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Lioness

Special Ops Lioness season 1

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Reviewer

Paul Asay
Kristin Smith

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Episode Reviews

TV Series Review

Station Chief Joe exists only in the present and the future. It’s not helpful for her to remain in the past. 

Her present is consumed with the realities of war and working to take down terrorists across the Middle East and drug cartels closer to home. Her future is filled with worries that her female, undercover agents, known as Lioness Special Operatives, will be found out and killed. Her past confirms that this is, and has been, possible. 

When she’s at home, Joe tries to be available to her husband Neil and her two daughters. Although sometimes, they wish she’d just stay out in the field and not interrupt their daily rhythms; their life without her. 

But when she’s out in the field, in the thick of things, she can’t think about troubles at home or the life she could have built had she left behind her ties to the government and the military. 

Her only goal is to assimilate new agents. To place them among women connected to high value targets, teach them to earn their trust and then wait for the perfect moment to kill said targets. 

It’s the polar opposite of a lax job. And it really all depends on the success and cooperation of her team, which includes CIA agents Bobby, Two Cups, Tucker, Randy and Tex. And, perhaps most importantly, Cruz Manuelos. 

Cruz is her latest operative. Aggressive and fierce, Cruz is the perfect fit for the role: a wounded warrior with a broken past. She never knew her father; her mother passed away when she was in high school. One brother is dead, the other in prison. Cruz took to stripping and dancing to make money and tacked on an abusive, demeaning boyfriend along the way. 

The United States Marine Corps has been a sanctuary for Cruz. But if she’s going to survive—if any of them are going to survive—they’ll have to learn to work together to fight the war they’re in, and to overcome the personal battles each of them have been in their entire lives. 

From The Makers of Yellowstone…

…Comes a show that’s unlike Yellowstone. Sort of. 

We’re not watching people herd cattle in Montana or fight over a family ranch. But we are watching war break out, operatives going undercover and people clinging to their positions to stay alive. 

That’s the basics for Lioness, a new, TV-MA show streaming on Paramount+. 

This is a star-studded cast, featuring names like Zoe Saldana, Nicole Kidman, Morgan Freeman and Laysla De Oliveira. From such a big cast, you’d probably expect greatness. And there are some moments in the first episode that may hint at just that. 

In my opinion, the most compelling character (at least her storyline) is that of Cruz Manuelos, a woman who goes through abuse that is both difficult to watch and just as hard to hear.

This is then, really, a story about Cruz and Joe. How their lives differ, how they intersect and, it seems, how they’re going to have to work together to perform dangerous missions. Especially for American women who are hidden within the ranks of terrorists. 

I can see the appeal here. Secret, undercover missions and a bonafide spy-thriller. But the cringey lines and predictable acting can make this feel stale, especially when compared to a huge hit like Yellowstone

Unlike Yellowstone, the sexual content seems to have been taken down a notch in some ways, but that doesn’t mean we escape those problems entirely. Joe and her husband get in the sheets (although their acts are insinuated), and we see the breasts of a few female characters in non-sexual settings. There are a few LGBT characters and storylines. Season 2 introduces a young gay woman whose father uses plenty of demeaning terms to describe people in same-sex relationships. He also voices his disapproval of women serving in the military, including his own daughter.

Besides the sexual content, there is also plenty of drama, thick profanity and violence and abuse that are difficult to watch and cannot be ignored. (Season 2 also features a plotline where Joe’s team breaks protocol as they try to take down a cartel leader trafficking children into sexual slavery.)

There’s something here, but the TV-MA rating makes sure that it’s not something for the entire family.

(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at [email protected], or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)

Episode Reviews

Jul. 14, 2023–S1, E1: “Sacrificial Soldiers”

Joe sacrifices an undercover operative for the welfare of her entire team. Shortly after, she must replace her lost agent with another. A young woman joins the Marines as an escape from her horrifying life.

Marines fight off a group of terrorists, shooting and killing many with guns and via an air strike. Buildings and vehicles explode.

Cruz’s boyfriend punches her in the face and belittles her in front of others, agreeing to his friend’s notion that he needs to “trade that b–ch in for a new model.” This same man also asks Cruz why she doesn’t strip and dance for money anymore or desire to engage in intercourse. Later, Cruz hits him in the face with a frying pan and then runs for her life, barely escaping his wrath.

ISIS members drag a woman out from her hiding place and beat her. Joe makes it clear that had she not called a hit on them, they would have raped her and filmed it. Two women hit one another in a petty fight.

Joe and her husband kiss and make out, and we see Joe in shorts with a robe covering her shirtless upper body (we see a bit of her stomach and the outline of the front of her breasts). A female agent is forced to take off all her clothes in front of Joe and we see her bare rear, as well as cigarette burns on her arms and a scar on her back from a beating with an extension cord.

Men and women alike consume hard liquor and beer. An agent vomits after a night of drinking. Joe’s daughter says that she hates it when her mother is home.

God’s name is misused twice, once paired with “d–”. The f-word is heard over 30 times while the s-word is heard twice. A man calls a woman a “b–ch” many times. “A–hole” is used once.

