Prime Video's 10/10 Action Series Gets 1/10 For Subtlety

Although Prime Video’s greatest action series to date is hardly subtle, this secretly works in the show’s favor instead of hurting its reception. Subtlety is a fickle friend in the world of TV and movies. In some genres, such as drama, its presence or absence can make or break the reception of a series or movie. There are few things more laughable than an overblown, unintentionally funny melodrama that lacks any vestiges of subtlety. However, this doesn’t mean subtlety is an inherent artistic good.

Think, for instance, of one of the most acclaimed horror franchises of all time, the Evil Dead movies. With its sweary, grinning, white-eyed demonic Deadites, its plentiful horrific gore and bloodletting, and its mean streak a mile wide, the Evil Dead franchise could never be called subtle. However, this quality consistently works in its favor throughout every movie in the series, as its cartoonish audacity and provocative imagery are what make the franchise memorably nasty. Similarly, the action movies of John Woo would not benefit from a subtler approach.

In fact, from Con Air to Speed to Prime Video’s hit thriller Reacher, there is an array of action movies and shows that would not benefit from more subtlety, as this would only blunt their escapist appeal. One of the most obvious instances of this is The Boys, a five-season superhero satire based on the comic book series of the same name by Garth Ennis. Set in a world where superheroes are a part of everyday life, essentially treated like superpowered celebrities, The Boys follows a group of vigilantes who police their amoral actions.

You'll Struggle To Find A TV Series With Less Subtlety Than The Boys

Even the biggest fan of The Boys and its spinoffs could never credibly accuse Prime Video’s five-season thriller masterpiece of of anything resembling subtlety. Throughout its run, the show never shied away from identifying the real-life figures at whom its satirical ire was aimed. The fascist supervillain Homelander is a violent reactionary who masks his demagoguery with shallow appeals to religion and patriotism.

Homelander's parallels with a specific right-wing figure in US politics grow increasingly blatant as the show continues. The primary villain of season 2, a Neo-Nazi superhero named Stormfront, is quite literally named after an infamously banned online forum for white nationalists and fascists.

Meanwhile, the billionaire benefactor of some of the show’s most nefarious villains is a transparent parody of a certain thin-skinned billionaire who is infamous for courting the right wing online. All of these gags are so obvious that no viewer old enough to watch could credibly fail to catch them unless they were entirely unfamiliar with contemporary politics.

For All Its Brashness, The Boys Never Lacked Depth

However, much like the other examples listed above, The Boys didn’t suffer because of its lack of subtlety. Like Hulu’s dystopian series The Handmaid’s Tale, the Prime Video show used sci-fi storytelling elements to tell an all-too realistic story about a right-wing political takeover and its impact on society.

Both shows proved that subtlety isn’t a necessary ingredient in this formula, as The Boys pointedly took aim at real-life political actors with zeal and all the subtlety of a proverbial hammer to the face. Despite this, crucially, the show’s primary protagonists were complex, multi-faceted characters who went through nuanced character arcs throughout its five seasons.

Even Homelander had some surprisingly complex character motivations that, while never particularly redeeming, were at least humanizing and made him more than a cardboard cutout villain. Thus, The Boys proved that an action series that hopes to comment on contemporary politics doesn’t necessarily need to be all that subtle, since real-life fascists rarely are and the show is setting its sights on their flagrant, grotesque abuses of power and trust.