Typically, the "Boys Universe" gets away with its excesses by having a point to its gruesomeness, but Nubian vs Nubian has no point. Instead, it offers meandering plot involving an adrenalized couple who seem incapable of physical attraction unless bathed in violent activity. Perhaps this can be extended to a critique of consumerism, but hasn't this already been done ad nauseam? And if a critique is meant, it isn't backed up by the through-line of the episode, which is more about a hateful world with hateful characters and hateful children and hateful morals. This, too, could have had something poetic to its bathos if it at least managed to be funny, which it wasn't.
Sure, the tastelessness is there: the gore, the perversity, the vulgarity - but these are just splashes of color on asphalt, lacking the momentum, wit, characterization and meaning that can often surprise us from this show. Instead, Maya's situation as merely a cheap punchline, as if a cycle of child abuse and cruelty warrants nothing more.
