'Lioness' Season 3 Episode 6 Review: Chooses To Be Stereotypical Instead Of Intriguing

Lioness Season 3 episode 6 drops the most interesting subplot of the season so that it can fuel some regressive stereotypes, and that’s just sad. Directed by D.J. Caruso and written by Taylor Sheridan, Sugar Land opens in the flashback section of the narrative, with Joe telling Neal yet again that he shouldn’t believe everything that he sees on the news, because it has been captured by “the enemy.” And in the same breath, she says that the government uses the mainstream media to scare “the enemy” and force them to run. Speaking of forcing people to go on the run, Joe, Mullins, Kaitlyn, and Byron sit down at a restaurant for a meeting with Senator Ryan Olson. It doesn’t take long for Olson to slip up and admit that he is a covert SVR agent, and that Oleksandra is his handler. Byron tells Olson that he can resign publicly or be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Once Mullins, Kaitlyn, and Byron have left, Joe offers Olson a third option: he can kill himself. In the present-day section of the narrative, after getting the green light from Mullins and co., Kyle, along with Cody and Grady, meets up with Oleksandra. She knows how the SVR works; hence, she can do a better job of predicting how Renat and his crew might be flying Joe out of the country. Based on that, the QRF chalks up a plan to hit the safe houses that the SVR uses to stash their assets, and the air bases they might be using to transport said assets. Whether or not this gamble will pay off for Joe’s crew is what forms the crux of the narrative.

At this point, it has become abundantly clear that Sheridan isn’t really interested in creating memorable characters or giving them moments that will truly stick in your mind and make you contemplate the relevance of their actions. Maybe he did it in Season 1, but as soon as they became household names, he started using them as mouthpieces for his hackneyed politics. What the hell do you mean by saying that the mainstream media is being manipulated by “outside forces”? In which world is that happening? The mainstream media always speaks in favor of those in power, and if you think that the mainstream media is questioning those in power too much, there’s a good chance they are doing that because that’s their job; speaking truth to power isn’t an international conspiracy, for crying out loud. To be clear, I know what Sheridan is doing. I know why he is casting doubt on the news, social media, educational institutions, and certain sectors of politics. But how does he not see that this hurts the storytelling or character development? Or does he just not care anymore? It was so interesting when he posed questions like: why do the people of a country choose to “betray” their own even though the state has provided them everything? And how does a country that prides itself on being the master of intelligence and counterintelligence fail to notice so many security breaches? Now, he has wrapped all that stuff up with some vague insinuations about the rise of communism because he has to focus on “religious extremism.”

I mean, it is ironic and kind of hilarious that Sheridan is catering to a public that gets their information about the world from very biased outlets, and then telling them to be critical of everything that doesn’t align with their worldview. Their understanding of their own country’s actions on foreign soil is covered in chest-thumping nationalism, and at the same time, on domestic soil, they are the victims of vile, uncouth, foreign invaders. How does that work exactly? Well, you don’t get the breathing space to wonder about that, because Caruso and his crew fill up those spaces with tension, action, or sentimentality. Even someone like me, whose job it is to be critical of whatever I am watching, gets swept up in the moment, and I become involved in the car chase, the shootout, or the rescue op that’s unfolding before me. However, as the dust settles, and I sit through the credits, the realization hits that Caruso and Sheridan are just repurposing story and action beats that have worked before. So, yeah, when you are in the thick of it, of course the cinematography, the editing, and the music work. That said, if you give it even a little bit of thought, it comes crumbling down like a house of cards. The show hardly has any outdoors scenes nowadays, even though it’s supposed to be about espionage and whatnot, but we do get a spectacular traffic collision in this episode. It’s evidently been done for real and, regardless of my feelings for the story or the storyteller, I’d love to know how they pulled that off, because stuff like that is much harder than it looks.

Performance-wise, I think the highlight of episode 6 of Lioness Season 3 is Joe Nemmers. I mean, the way he expresses a heightened sense of nervousness, I think I wouldn’t have minded it if the entire episode focused on just him trying various ways to get out of the pickle that he was in. You know, like an abbreviated version of Wake in Fright or After Hours. Everyone else in the cast is very “whatever.” I always say that Zoe gives it her all in everything she is in. And yeah, sure, she screams her lungs out at the very end of the episode, but what about the rest of the time? It seems like she is sleepwalking through this. It’s like her heart is not even in it. Kidman, Freeman, Kelly, McGill, and Ehle haven’t done anything that really sticks out; and in case you need to remind yourselves how legendary these actors are, I’d advise you to go through their filmographies and then look at the material they are being given to work with. Annable, Oliveira, Wagner, Garrett, Jordan, Hébert, Wharton, Luckinbill, Rodgriguez, and the rest of the supporting cast are kind of going through the motions. Oliveira gets a moment where she has to essentially summarize her relationship with Zoe’s character to give the rescue emotion some emotional gravitas, and the take they have used is so bad that it does nothing. Anyway, there are two more episodes to go, and I will be praying to the TV gods that Sheridan and co. do something that redeems this absolute mess of a season of Lioness (I know it is pointless, but you pray only when it’s pointless to do so). What are your thoughts on Sugar Land? Please, let me know in the comments section below.