This review contains full spoilers for The Boys Season 4, Episode 6, “Dirty Business”
Only a show like The Boys could offer an episode about sex dungeon foreplay, lobotomies and heroic gimps that provides some welcome levity. “Dirty Business” avoids feeling unnecessarily complicated or distracting, instead continuing a singular plot that involves a secret infiltration of a right-wing cocktail party. It lifts our spirits after the downer that was last week’s tearful conclusion, and even drops its own bombshell of a parting revelation (which you probably saw coming if you were paying close attention). Freed from the multiple narrative angles still stuck after a weeks-long lull, The Boys finally feels like itself again.
The deep-voiced elephant in the room is finally confirmed: Joe Kessler (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is a disease-induced hallucination like Becca (Shantel VanSanten). Hints have been scattered in previous episodes, but nothing concrete so far. Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) is not around much in “Dirty Business,” only long enough to establish his two imaginary friends — a now-one-legged Dr. Sameer Shah (Omid Abtahi) gets the honor of denouncing Butcher’s delusional state, with a quick montage of Butcher speaking to empty rooms in scenes past where we thought Kessler was present. It’s not a groundbreaking twist, but the fact that Kessler and Sameer are reacting to Butcher’s demented state helps the shock last longer.
Elsewhere, and for most of the episode, we spend an evening at Tek Knight’s (Derek Wilson) mansion, which resembles Bruce Wayne – except his Batcave is a Fifty Shades lair. An invitation-only, haughty and unpretentious party, bringing together the Seven’s top players and representatives of the American government, with all the self-serving corruption we could want. The purpose of the meeting is to collude and discuss an anti-knot to Robert Singer’s (Jim Beaver) presidency, which means the Boys have no choice but to send Hughie (Jack Quaid) undercover as the Boys’ equivalent of Spider-Man, a junkie named Webweaver (Dan Mousseau). Quaid plays tactically awkward and out of touch, something he’s done so well throughout The Boys, until Hughie finds himself held back, learning the hard way that Webweaver was only invited as a passing pleasure boy.
Locking innocent Hughie in a secret room with a horny Tek Knight and Ashely Barrett (Colby Minifie) is a recipe for comedy gold. It starts simply, with Hughie trying to mimic Webweaver’s drug-addled speech — then panic sets in when he spots Homelander (Antony Starr) at the party. Tek Knight later leads Hughie downstairs to his perverted lair, where Ashley gets the first chance to tickle “Webweaver” and herself to orgasm. Hughie is mortified despite laughing through the sticky, stinky ordeal, which Quaid sells with appropriate shades of excitable panic — but Colby Minifie is the secret sauce. The way she forcefully delivers vulgar lines as the sexually dominant alpha exudes volcanic confidence, while Ashley beams her devilish smile while degrading her partners in fetishistic displays of ball-crushing power.
When Hughie is exposed by Tek Knight for forgetting Webweaver’s safe word, the Boys rush to his rescue—but it’s not an easy escape. Annie (Erin Moriarty) confronts Firecracker (Valorie Curry) in an upstairs hallway, where she rightfully apologizes for being a total freak in her beauty pageant days before taking down Vought’s racist, anti-Semitic spokesperson. Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) suffers a panic attack after shooting Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) in the head, while he succumbs to pressures that never cracked Butcher. Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) and Annie eventually reach Hughie just before Tek Knight burrows another hole into his body to penetrate him, and they turn the tables on the fornicating monster, but not before what’s left of the Boys make some notable character advancements. Annie’s confession, MM’s health issues, and Hughie’s ability to admit that he’s far from okay are all concisely woven into the main storyline. It’s a vast improvement over the previous episodes of Season 4 that felt torn in fifty different directions.
A narrower scope allows the performances to shine, like the way Sister Sage and Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) steal “Dirty Business” toward the end. Sister Sage spends most of the episode playing mind games with her Vought-controlled pawns until MM’s bullet turns her into a Bloomin’ Onion-hungry Sister Sage in one hilarious moment. She can’t help Homelander win over a crowd of voters with his supremacy plan, so Victoria steals the spotlight from Homelander and drives his monologue home with bravado. Homelander, the tyrannical superhuman who continues to insist that humans are toys, shrinks to the size of a pea when he fails to smile his way through. Worse yet, his masculine aura is shattered by Victoria’s actions and Sister Sage’s inability to support him. Homelander crumbles under the pressure like a Nature Valley granola bar, acknowledging his inability to be Vought’s sole dictator.
“Dirty Business” resurrects The Boys’ satirical wit and dark humor beyond Hughie’s psycho-sexual episode. Victoria despises hanging out with wrinkled conservative ghouls to the point where she imagines having her head violently ripped off as a Roe v. Wade-opposed official explains inaccurate facts about abortion. A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) has to listen to Tek Knight’s contemptibly bigoted story about his family’s lucrative legacy as slave catchers, noting that he would have given his great-great-grandfather a hard time—A-Train’s reaction is priceless. Self-appointed gatekeepers like Tek Knight deliver the quiet bits into a megaphone, and “Dirty Business” follows the nastiness with just reward. After Tek Knight is berated by Annie and Kimiko, they donate hundreds of millions of dollars from his bank accounts to charitable funds for Black Lives Matter or Elizabeth Warren’s Super PAC while he protests in agony. He won’t admit pain when he partakes in the most depraved carnal pleasures, but does he send his filthy inheritance to worthy causes? His musk intolerance makes him throw a tantrum.
Better yet, Tek Knight’s death leaves the Seven in disarray. The Boys may be in shambles, especially with Frenchie (Tomer Capone) in prison, but their unwitting actions are a clever stab at the back. Homelander realizes the mole is still alive—it wasn’t Ashley’s sacrificial lamb, Cameron Coleman (Matthew Edison)—and he’s one step closer to the edge (and he’s about to snap). Enter Firecracker, who medically sprays him with milk as the ultimate olive branch. Cut to Homelander, cloaked in his cape, suckling at Firecracker’s breast, as the two of them sit in front of a giant American flag tapestry. It’s one of my favorite scenes from The Boys , because America’s greatest patriot is a man-baby behind closed doors who’s still breastfeeding. This is the show I know and love; which was so lacking in season 4 so far.
