(TV SERIES) Gen V - Season 1 - The Entertaining Spin-off from The Boys with Almost Same Characteristics as Its Original Series

After reading the hype surrounding this series, obviously I was interested in watching it, especially since it was the spin off of The Boys that I really liked. So as soon as it finished the first season few days ago, I immediately start watching and finished in just 2 days. OK, why don't I get to it now.

Brief Story Line

Godolkin University was founded to give advanced education for the young Supes which was run by Vought International and headed by Dean Indira Shetty (Shelley Conn - Terra Nova TV series etc). The university had a unique ranking system where the highest would have the chance to become one of the Seven. Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair -  Chilling Adventures of Sabrina TV series, Paper Town etc) was an orphan who managed to attend God-U and had the ambition of getting to the top. She was staying with her friendly roommate Emma (Lizze Broadway - American Pie Presents: Girls' Rules etc).

In order to reach the Top Ten that was filled with a group of popular students such as Luke aka Golden Boy (Patrick Schwarzenegger - Moxie, Stowaway etc), with his girlfriend Cate (Maddie Phillips - Teenage Bounty Hunters TV series etc), their best friend Andre (Chance Perdomo - After We Fell and its sequels etc) and the TA Jordan Li (London Thor & Derek Luh), Marie had to do her best. Things became complicated for her when she was unexpectedly involved in something dangerous. And with the appearance of mysterious Supe named Sam (Asa Germann), she had no choice but to do the unimaginable.

So what would happen to these group of people? You could find out in the first season of this series.

End of Brief Story Line

Since I watched the last 3 seasons of The Boys, I had grown to admire the twisted way of the superheroes in this fictional world. So when they announced the production of this series which focused on the young superheroes in the University for Supes, I was obviously interested. Oh if you felt the premise to be familiar, it was based on The Boys' story arc "We Gotta Go Now" focusing on G-Men which was said to be inspired by X-Men and The Hunger Games.

Anyway, the first episode just like in the original series was amazing as it was not shy of giving some shocking gore scenes and few cool action fight scenes. It was certainly helped by the pretty awesome visual effects. Subsequently though, the series pace felt a bit slowed down especially when it seemed to focus providing more characters development. But most of the episodes always ended with a bang that kept me interested. Strange thing that I noticed in the first season was the duration as it got shorter and shorter. Even the last two episodes were only like 40 minutes or so which made me felt them a bit inadequate. Luckily the finale was still quite satisfying, particularly with such a shocking ending. Oh before I forgot, there was a very brief mid end credit scene in the 8th episode.

During the whole first season, even though it had the similar characteristic of The Boys where there were plenty of disturbing scenes (including graphic obscenity), it did have a bit of those young adults problems like love, sexual orientations, self harm and other stuff. However it was not so much that would make the series to be regular teenage drama as they still emphasised on the mystery surrounding the University. Btw, there was a small piece of plot hole in the seventh episode to my personal opinion. It was Marie's decision related to the bad guys, cause it was so obvious it would result to even more danger which could be averted if she did something else. To me it seemed like the writers just wanted to make a grander finale but it could have been done in different way that made more sense to me.

Aside from the weird decision in 7th episode and the short durations in some of the episodes, I still felt the series was entertaining as a whole. The actions were quite awesome (even if few were only shown the aftermath and one was done in a weird way), plus the characters were interesting enough. I read that critics were fond of Sinclair, Broadway, Phillips and Germann performance in here probably because their characters were the most complex. 

From casual audience perspective, I liked Marie's power the most, although I think Cate's was fantastic as well but the one that really impressed me was actually Jordan Li (you would understand it if you have watched the series). In addition to the names I mentioned above, there were few guest stars such as Sean Patrick Thomas (Barbershop trilogy, The District TV series etc) as Andre's father superhero Polarity, Alexander Calvert (Supernatural TV series etc) as a student named Rufus, Clancy Brown (John Wick: Chapter 4 etc) as Professor Brink and several others as cameo, including of course characters from the original series.

So if you like The Boys, this one would be to your liking as it pretty much had same style (developed by the same people) and set in the same world. Likely it would have great significance in the future of that series, hence it would be better to watch it to have greater appreciation later. Although it would add to the list of series that we got to watch and probably a bit of inconvenience to those who want to keep it to the minimal. For me personally, it would be an even more satisfying series had it not for that small part in the 7th episode and the short durations in the final episodes. But still an enjoyable series nonetheless.

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars