Lioness Recap: Just Do It (Brought To You By The CIA)

10/28/2024 07:59 PM

Now that we're officially back with a bang, the new season of Lioness (dropping its Special Ops moniker this year as a demo of confidence in the show's personality) is ready to set us up with its new … uh, lioness. The apparent move to get away from espionage plotting in the Middle East — rife as the region is with the atrocities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which the full might of U.S. military aid is currently embroiled with no apparent end in sight — lands us in a "closer to home" plot that's also nowhere close to the modern geopolitical realities it's vaguely mirroring.

Our new lioness is Captain Josephina Carillo (Genesis Rodriguez), the U.S.-born niece of Alvaro Carillo, leader of the Los Tigres cartel. A badass helicopter pilot of Brett "Maverick" Mitchell proportions ("Anything north of Major sits behind a desk," says Kaitlyn of their new prospect. "She seems to like action."), Carillo is their best bet at infiltrating Los Tigres and getting to their target within the shortened time frame of the mission. The target isn't Alvaro Carillo himself, but a Chinese agent with the Ministry of State secretly pulling all the strings. The premise hinges on the idea that China is Mexico's number-one oil buyer — formidable leverage for the mysterious Chinese agent's clandestine plot.

It'll surprise no one that the good old U.S.A. is Mexico's biggest oil buyer in real life, putting us on a false continuum of surely indecent but all-too-familiar narrative territory on the Hollywood military propaganda scale. It's as odious in its real-world political obfuscation and cake-and-eat-it-too moral ambiguity as any Clancy-esque international spy thriller — made that much more so by the violent fever-pitch socio-political machinations they're effectively skirting around in 2024. But, as is often the case with these things, the boilerplate scenarios, heightened stakes, and BIG acting from seasoned, indubitably game professionals make for imperial entertainment that's as compelling as it is perverse, horrific as it is exciting.

Ironically, our new lioness recruitment episode takes us back to Iraq (or a facsimile of Iraq, only distinguishable from the faux-Mexico of the first episode via a slight change in sepia tone saturation) but just long enough to ensure their prospective asset into the program. A few days prior, the Lioness crew gathers at a janky ass black site in El Paso, Texas — complete with an open communal shower and latrine space that's perfect for Two Cups to clear with a big ole shit he can't hold in. Speaking of which, boy is it great to be back with the full Lioness crew after their episode one absence. Plus, we still get Taylor Sheridan's "Old Soldier" Cody and Kyle in the mix. Kyle's got a plan to win back Joe's respect after his cowboy shenanigans that almost got them killed last episode. First, he lists all the "bad things" that Los Tigres is involved in (fentanyl, human trafficking, kidnapping, and extortion of lime farmers) to justify their biggest crime: selling black market oil to North Korea, Cuba, and, of course, China.

Los Tigres leader Alvaro Carillo's brother Pablo is an immigration attorney in Dallas who came to the U.S. at five years old, joined the army, and gained citizenship in the Gulf War. Pablo's daughter is a badass helicopter pilot with two bronze stars and a silver and four tours in Afghanistan. Kyle's aware that Joe doesn't like someone picking her lioness for her — "The skill sets need to support the mission, not the other way around," she'd told Kaitlyn a few days before — but Kaitlyn sees the value in Joesfina Carrillo's recruitment. They can get her dishonorably discharged in a way that'll stick with anyone who looks into it after the fact (at the expense of her military career, of course). She'll go to Mexico to blow off steam, and her much-coveted pilot skills will naturally get her a job with her uncle. Once she's "flying loads" for her uncle's cartel, they can swap a load out for the Lioness team and swoop in on their target.

"Think of her as a Trojan horse," Byron tells Mullins, Mason, and Hollar in the run-it-up-the-flagpole meeting. "Once we get her location, she can insert a team, then we will have a capture-kill option, depending on the message POTUS wants to send." There is an election coming up fast, after all, and everyone in the room knows they're handling this operation according to the dictates of the President's electability pressures. Mullins pays lip service to the inciting incident of this operation — the attack on the congresswoman's family — and gives them the go-ahead, America-style: "Do it."

Next thing you know, we're in Northern Iraq with the Lioness crew, hit by a mine en route to Josephina Carillo's base. A firefight breaks out until Carillo herself comes flying in to save the day. True to her on-the-nose call sign (even for a call sign, am I right?), Carillo rains a capital-t "Thunder" of heavy artillery fire down on the Iraqi combatants. A one-woman reign of instant terror, far too uncanny in its precision to elicit a fist bump.

The volatility of the situation is emphasized by the emotional skirmish that erupts back on the base. Rodriguez makes a ferocious first impression as Carillo, who immediately gets in Joe's face for thinking she could fly covertly into an area where Iraqi eyes are directly on the airport. Joe takes that about as well as expected, and things quickly erupt into fisticuffs — Carillo shouting, "I'll fucking MURDER you bitch!" as the fight is broken up. This leads to my favorite moment of the episode when Zoe Saldaña goes full Pacino-in-Heat rager on the commanding officer — "Where's your office? It's my fucking office now!" Absolute king shit.

"I've been warned about people like you," Carillo tells Joe later in said commandeered office. She's met plenty of women who went into the Lioness program but never met a woman who came out. Characteristically, the conversation only gets more sinister from here as Joe hands out another deal with the devil from behind steely, tired, and tortured eyes — knowing her new "asset" has no choice but to accept.

Already aware but not quite willing to accept her fate as not only a pawn but boots-on-the-ground executor of her distant family's undoing, Carillo pleads that she's already serving her country and her service only involves killing from a distance. Looking your prey in the eyes is the work of other agents of U.S. military might. "Your country needs more," Joe retorts. "Do you love it?"

Do you love your country? With each refrain of that question, the message behind it becomes louder and more horrifying: your country has chosen you to do its dirty work. Sign here.

The Debrief

• This week's field Lesson from Kailtyn Meade: "It kind of defeats the purpose if the clandestine organization starts making swag naming the clandestine organization." This is so absurd as to feel like it could've been a real conversation between two real clandestine organizations in U.S. intelligence.

• While we're on the subject, I can't believe how many times they make Nicole Kidman say "clandestine organization" through her default standard-American accent in this show. New Lioness drinking game unlocked.

• Joe almost murdering the folks stopping by her daughter's lemonade stand was hilarious. Then again, inviting a child into your suspicious-looking van and closing the door behind you is an insane thing to do. She probably should have at least kicked both their asses on pure principle.

• Jill Wagner's Bobby continues to be the standout Lioness crew member (if I had to pick just one), bringing the Bruce Willis energy to the proceedings and playing the "oh shit, here comes the last dick my gay ass ever had to put up with" c-plot with total panache.

• Joe said the quiet part out loud in this week's heart-to-heart with her daughter, Kate (Hannah Love Lanier): Long ago, her grandfather told her father he risked his life in WWII for a nation he barely knew; her grandfather had said, "I just learned English. I'm not about to learn to speak German or Japanese. Why do I do it," Joe adds. "So you don't have to learn Chinese or Russian. That's why." The sunk cost of giving ones life to whichever colossal power happens to be dominating the world stage when the fates throw you onto it.

• Credit where credit is due: props to commenter interimbananafor taking Martin Donovan's advice to "look up where Mexico exports most of its oil" from the last episode and finding the answer was the U.S. I'm not in the habit of reading comments; so everyone just back off for a sec here (*nervous laughter*). Still, I'm glad I happened to take a peek this time around.