“Particular Ops: Lioness” (which appears like a derivative to a community thriller that doesn’t exist) follows the Lioness Staff, a subset of the CIA that sends feminine operatives undercover in Iraq and different ISIS-occupied international locations to get near the wives, girlfriends, and daughters of high-level targets. Main the workforce is Joe (Zoe Saldana), a hard-as-nails, uncompromising soldier whose job it’s to deal with the undercover brokers tasked with infiltrating these terrorist social circles. It’s not simple; within the opening minutes, her newest asset is found and presumed misplaced after they see a tattoo of a cross on her facet. Her superiors (Michael Kelly and Nicole Kidman, barely used right here exterior of boardrooms) lambast her and demand she discover a alternative.
Right here we’re launched to Cruz Manuelos (Laysla De Oliviera), a former stripper with an abusive boyfriend and a go-nowhere job flipping burgers. After an altercation with stated boyfriend sees her operating right into a Marine recruitment workplace for assist, she finally ends up enlisting. On the planet of the present, working-class ladies have solely two choices: stroll the streets or be part of the armed forces.
Fortunate her, then, that she’s a next-level genius at this—she’s in peak bodily situation, learns languages on the drop of a hat, and is ruthlessly bold in methods she by no means utilized to her pre-Marine profession. It’s not lengthy earlier than she’s dropped into Joe’s workforce, with the duty of befriending the daughter of a high-level CIA goal.
The premiere episode performs as a form of prologue to the drama to come back, largely monitoring Cruz’s initiation into the Lioness workforce alongside a couple of bursts of motion at first. Scenes largely encompass walk-and-talks of individuals in fight fatigues rattling off efficiency metrics and bog-standard intel. Everyone seems to be a stone-faced skilled or cussed bureaucrat, or, within the case of Cruz’s backstory, a misogynist or a stripper. Sheridan positions the army as a beacon of self-discipline and order in opposition to a chaotic world each overseas (the mysterious Muslim terrorists of ISIS) and home (the unwashed civilian hordes).
