Hello and welcome back to another wonderful video. Today, we are going to keep talking about The Boys: Diabolical. If you missed the first three episodes, you can watch them on our channel since we will be discussing the fourth one today. “Boyd in 3D” is the name of the episode we will be discussing today. It is also the one that is least connected to the rest of The Boys’ mythology.
“Boyd In 3D” does not pay homage to any specific cartoon or animation style. The episode was written by Eliot Glazer, a writer for New Girl, and was directed by Naz Ghodrati-Azadi, who is most known for her work on Dreamworks. Folivari, the episode’s chosen studio, is largely responsible for the “Boyd In 3D” episode’s visual tone. Both Stinky Dog and Ernest & Célestine, produced by the French animation studio, feature a gritty aesthetic resembling comic book imagery with obvious pencil strokes.
So without further ado, let us begin the narrative!
Boyd In 3D
In the opening scene, we see our protagonist, Boyd Doone, walking dogs of other people while contemplating how his life sucks by checking out his social media feed filled with other people enjoying their lives. After returning the dogs to their owners, he returns to his apartment after collecting his letters from his mailbox. He notices his next-door neighbour’s letter among his own, a neighbour he has a crush on. So naturally, he thought of taking his chance and handing her the letter personally so he could get noticed.
At the last moment, he panics and returns to his room. He checks his phone to see Cherry (his neighbour) has posted a selfie with a cat filter, so he opens up his camera and tries out different filters till he reaches a Vought International filter. It is a filter that allows the user to look like one of the Supes from Seven. So after trying out a Homelander filter, he receives a pop-up message which says, “Product Testers Needed.” After clicking on it, he gets another flash message which says, “Unleash the Inner You!!”
Cut to the following setting, we are inside the Vought towers now, and we see our protagonist signing on a waiver form while two scientists explain to him how their new experiment, a prototype moisturiser works. Apparently, it is designed to sculpt a person’s features in response to his imagination. If you apply this cream on your face and imagine you look like Brad Pitt from Troy, you will look like Brad Pitt from Troy!
After application, Boyd feels excruciating pain for a few moments but soon enough, his face transforms into that of a gorgeous-looking man. Not only his face but his physique also becomes hunky. The scientist hands him the rest of the moisturizer but tells him to use it wisely.
He immediately impresses Cherry and starts to go out with her and do couply things, which are shown in a montage, like eating out, playfully fighting, and putting pictures together on social media. Bleh! Yes, I am Single! They also used my favourite Dua Lipa song as background music for the montage! So anyway, one thing leads to another, and both end up making love in Boyd’s apartment. After their session, when Cherry goes to the toilet for a tinkle, she sees the jar of the moisturiser beside the sink.
To his shock, Boyd found Cherry wholly transformed into a cat the next day! You know, with pointy ears and a tail and whiskers, the whole package. But that didn’t seem to bother him much as they continued to date, and as they went out, everyone started to stare at them and click their pictures or videos. So to sensationalize themselves, they began to make their presence felt deep in front of the cameras, leading both of them to gain massive social media followers and become mini celebs.
Soon the attention and the fast life became dull, and they started having problems and obstacles in their lives, leading to public notoriety and a public nuisance. Vought decided to stop their trial and not give them any more of the moisturiser, which ultimately leads to a big physical fight between Boyd and Cherry for the last drop of the moisturiser left in the jar, which eventually goes to waste as it is dropped into the toilet.
Fast-forward to one month from this incident, we see our protagonist checking out his social media feed and missing his famous life and his flame, Cherry. The bell rings, and it is Cherry, but the roles have reversed this time. She is here with a letter that was supposed to be delivered to Boyd. She claims that she sees Boyd correctly now, and they patched things up and embraced.
What a lovely ending, right? How I wish this were true! But the truth is, as they were about to embrace, the scene cut to inside the Vought tower again. We see Boyd sitting on the same chair and his face all wrinkled and melted as a result of the moisturizer’s side effect.
So all of the above, starting from when he applied the moisturiser was just a hallucination inside his brain. It’s what he hoped for, but unfortunately, he never left the chair, and he must have done all the imagining in a minute or two. As the scientist explains, she has applied too much of the moisturiser, Boyd’s whole head explodes like a Volcano!
What a messy ending to a love story! I love it!
Our Final Thoughts
This episode does a great job of emphasising the concept of vanity and how genuine beauty lies within rather than on the outside. It’s an excellent chapter on reality and truth. Social media is a dysmorphic prism that distorts our perceptions of ourselves and others while numbing us to what matters most in life. That’s what this is about.
I want to point out that the story style of this episode is similar to a famous French Short film released in 1961. The name of that film is “La Rivière du hibou” It was also released 3 years later on American Television in the fifth season of the popular anthology series “The Twilight Zone” in the 22nd episode of the season. It was titled “An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge,” you need to check it out on YouTube, and you will understand what I am trying to say.
Boyd in 3D has a great ebb and flow in its narration treatment. It builds on a strong idea and delivers on the promise of making Vought appear completely ridiculous. The concept and drama are not original but the true winners here, as Diabolical delivers yet another excellent episode.
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