★★★½
“Hold the lion…”
Interesting the title dropped the “Special Ops” prefix from the title for this series, necessitating a bit of a retro-fix on our season one review for consistency. The sophomore run is another solid television show. Between this and Yellowstone, it feels like Sheridan is the macho version of Shonda Rimes, creating television series that have a recognizable auteur feel to them. In Sheridan’s case, that means two-fisted tales,cbest enjoyed with a cigar and a glass of whiskey. That, in this case, it’s largely focused on female characters, does not make proceedings any less macho or two-fisted. This season certainly left me with a new, deeply held respect for attack helicopters. M134 Minigun go brrrrrr…
It’s the pilot of one such, Josie Carrillo (Rodriguez) who is recruited as this season’s Lioness. The reason is her family are deeply embedded in one of the Mexican cartels; in particular, her father is the chief accountant to the Los Tigres cartel, and her uncle is its leader. A dishonourable discharge is fabricated, and she’s sent back to her family. However, in a sharp change from season one, this is only a minor thread. Indeed, it’s only a few hours after her return that her father figures out what’s going on, and the surveillance team have to go in, guns blazing, to rescue Carrillo. It’s all painfully messy, and if there’s an overall theme in season 2, it’s that anything which can go wrong, will.
As a result, Joe McNamara (Saldaña), the CIA officer in charge of the Lioness program, and her boss Kaitlyn Meade (Kidman), spend much of the series trying to fight the resulting fires. The instigating event is the kidnapping of an American congresswoman by Los Tigres, whom Joe and her team have to rescue from over the border in Mexico. Though Meade and her ultimate boss, Secretary of State Edwin Mullins (Freeman), detect the hand of foreign powers behind the cartel’s actions. Which is why, eight episodes later, Joe and her team are sent to Iran, to stop two Chinese nuclear scientists from joining their weapons program. The message is clear. You think you can cross our border with impunity? That belief operates in both directions.
In between though, a lot of stuff goes bad, as Los Tigres are targeted. Not all the opposition is external either, with inter-agency cooperation notable by its absence, and a shady DEA agent whose loyalties are seriously in question. There’s bad intel thrown in too: what is supposed to be a cartel drug stash house ends up containing children, and a well-meaning attempt to rescue them fails spectacularly. The action scenes may be among the best on TV, especially the sequences book-ending this season. However, I felt there was rather too much political intrigue. I wouldn’t mind it in another show: you get a real sense of how different government departments fight each other, rather than working together. But it’s all time when we should be watching M134 Miniguns go brrrrrr.
Creator: Taylor Sheridan
Star: Zoe Saldaña, Nicole Kidman, Genesis Rodriguez, Morgan Freeman