Oct. 27, 2024—S2, E1: “Beware the Old Soldier”

When a congresswoman gets kidnapped and her family is killed, Joe is called into the field to find her, teaming up with several “grey-work guys” to rescue the congresswoman. The catch: They’ll have to go across the Mexican border to get her.

The episode opens with a home invasion: A man is shot in the forehead (we see a splash of blood). When a boy comes out of his own room to investigate, he’s killed as well—albeit off-camera. (We hear the gunshot as well as the body falling to the floor.) A woman runs outside, falling and limping badly, before she’s caught and thrown in the back of a van.

But the fatalities are just getting started. When Joe and her team cross the border (pretending to be American tourists), they quickly kill a trio of gun-toting men with ill-intentions. They later dispatch the kidnappers with quick, lethal bursts of gunfire, then get into a frenetic running battle with Mexican law enforcement. (A dozen or two of these folks, just doing their jobs, are killed. Joe’s team loses one man as well.) Joe punches one of her own teammates in the face; he takes it once, but when she keeps swinging, the man hits her in the gut. A vehicle crashes into a river, forcing its inhabitants to swim for their lives under a hail of gunfire.

Before leaving, Joe exchanges some suggestive words with husband, Neal. When posing as a tourist, she wears a top without a bra beneath (a decision that seems designed to spark some of those ill-intentions from the three quickly-killed men). Later, we see her underwear-clad rear as she puts on a more practical pair of pants. A couple of guys go shirtless. Someone smokes a cigarette and offers Joe one. “I don’t smoke,” she says. “Neither do I,” the smoker responds.

Characters use the f-word more than 40 times in this 43-minute episode. And we can add to that tally eight uses of the s-word and sporadic language elsewhere, including “a–” and “d–k.” God’s name is misused twice, once with the word “d–n.”

Oct. 27, 2024—S2, E2: “I Love My Country”

The congresswoman (from the previous episode) is rescued, but the job’s hardly done. Joe and her bosses are now tasked with infiltrating a Mexican cartel and tracking down the Chinese operatives whom those criminals are apparently working with. To do that, though, they’ll need an extra-special asset: decorated helicopter pilot Josephina Carrillo, whose uncle just happens to be the cartel’s leader. Alas, Joe and her team must go to Iraq to recruit her.

Joe’s daring rescue of the congresswoman does not go unnoticed: The firefight along the U.S.-Mexican border made the news, and both Joe’s husband and teen daughter, Kate, saw her on television. It’s the first time that Kate really understood what her mother did for a living. And when she asks Joe why she does it, Joe tells her the story of why her immigrant grandfather enlisted in the Army just three days after Pearl Harbor. Her grandfather always used to tell people that he just learned how to speak English: He wasn’t about to learn German or Japanese as well.

Why does Joe do what she does? “So you don’t have to learn Chinese,” Joe tells Kate. “Or Russian. That’s why.”

The reality of Joe’s job hits home with Neal, Joe’s husband, as well. “Do us both a favor and stop watching the news,” Joe kids him, and the two wind up in the shower together before Joe leaves on her next assignment. We see Joe’s naked rear as the two make out in the water, even as Neal worries over the bruises he sees on her arms. (“I told you to stop playing rugby,” he kids, and then kisses her passionately.)

In Iraq, Joe reunites with her old team, including the lesbian Bobby. Joining the team is Bobby’s last boyfriend before “she switched sides.” (Bobby says she didn’t switch; she just “abandoned the side with a penis.”) When Bobby’s old beau makes a crude remark, another teammate tells her, “No wonder you’re gay!” Elsewhere, there’s a crude reference to the male anatomy.

On the way to recruit Carrillo, Joe’s small caravan hits an IED. She’s knocked out briefly, and she and several teammates are bloodied. (We hear the driver “ate part of the the steering wheel,” but he seems to be alive.) They engage in another massive shootout with Iraqi guerillas—a fight that leaves several Iraqis dead. We hear that Carrillo has racked up 822 kills while flying an Apache helicopter. Two women nearly get into a physical fight.

We hear that the cartel that Joe is trying to infiltrate is involved in drug production and distribution, human trafficking and “oil tapping” (selling black-market oil to enemy countries such as North Korea and China). The cartel also apparently drops off illegal immigrants across the U.S. border, too. We hear about what might happen if Joe and her team are captured either by the cartel (they’d be killed) or America’s Drug Enforcement Administration (they’d be prosecuted, and the Chinese might consider the covert op as an act of war).

We hear more than 50 f-words in this 46-minute episode, along with five s-words and a dusting of other profanities (including “a–,” “b–ch,” “b–tard” and “d–n”). God’s name is misused three times, once with “d–n.”

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Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

kristin-smith
Kristin Smith

Kristin Smith joined the Plugged In team in 2017. Formerly a Spanish and English teacher, Kristin loves reading literature and eating authentic Mexican tacos. She and her husband, Eddy, love raising their children Judah and Selah. Kristin also has a deep affection for coffee, music, her dog (Cali) and cat (Aslan).

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