Taylor Sheridan has made a public point of touting his role as the primary (if not sole) author of his TV ventures while decrying collaborative writers’ rooms, which means he’s responsible for his Yellowstone devolving into a morass of soap opera clichés and his latest, Special Ops: Lioness, going for the jugular via nothing but generic maneuvers. A military thriller minus any thrills, originality, or nuance, it seems destined to follow the path of his prior Paramount+ hits: a show that features lots of talented people wasting their time on second-rate material targeted directly at red-state viewers.
Critics were only provided with the first episode of Special Ops: Lioness ahead of its July 23 premiere, leaving us with few details about its larger story. On the basis of its maiden installment, however, there’s every reason to expect it to be a by-the-books affair: gung-ho armed-services badasses both fighting the good fight in the Middle East on behalf of oppressed Muslim women and girls, and dealing with the burden of their duty and untrustworthy bureaucrats back at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. One of those suits is played by Nicole Kidman, who makes no impression during an early debriefing as Kaitlyn Meade, and another will be portrayed by Morgan Freeman, who’s wholly MIA for now.
[Light spoilers follow.]
Those two Oscar winners are the biggest names attached to Special Ops: Lioness, but its real star is Zoe Saldaña as Joe, the leader of a heroic Marines squadron dubbed “Lioness.” Its mission is to place highly trained female members undercover in order to befriend the wives and daughters of their Middle Eastern targets, who can be taken out once their whereabouts are ascertained. This is risky stuff, and its dangerousness is underscored by the show’s opening sequence. Embedded with ISIS villains, Joe’s hand-picked 22-year-old operative has her cover blown due to a crucifix tattoo, about which Joe somehow didn’t know (good work!). Despite trying to flee to an evac team that Joe has sent to rescue her, the American agent is captured by her pursuers, and Joe, realizing that her comrade is dead either way, orders a fatal drone strike on the entire compound.
This might have been Joe’s best strategic option, yet it weighs on her soul, as proven by numerous close-ups of Saldaña’s sad countenance set to mournful Arabic singing. Director John Hillcoat at least gets to shoot actual choppers flying across the desert as well as legitimately enormous explosions, thereby flaunting the series’ impressive production budget. In most other respects, however, Special Ops: Lioness is a standard-issue affair, including with regards to its Lioness players: Bobby (Jill Wagner), Tex (Jonah Wharton), Tucker (LaMonica Garrett), Randy (Austin Hébert), and Two Cups (James Jordan, a vet of Sheridan’s Wind River, Yellowstone, Mayor of Kingstown, and 1883). They’re a rowdy drinking-and-killing bunch, and Two Cups is the de facto wild card, as evidenced by the fact that he got his nickname from imbibing a Thailand cocktail that made him want to have sex with everything. Their colorful sitting-around-the-base shit-talking is a photocopy of Yellowstone’s ranch hand dynamics, because apparently, if it ain’t broke, Sheridan won’t bother updating it.
Special Ops: Lioness is very concerned with Joe’s grief and guilt, which follows her from Syria back to her suburban Virginia home. Her husband Neil (Dave Annable) cares for their two daughters, the older of whom making clear that she’s not happy to see her mom by outright stating, “I hate it when she’s here.” Joe and Neil’s relationship is one defined by her profession; they’re both free to seek comfort in the arms of others, given that she’s always away. After a quick roll in the hay, Joe is back to work, where she’s tasked with finding a replacement for her fallen subordinate. That person turns out to be Cruz Manuelos (Laysla De Oliveira), a young woman who’s introduced flipping burgers and taking a punch from her abusive boyfriend. She retaliates by smashing his face in with a frying pan, and seeking sanctuary from his violence in a Marines recruitment office.
Cruz’s wayward life is the result of anger from her mom’s premature death and her dad’s absenteeism, and she discovers an ideal outlet for her rage in the military. She rapidly rises through the ranks due to her intellectual and physical prowess (she can do 22 pull-ups and 114 push-ups in three minutes!). Much is made about Cruz’s toughness, so audiences know she can hold her own in a brawl, and De Oliveira is convincing enough in the part. Thanks to her might, she’s soon recruited to be Joe’s newest protégé—this following an interview process in which Joe makes Cruz strip down for a tattoo inspection, because she’s not going to make that same mistake again! As in a preceding post-shower bathroom scene, this incident grants the show an opportunity to sexually gawk at Saldaña and its other formidable female leads; no matter their ruggedness, the show reminds us, they’re still desirable women.
This mixture of rah-rah jingoism and conservative-grade “feminism” is old hat for Sheridan, and it’s dutifully proffered by Special Ops: Lioness, whose plot—after considerable table-setting—involves Cruz traveling to Kuwait and donning a head scarf to befriend the wealthy 20-something daughter of an Iranian backed militia bigwig in Iraq. Doing this takes about three lines of dialogue, as the series’ blunt-force drama has little time to waste on cleverness. It’s all so smash-and-grab unsubtle, desperate to get in and out of scenarios with minimal fuss and maximum obviousness. That definitely keeps things from becoming lethargic, but it also negates any surprise or excitement—two qualities that should be of prime importance for a hawkish endeavor such as this.
Since Paramount+ wants to keep most of Special Ops: Lioness under wraps pre-release , it’s always conceivable that there are unexpected and invigorating twists lying in wait. If his recent output is any indication, though, it’s more likely that Sheridan’s latest is merely another risk-averse small-screen effort that cares only about doing what’s already been done before—narratively and politically.
