Lioness Recap: You’re in the Gray Now

Special Ops: Lioness

Five Hundred Children

Season 2 Episode 4

Editor’s Rating 3 stars ***

Photo: Lauren Smith/Paramount+

Lioness is a mess of political signifiers without a coherent political worldview. You might say that’s what makes this cowboy techno-thriller an all-American TV classic. In the context of these “interesting times,” it’s also what makes it increasingly crazy-making to watch. Episode four brings season one fan-favorite Cruz back into the fold and makes the show’s first reference to the Israel-Palestine war in the same scene. “There’s no such thing as a moral war, Cruz. There is survival and there is surrender. You can ask any concertgoer in Israel the consequences of surrender, or any eight-year-old in Gaza for that matter. If you can find one.”

Painting the U.S. imperial project in the ghoulish, unflattering light it deserves is cool with me, but you really couldn’t have picked a more vile subject through which to talk out of both sides of your mouth here. We’re reaching critical levels of gross military propaganda here, even for the tastes of this humble recapper and frequent pervert for yoked, Milius-meets-Clancy-style American entertainment. Still, this overqualified cast continues to win me over by chewing scenery like every single one of ‘em went to the Al-Pacino-in-Heat school of acting (off-screen cocaine habit included).

And, despite itself, Lioness continues to parlay effectively dissonant, pre-apocalyptic visions of U.S. hegemony — the runaway train to the “next American century.” After a semi-heated debrief with Kaitlyn and Byron, where she’s ordered to find a qualified handler for their pilot lioness, Joe picks up a tail on the highway and calls in Kyle for assistance, who’s already tracking her from the road about five minutes away. Together, they’re able to maneuver the tail to a stop and hold the guy at gunpoint. Special Agent Gutierrez (Kirk Acevedo) gets right to the point: what is the CIA doing wandering all over the border — drones buzzing around and strike teams making noise on decommissioned runways? No one knows why, and he’s there on orders from the DOJ, not to surveil but to provide cover.

Here’s where Gutierrez pops off with an insane cocktail of Bush-era Islamophobia and Sicario-style drug-war racism: “You’re not dealing with some pedophile zealots who live in the desert who think they’re gonna get a room full of virgins when they blow themselves up. These fucking monsters [will] just show up to a fucking sheriff’s house with a million in cash, and he has a choice: take the money or watch them impale his nine-year-old on a fucking rake and hang his wife from a fucking bridge.” Incidentally, Gutierrez must surely now hold the show’s record for most f-words emphatically uttered in a single diatribe, and that’s saying something. The point is that this cartel has infiltrated every state and federal agency in the U.S. government, and if Joe wants a sufficient leg up on them, she should bring Gutierrez in on the operation. “I am the file you can’t check out of a library.” A strange but admittedly cool way to say you’ve worked at the same job for 20 years.

Following an absolutely jarring transitional scene of Dr. Neal losing a child cancer patient mid-surgery and having to break the news to the parents (with absolutely zero follow-up for the rest of the episode — I guess we’ll have to wait till next week to see what domestic troubles this might drudge up for Neal and Joe), we get reacquainted with Cruz via a bit of sniper-practice badassery before she returns home to find Joe there waiting for her. Still furious with Joe for wrecking her life last season, she’s predictably prickly toward her old boss and the notion of getting back in the shit with the Lioness crew. Joe argues the mission is worthy of Cruz’s airtight focus on the primary task above all else. Cruz is still operating in a counter-intelligence unit because she “believes,” Joe argues, and they both share that uncanny, monk-like fanaticism to keep going, even after the mission breaks them. “There’s no such thing as a moral war.” There’s only the mission and the skill sets required to make it happen. Besides, Cruz has no choice. She’s already been reassigned to the Lioness team. “Quit or pack your kit.”

Lioness continues to, more or less, exhibit the type of rhythms and idiosyncrasies that leave me endeared to the concept of a TV show written by one person, problematic though it is in light of current Hollywood labor issues. Writers rooms are their own vital creative and commercial engine, but there’s something about the personality — however goofy, narrow, opaque, whatever else — that comes out when you’re working with the written source material of one creative mind that, while not a virtue in and of itself, makes for broader visual entertainment landscape. Take the first scene where Josephina catches a stray moment of comradery from Tucker. LaMonica Garrett’s characterization is one of the quieter ones among the Lioness-crew players, but he continues to fill his dialogue scenes, such as they arise, with a welcoming aura of strength, warmth, and Aragorn-like wisdom. Something about the pairing of energies with dialogue that feels both recognizably tailored to a mass American TV audience and steeped in its own signature language flair. “Tell me there’s a sexier sound on the planet than an Apache running up your six while you’re pinned behind a rock with a dick in your hand,” says Josephina. A hilarious artillery-measuring mic-drop on the boys here. Anyway, she lets it slip that she just wants to get back to her unit. “The sooner we get this over with, the sooner that happens.” Having unofficially accepted her into the fold, Tucker gets honest with her: there’s no going back to her former life. Straight-forward citizenship or even soldiering is not an option. Whether by choice or under duress, enter the gray and you’re in it for good.

Hold up, guys, we haven’t had our comfortably-above-mid action scene for the week. “Five Hundred Children” earns its strange title through rather literal means, ending on a nighttime raid on a heavily guarded Los Tigres warehouse. Gutierrez makes himself useful with some rusty but ultimately viable intel, and Josephina gets her first chance to show off in a sexy stealth copter. Once inside the warehouse, they discover hundreds of children cowering in the dark. “What the fuck was that?” asks Bobby as the crew departs in their tiny stealth chopper, leaving the children behind, emerging from the warehouse and staring up at the departing team in this week’s bit of lizard-brainy Apocalypse Now-type image-making. What the fuck was that, indeed? I reckon we can consider ourselves well primed to fear and tremble at the enemy looming on the next leg of the strategy board.