SummarySuperpowered students compete for top rankings at Godolkin University, a Vought International-run college for young superheroes in the spinoff of The Boys.
SummarySuperpowered students compete for top rankings at Godolkin University, a Vought International-run college for young superheroes in the spinoff of The Boys.
You’ll laugh out loud, wince often, and wonder how Gen V gets away with half of what’s displayed – which is my way of recommending this brilliantly batshit show to anyone who will listen.
The “Gen V” premiere has the most shocks while subsequent episodes deepen the character backstories and the show’s mystery. It’s engrossing enough thanks to the efforts of showrunners Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters, veterans of genre series “Agent Carter,” “Reaper” and “Resurrection.”
Gen V fully leans into the chaos that a world filled with supercharged adolescents would experience and the result is a series that’s constantly surprising and devilishly entertaining. But it also makes sure to give us real characters to care about amid all this carnage.
With Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters as showrunners (plus Kripke producing the series and co-writing the pilot), it all works well enough to satisfy franchise fans, though one has to wonder if that’s enough.
Youth is apt to go to extremes. Super youth, by logical extension, will go to super extremes. And an eight-part series about super youth may very well be a riot of extremes. Such is the case with very violent, excessively bloody, hyper-sexualized “Gen V,” which is quite ridiculous, but can’t really be dismissed. Why? Because it is enough of a social critique, however fuzzy and smart-alecky, to hint at intelligence behind the sensationalism.
Gen V constantly resorts to icky humor for fear of losing our attention. Despite its flash, its swaggers of confidence, this is a curiously self-conscious, uncomfortable show, forever offsetting its earnestness as if needing to prove its coolness.