Season 01 (Special Ops: Lioness)

[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.

[Raja]

On 7/31/2023 at 2:51 PM, munchiewoman said:

Just starting this episode but already I'm annoyed.  Her backstory should be hard grained into her, not a talk as she's driving there.  What she's studying should be REAL, she is actually studying it.  Just because someone can take a beating doesn't mean they would be good for this act - she should be educated, sophisticated, TRAINED.

Three episodes in and everything I have seen points to Sergeant Cruz being part of the reaction force not an undercover operative.  I guess showing James Bond learning to fit into high society isn't as cinematic as making an HALO jump onto a cliff.

That the CIA knew she was going to get a bathing suit after that quick SERE test and nobody thought that the mission had her being a friend to a very rich and powerful woman. That I was in a car crash was the cover, do better please.

[Raja]

On 9/4/2023 at 7:00 AM, chaifan said:

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? 

Coming back to my first impression they did nothing to establish Cruz as a spy/assassin, just a Marine who could kill. Her only future use would seem to be as someone on the quick reaction force who doesn't wear the uniform of special forces, a beard. So stays with the CIA rather than go back to the Marine Raiders.

[Idiotboy]

Drug war in Mexico, you say? Could Sheridan be cannibalizing ideas from the unrealized third part of the Sicario trilogy? Not crazy about the return of Cruz, one of my least favorite characters since Moses was a lad, but anything that gets Zoe Saldaña on our TV is welcome.