Special Ops: Lioness - General Discussion

[HerkyJerky]

The ending was just too pat.  Does anyone think that this was an alternate ending since TS isn't sure there will be a second season because of the strikes?

[chaifan]

Overall, the series was OK.  Not great, not bad, just ok.  Decent premise, something we haven't really seen before.  Just knowing that the Lioness program is a real thing is sorta cool, too.  But still, it resulted in a just ok show for me.

I didn't buy Cruz being so head over heels in love with Aaliyah.  They have absolutely nothing in common, there was never any substance to their relationship.  I didn't even buy them as BFF's, let alone star crossed lovers.  I think part if it is because Cruz is played so unemotional.  She'd make a good Vulcan.  But other than what seemed to be good sex, I just didn't see a connection there at all. 

That said, I was prepared for Cruz to go back into the house to "save" Aaliyah.  I'm thinking that there's a good chance she gets killed by her family for letting a Marine infiltrate the house and kill both her father and fiancee.  (That was the fiancee, right?  Someone above referred to him as the brother.)  Oh, and also for being a lesbian (or bi). 

The million guys shooting a bazillion bullets and not one hitting Cruz was Storm Trooper level of unbelievable.  It would have made more sense for her to have a bit more of an advance start, be out of range for most of what we saw, and just be dodging bullets at the very end.  The fight between her and Jo on the boat was also stupid.

The whole situation room - oh maybe we shouldn't kill the oil baron terrorist after all now that we think about it, oops, are we a little late for that, oh, my bad - was more annoying than anything else.  I liked the sit room scene an episode or two earlier, where they were getting grilled about extrajudicial killings.  But if killing oil guy was such a bad thing, why didn't they say so then?  Jo and Kaitlyn's home life scenes were boring, and added nothing to the story.

So in a show about female Marines, of the three main female characters we have two who collapse in tears at the end of the mission, one of whom proclaims she's quitting; and only the "suit", the stereotypical bitch in heels, remains steeled the entire time.  So much for female empowerment. 

Oh, and isn't one of the hallmarks of these incredibly wealthy weddings - of any religion - that the women change outfits multiple times a day?  How did Cruz pack in just a carry on?  And nothing else says "I'm a Marine undercover" more than a woman who wears an oversize white tee and boxers to bed while staying at a palatial mansion.  She might as well have been wearing army greens to bed.

Sorry, I'm cranky and critical this morning. 

I'm wondering if they will keep Cruz for the second season.  Not sure how that will work out, as she has seemingly burnt one big bridge.  Or do they start fresh with a new lioness each season? 

 

[Chicago Redshirt]

I have a tough time thinking why the Lioness program wouldn't do facial recognition on the assets, knowing that the terrorists potentially might. It makes the program seem either lazy or incompetent or both that rando bad guy can come up with the marine connection in literally under a minute of feeding Cruz's picture into a computer.

I'm not sure what Terror Dad was doing in the same kitchen where Cruz was since the men and women were supposed to be separated, or how he didn't hear Cruz trying to talk herself into completing the mission enough to be like "What is this random woman doing talking about the mission?" Or why Cruz felt the need to vocalize her need to pump up her confidence. I've not been trained to be an infiltrating assassin, but I think I probably would have it on lock that i wouldn't say anything about my having a "mission" out loud.

There are probably a half-dozen better ways for Terror Fiance to have handled the discovery of Cruz being a Marine then wandering solo into the kitchen (where he presumably would have had no reason to think that either she or Terror dad were) and yelling "She's a Marine!" But if he were at all competent in that regard there would have been no plausible way for Cruz to have carried out the assassination, or at least, for Cruz to have been successfully extracted. 

i think I would have liked this better if it had been stripped of pretty much all of the non-mission stuff and spent more time building up the characters. 

[AntFTW]

I liked the show but it dragged out a lot. Watching the trailer way back when, my expectations were pretty high. The show wasn't bad, and I'd watch if they have a second season but it didn't quite meet those expectations.

I feel like they had an all-star cast and the show has much more potential if it gets a second season.

[SeanBug]

18 hours ago, dwmarch said:

I was certain Aaliyah was going to be a part of the family business somehow because otherwise she is the absolute stereotype of the American idea of an oppressed Muslim woman. But I guess we saved nuance for the oil politics and left it out for the characters. Maybe she'll be the villain in season 2.

Having said that, I do really like the team vibe of the QRF. Everything I know about these types of commando units comes from G.I. Joe, Tom Clancy novels and shows like SEAL Team but this team felt like real soldiers to me. Like when they get onto the yacht, what's the first thing they do? They inventory their gear because they know stuff can get lost in transit and they'd rather find out sooner than later. That was a nice touch. There are some Youtube channels where former Special Forces/Tier 1, etc types critique these shows and I'd love to see what they say about this show because I think if they got nothing else right, they had a great advisor for the military aspects.

