If there's one show that probably shouldn't be viewed as appropriate for the whole family, it's The Boys. So it shouldn't be surprising that the series poked fun at VidAngel for coming up with a family-friendly version of the Amazon Prime hit.
The Boys has built its reputation for subverting everything regarding the superhero film genre, which is among the most popular film genres in Hollywood today, in the most adult way possible. So, true to that spirit, The Boys' official Twitter account opted to poke fun at VidAngel after the streaming service made a family-friendly version of the show.
The Twitter account posted an image of VidAngel revealing that The Boys had made it to the service while providing the caption, "Finally, a family-friendly version!!!" While The Boys is best known for making the superheroes the villains of the show, it's also best known for being quite gory, having a lot of sexual content on it - most infamously with their standout episode of the series, "Herogasm" - and of course, there's also quite a bit of language to go with the show as well. The Boys is the perfect satire of the family-friendly image that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been putting up since 2008.
Watching The Boys without all of the mature ingredients kind of defeats the purpose of watching it in the first place. Still, props to VidAngel for going through the rigorous process of giving their subscribers to chance to get rid of all of it so that interested parties who don't want to watch that sort of content with their shows can have that opportunity to watch The Boys. Doing that must not have been easy while trying to keep the story going because, on paper, that would seem impossible with the raunchiness that The Boys gives its audience at every possible turn.
Give VidAngel credit though. They're not forcing anyone to watch a censored version of The Boys. They are simply giving that option out there to viewers in case they want one. That's better than when other TV channels tried that in the past with very raunchy shows, like when the A&E channel tried to syndicate The Sopranos. Then, they had no choice but to heavily edit pretty much everything that show did when it aired on HBO. That was so comical to the point where MadTV did a spoof on that back in 2001 because doing so was outright ridiculous.
Times like those also beg the question, why would you watch The Boys if you weren't looking for that type of raunchy content to begin with? Three seasons in, those who haven't watched the show but heard about it probably have a good idea of what it's about. The whole point of The Boys is to flip everything viewers originally perceived about superheroes right on its head, and that means diving into who superheroes would most likely be behind the scenes. If viewers didn't want to watch what The Boys put on the screen, they can always watch Marvel. Nothing wrong with that. The Boys just gives the genre a whole new flavor, and one that definitely includes adult content.
The Boys seasons 1-3 can currently be streamed on Amazon Prime.
Source: THE BOYS/Twitter