored, implausibly, in the crotch of Polarity’s statue around campus), Andre and Cate (Maddie Phillips)—soon to be a couple, FYI, since these shows can’t imagine going one episode without shipping two characters with abandon—learn that Luke’s brother is being kept in “The Woods,” a facility underneath Godolkin.
This is news to them both: Hadn’t Luke’s brother, Sam, killed himself three years prior, after struggling with schizophrenia or something? Guess again! Turns out that Sam was the kid Marie and Andre had helped apprehend a few nights prior. For Andre, this becomes the thing he now needs to focus on—at the cost, it seems, of the great amount of publicity and acclaim being the new No. 1 is bringing him (much to his father’s chagrin).
It seems Andre is a true hero through and through. He doesn’t care about glory. He cares about justice.
Meanwhile, Marie is not ready to put herself on the line like that. She saw how quickly it could all evaporate, and she’s not about to risk what she’s gained…even if it means lying to the press (about how it was her, not Jordan, who fought Golden Boy) and squarely focusing on getting ahead so she can perhaps contact her sister and have the family she’s always wanted. “I’m taking whatever they give,” she tells a stunned and heartbroken Jordan—who’ll then be ever more stunned and heartbroken when Marie refuses to set the record straight on camera.
For yes, “First Day” ends with a big splashy interview with the Guardians of Godolkin. (Side note: That’s too many syllables!). Or, scratch that, it’s just Guardian singular since Andre doesn’t show up. He’s too busy playing sleuth trying to find out what really happened to Luke and Sam (again, much to his father’s chagrin).
Thankfully for Marie she nails the interview. (She’s so raw! So vulnerable! Hear that quiver in her voice as she talks about taking on Golden Boy!) And she sets herself up as the new beloved student Dean Shetty (Shelley Conn) can parade around in the fundraiser that’s the center of episode three, “#ThinkBrink.”
But that’s not before we get some flashbacks to Luke (and Cate) visiting Sam, who’s clearly unstable, three years prior. Like many other kids (you’d imagine) who learned their powers were the result of their parents opting in to give their children Compound V, Sam is upset about how this supposed gift has left him so wounded. Or, in his words, “I got a lot more than powers! I got a fucking broken brain!!” Subtle...it is not.
Then again, it’s clear Gen V really wants to anchor a lot of its plots on mental health. (Did you know Dean Shetty was a behavioral psychologist whose dissertation was on supes and mental health?) And so episode three really leans heavily on the way parent/child relationships have scarred all of our leads: There’s Polarity, who pushes Andre more than he’d like; there’s Emma’s momager, who’s all too keen to make her kid a star; and there’s even Jordan, whose parents clearly can’t truly accept them for who they are. Is it all a bit too trite? Maybe.
But those are the relationships that animate “#ThinkBrink”. And while Marie has no parents, trust Gen V to give her a vicarious one in Dean Shetty. Though clearly those motherly meetings they have are no doubt more sinister than we could imagine, right? I mean, what parental or avuncular relationship has proven to be selfless and well-meaning in the world of The Boys? Exactly.
And so we arrive at arguably the moment where my suspension of disbelief regarding what was happening in Gen V hit a wall: Andre and Emma’s meeting at the fundraiser. Sure, it’s clear Little Cricket would be a perfect person to sneak into the Woods to see what’s up with Sam (and the two do make for a funny pair) but…why is Andre spilling all of this super secret stuff to someone we’ve not seen him connect with all that much? It had a lot of “we need to get the plot moving” energy for me—especially since Emma had been vocal about not really wanting to be a crime fighting supe. But then, with her influencer debacle and having been outed to the school as a purger with a potential eating disorder, maybe that’s made her reassess what she wants to do with her life? Is this the way she becomes more like her hero Queen Maeve?
Anyway, so while Marie gladhandles donors at the dinner (and eventually bonds with Cate and Jordan—look at all our leads finally being on the same page!), Andre sends Emma on a recon mission.
It’s there where she chats it up with Sam (and lies to him, which is smart given that we have no clue how he’ll react when he learns of Luke’s death). But after she’s almost caught and kills a guard (by entering his ear and coming out the other!), what will these two do?
We’ll have to wait ’til next time when surely Gen V will throw more mental health subplots our way in between meditations on what it means to be a hero and what it costs to be one that’ll play backdrop to this Woods mystery that may well bring Godolkin (if not Vought/The Seven) down altogether. ’Til then!
Stray observations
- Guess we haven’t outgrown the whole “eerie modern covers of songs to evoke dramatic undertones” thing. (See: the use of “Nothing Else Matters” that opens episode two.)
- God, I love seeing our favorite soulless PR flak doing her thing in Gen V (looking at you Ashley Barrett [Colby Minifie], who makes lines like “Oh a bigender Asian with pronoun fuckery?” truly sing).
- Speaking of PR flaks…thank you Gen V for gifting us more of Jackie Tohn (#Justice4GLOW).
- JUMANJI shoutout!
- I don’t think I’ll recover from hearing “Nancy Reagan that shit” about a college student and her own rat tail. Shudder. (Which reminds me: This entire influencer storyline feels a bit of an outlier. Will it have a payoff or was it just a chance for Emma to open herself up to scrutiny and thus make it easier for her to want to help Andre in getting Sam out?)
- Ditto for how Sam thrusts his fist through a guard’s chest and out of their mouth.
- Do we think Marie will ever get to wear any kind outfit that doesn’t feature the color red?
- Trying to decide whether Emma should go with Eatin’ Alive or Feeling Small for her reality TV debut does feel horribly embarrassing. But then that’s how the world works around here, no?
- Oh god, who’s favorite movie is Waterworld?
- Emma being a big Termite fan is apt, yet does she really need to display that Big Crazy Love 2 poster in her own room?
- I almost want an entire episode dedicated to the mundanity of the classes these supes take. “Acting for Auditions” alone was a highlight of these episodes.
- So ranking is decided through an arbitrary methodology that includes Talent, Skill, Brand awareness and Social mentions. It’s so bleak because it sounds so true.
- Loved the brief moment when Jordan lies about having killed her grandparents because she felt excluded from the Cate/Marie bonding session.
- Hm. Do we think Marie’s sister was really contacted by the press and refused to have anything to do with her? Or was that, alongside pretty much everything Dean Shetty is telling her, a big pack of lies designed to keep her on a short leash? Speaking of…how do we think her daughter ties into the season’s storylines?
- So many more questions now: What does Polarity know? How many kids committed suicide at Godolkin U when they learned about Compound V? Who burned down the security cameras around campus? Is Marie truly our next Starlight (in more ways than one)? What is Dean Shetty accomplishing over at the Woods? In other words, what are they doing with the likes of Sam?