Taylor Sheridan shows (at least the ones I have seen) don't skimp on the brutality so the kills on Terror Dad and Terror Husband were great. Cruz didn't stab them once and walk away, she knifed the shit out of them in multiple spots. I noticed she took the extra moment to slice the dad's neck but she didn't do the same for the son so I wonder if he might have survived. But I'm pretty sure we cut back to the scene later and he's still on the floor so I guess not.

I thought it was somewhat realistic that a black swan like that could happen. The Lioness program probably does a deep dive on a person's digital identity but does that include running facial recognition on Facebook pictures? The profile was some other Marine's and Cruz may not have even been tagged in the picture so there was no way for the CIA to find it other than to use methods that are probably not legal in the US.

Speaking of bureaucratic entanglements, the State Department wants to be in charge of the operation but the CIA just went ahead and did their own thing anyhow. The first half of the episode is a bunch of infighting about how impossible it will be to extract Cruz. But if the idea was to scrub the mission, why are they all gathered in the White House Situation Room? I don't work at the State Department, CIA or anything even close to either but when my boss decides we're not doing something we don't hold an all hands on deck meeting where the employees get to argue that they should be allow to go ahead while simultaneously doing the work that we were told we weren't going to do.

The argument Byron and Kaitlyn had was that Aaliyah's father had been No 1 on the US kill list of terrorists for 20 years, they had a plan in place, trained Cruz, had the site for the wedding confirmed, a destroyer that could be in place if they needed to launch missiles, etc. and the WH and State got cold feet after San Antonio and the botched extraction of the prisoner, and the fact CIA didn't coordinate with State to find out POTUS was in Paris.

Secretary of State didn't want to necessarily scrub the mission they just wanted to run it. It's the typical in fighting of various departments of the government. Remember this isn't how a mission like this would really work, it's fiction and it's got to be  more dramatic and tension filled. 

Zero Dark Thirty movie is much more realistic in how a mission like that is run. Months of debating the details, gathering intel etc. putting a team together, training them, the whole nine yards. Then waiting til they get the okay to go.  Remember how frustrated Maya, the character in the movie got, when it took forever for them to even consider what she had proposed.  

Lioness made it seem like all this took place in the span of a month or so once Joe brought Cruz in. The most unrealistic aspect for me is how Cruz became friends with Aaliyah just by "accidentally" running into her while out shopping in Manhattan. Next thing she knows, they're best friends, lovers, and she's at the wedding. The daughter of a man funding terrorist cells would never have been allowed to become fast friends with a stranger like that. 

IMO, YMMV. 

 

 

[Chicago Redshirt]

4 hours ago, SeanBug said:

Lioness made it seem like all this took place in the span of a month or so once Joe brought Cruz in. The most unrealistic aspect for me is how Cruz became friends with Aaliyah just by "accidentally" running into her while out shopping in Manhattan. Next thing she knows, they're best friends, lovers, and she's at the wedding. The daughter of a man funding terrorist cells would never have been allowed to become fast friends with a stranger like that. 

IMO, YMMV. 

The show spent very little time on characterization. So we don't really know much about Aaliyah or her terrorist dad. But I buy the notion that the show was trying to sell us on: that she was ignorant of the true nature of her dad's empire and so had no particular reason to be cautious of friends, that her dad and his associates didn't really care about her, as long as she went along with the  arranged marriage and popped out kids (and wasn't kidnapped or otherwise used as a tool against her dad), that she was utterly friendless,  and sexism caused the men in Aaliyah's life to mostly turn a blind eye to the possible threat newcomer women might pose. 

Since the show establishes Aaliyah as at least bi, it is feasible that her attraction to Cruz was led to her bringing Cruz in her orbit in the first place. I think I would have liked the show better if the Americans knew that Aaliyah was bi and deliberately put Cruz in with the express notion of possibly using sex as a weapon. 

[mythoughtis]

Why did we have 15  plots in an 8 episode  show?  And a whole bunch of characters that we never learned a thing about?  Other than they can point out empty bunks, and oh, one can drive a boat. I would  have loved for those characters to be fleshed out.

Then we have a room full of people that authorized a mission but are just now thinking of the ramifications of the mission and  want to scrub it. 
I don’t know why we should  care about Kyle or  Nichole Kushan’s character, or that character’s spouse. 
Then we veer off into showing how hard it is for  Joe to go off to war, even though her family is usually the last thing she cares about.  Even screaming at her husband for making her talk to her own traumatized daughter on the phone.  And  what father thinks it’s ok for a 14 year old to be fooling around  to the extent she was? 
 

