The Boys' Most Experimental Episode Reveals TV's Worst Trend
In defense of the “filler episode.”
In the streaming era, the line between TV and movies has gotten much blurrier. Now that Hollywood blockbusters and TV shows co-exist on the same service, TV budgets and runtimes have grown bigger while episode counts have dwindled. While 23-episode seasons were common in the broadcast era, a streaming show is lucky to get 10.
Now that episode counts are smaller, storytelling has had to adjust, making episode-by-episode analysis far more critical of how these precious episodes were used, leading to the dreaded term “filler episode.” That term has recently been used to describe a recent episode of The Boys, but the showrunner takes issue with it — as he should. But what’s so wrong about filler episodes in the first place?
“One-Shots” may have included a story from the perspective of Butcher’s dog Terror, but it still served a character purpose.
When reviews for The Boys Season 5 started rolling out, critics kept highlighing Episode 5, “One-Shots,” as a standout episode. When that episode premiered last week, the fan reaction was polarizing. On paper, it seemed like this episode would be a slam dunk, an anthological look at a number of side characters, including the much-anticipated Supernatural reunion between Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, and Mischa Collins. It even ended with a shocking loss that wrote off a beloved character who finally got the storyline she deserved. But that didn’t stop fans from calling it a filler episode.
“None of the things that happen in the last few episodes will matter if you don’t flesh out the characters. I’m getting a lot of online dissatisfaction, to put it politely,” he told TV Guide. “And I’m like, ‘What are you expecting? Are you expecting a huge battle scene every episode?'”
He has a good point. With such an action-packed final season, it can be hard to fit in the quiet moments where characters actually take stock of what is happening to them. It may not be rip-roaring action, but in these moments, we actually see the characters grow and change, like when Firecracker meets with her old pastor or Soldier Boy realizes, much to his chagrin, that he feels the need to defend his son Homelander.
Really, there’s no such thing as a “filler episode.” Even in anime, where characters will just go to the beach for an episode, these stories serve as a way for the plot to take a break and to show where the characters are emotionally at this moment in time.
“One-Shots” featured the much-anticipated Supernatural reunion, but fans still called it “filler.”
But there’s another wrinkle to this debate: the release structure. Kripke suggests that the weekly release structure of the series may have contributed to the criticism. “For as much as I love the weekly release — because we should take time to have people talking and arguing about the show — my guess is if you were bingeing it or watching it all at once, you would have a very different experience than watching one episode a week that you might find slow or slower than usual, and then you have to wait a whole other week for the next piece,” he said. “I think that aggravates people, probably.”
If The Boys episodes were released all at once, then this episode would just be an hour-long interlude in between ultra-exciting chapters. But with the weekly episode drops, it’s easier for fans to feel shortchanged when that week’s episode isn’t what they expect. Kripke makes it very clear he’s very much in favor of weekly releases, but it’s worth examining as a side effect.
But The Boys isn’t a procedural; there’s no set format to its episodes. The variety is what makes it interesting, as it makes it difficult to get bored. But by Season 5, fans have come to expect a certain level of chaos. So perhaps, this more sedate episode is actually the most chaotic choice possible: if you are constantly expecting the unexpected, then something more “normal” is truly the subversive choice.