Focus, Sheridan, Focus. 

Edited September 8, 2023 by mythoughtis

[chaifan]

On 9/4/2023 at 2:55 PM, Chicago Redshirt said:

I have a tough time thinking why the Lioness program wouldn't do facial recognition on the assets, knowing that the terrorists potentially might.

They show a facial recognition check being done as Cruz gets the the estate in Mallorca.  She passed.  They show the fiancee doing one in his office, and she passed.  For some reason, he does it again.  Same program?  Different program?  Did he set different parameters?  I don't know, but for some reason he has it run again, and then her face pops up. 

I have no idea if this is how facial recognition programs work.  Also, I have no idea how the CIA would scrub the entire internet of 100% of someone's picture.  Is this actually technologically possible?  Wouldn't you wonder if all of a sudden every picture of your sister or college roommate just disappeared off your facebook page? 

On 9/4/2023 at 2:55 PM, Chicago Redshirt said:

i think I would have liked this better if it had been stripped of pretty much all of the non-mission stuff and spent more time building up the characters. 

I totally agree with this.  The Joe at home B plot was tedious, and other than checking off the obligatory box for "let's show that the bad ass woman really is a softy and cares", I don't know what the point was.  Kaitlyn's home scenes were equally boring, but at least allowed some exposition to give the viewers some inside baseball type info. 

[dwmarch]

2 hours ago, chaifan said:

They show a facial recognition check being done as Cruz gets the the estate in Mallorca.  She passed.  They show the fiancee doing one in his office, and she passed.  For some reason, he does it again.  Same program?  Different program?  Did he set different parameters?  I don't know, but for some reason he has it run again, and then her face pops up. 

The social network shown isn't Facebook but is meant to look and function basically the same way. A freeze-frame of the scene doesn't show the time of the post but does show that the first comment on it was "two hours ago" which suggests to me that this picture was posted on the same day it was found. This along with the random break-in at the QRF's house shows that in this secretive world they can sometimes get tripped up by some unanticipated absurdity blowing their cover.

[ribboninthesky1]

I've enjoyed a couple of Sheridan films, but never watched any of his TV shows before this one. I read his Hollywood Reporter profile a couple of months ago, and he came off like a delusional asshole. So I think that's permanently colored my perception of his work. 

It's a shame this series had a decent cast without the writing to support it. I'm not even referring to what's realistic in terms of the plot (others have already made salient points).  A lot of the dialogue was so, so cringey and I was embarrassed for the actors having to say the lines.

Edited September 11, 2023 by ribboninthesky1

[KeithJ]

Overall I enjoyed this.  I could have done with less of the family drama and focusing more on the team though.

The whole “he’s been on the top of the kill list for 20 years but let’s not kill him” was really stupid.  As Westfield said, you should have taken him off the list if you didn’t want him dead.

I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for Aaliyah.  She got played by someone she seemed to really care about and, on top of that, she lost her father.  Although she was probably a little happy on the inside that her fiancé is dead.

[Cranberry]

We're getting interviews about the show now -- they couldn't promote it during the strike. ‘Special Ops: Lioness’ Star Laysla De Oliveira On Playing A CIA Recruit For Taylor Sheridan: “It Physically Hurt, And Emotionally Hurt, Too”

[Snazzy Daisy]

Special Ops: Lioness Renewed For Season 2 at Paramount+

Quote

Paramount+ has renewed Taylor Sheridan’s spy thriller show ‘Special Ops: Lioness‘ for season 2. The filming of the upcoming installment will start in Mexico on an undisclosed date. Sheridan continues to serve as the showrunner of the series with John Hillcoat returning as a director.

The return of Laysla De Oliveira, who portrays the pivotal character Cruz, is uncertain, given the conclusion of her character’s arc in the first season. 

 

[AntFTW]

11 minutes ago, Snazzy Daisy said:

Special Ops: Lioness Renewed For Season 2 at Paramount+

 

I hope the writing is better.

[KeithJ]

https://www.dexerto.com/tv-movies/taylor-sheridan-special-ops-lioness-season-2-change-2517835/
 

According to this article it looks like season 2 will have a whole new cast.  Not sure I care for that idea that much.

[dwmarch]

I think that could work. I'm not sure I'd love a season 2 with the same characters but I wouldn't mind some of them popping up in supporting roles here and there.

[Snazzy Daisy]

Renewed for season 2 with a new title.

 

Edited Thursday at 02:22 PM by Snazzy Daisy