Killer Women - Series Premiere - Recap: Cartel Tale Heart
Recap and review of Killer Women - Series Premiere - La Sicaria:
Killer Women, adapted by Hannah Shakespeare (The Raven) from the Argentine series Mujeres Asesinas, is an amusing spectacle: it's neither good nor bad, exciting nor boring. It's a sexy show that also has a great deal of clinical process behind it, approach crime procedurals with an outlaw sensibility that aims for Old West lawlessness. Or perhaps "lawlessness" is the wrong word, since Molly Parker (Tricia Helfer) is actually on the side of law enforcement: she's one of only two female Texas Rangers in history, a fact that has her constantly dealing with skepticism from her superiors and colleagues, all male. In order to be heard, she has to bend the rules a bit, and it's this character approach that makes Molly far more interesting than she might otherwise have been. Helfer is the bright spot of the pilot, and while "La Sicaria" doesn't exactly have me itching for next week's episode, I'm not dreading it in the least thanks to my overall confidence in her abilities as an anchoring lead performer. Killer Women might be a fairly forgettable hour of TV, but it's honestly pretty enjoyable while you're actually watching.
The series kicks off with a fair amount of bombast, as a woman in a little red dress crashes a wedding ceremony and shoots the bride at point-blank range before casually fleeing the scene, leaving behind only a pair of apple red heels. It doesn't take long for Molly to launch into her investigation, but it somehow takes even less time the killer, Martina Alvarez (Nadine Velazquez), to confess to the murder. It's a strange turn in the case that immediately raises Molly's suspicions, as she isn't really satisfied with the theory that this was a crime of passion, suspecting something much more far-reaching and sinister. And it turns out she's right, as the murdered bride was apparently a law enforcement agent close to solving a big-time case. The case is complicated by Molly's own personal history as well: she's involved in a complicated "friends with benefits" relationship with DEA Agent Dan Winston (Marc Blucas), all while her husband, Jake (Jeffrey Nordling), refuses to give her a divorce on the grounds that he's still in love with her. Jake seems like a decent enough guy when we first meet him, but there's a backstory to the deterioration of his and Molly's marriage that recontextualizes how we view him once we learn it later in the episode. In short, there's a lot going on in this pilot.
Credit: ABC
But as the episode rolls on, it becomes apparent that pacing isn't really an issue here. Not only does the procedural story blaze along at a fast pace, the character-centric stories do as well. Of course, it helps that they're intertwined. In fact, intertwining the character stories so intricately with the "Case of the Week" makes this one of the more effective procedural pilots I've seen, where characterization is concerned. For example, we could have gotten completely separate scenes unrelated to the case in order to develop the complicated "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" relationship between Molly and Dan. But here, Molly sleeps with Dan and then attempts to get him to spill the details on a DEA investigation the next morning, believing that his info on a drug cartel could help in the Alvarez case. It leads to a big blow-up between Dan and Molly that inevitably ends with Dan begrudgingly agreeing to help Molly, against his better judgment. It illustrates the frayed nature of their partnership: they care about one another, but there's an element of use between them -- they both need one another, whether it's for sex, companionship, intel, or backup. It's a far more dynamic relationship than the standard "Will they?/Won't they?" pairings of most procedurals. And Helfer and Blucas have solid chemistry on-screen.
Credit: ABC
Another example of the ways in which character and case are intertwined is in the scene in which Molly visits Martina in the hospital after she's nearly beaten to death in prison. It's clear to Molly that the shooting at the altar wasn't a crime of passion, but rather something that Martina was pressured into doing by a Mexican drug cartel holding her elderly mother and young daughter hostage. Molly needs her to open up and provide intel to not only save Martina from the death penalty, but to also bring down the cartel and save her family. But Martina refuses to talk, so Molly attempts to connect with the suspect by offering her own tale of hardship as a means of relating to her: as it turns out, Jake used to beat her, and it was this action that prompted her to doubt herself and question her worth not only as a woman, but as a human being. From her tumultuous marriage, she found the strength to pursue her career more actively, and it ultimately makes sense that domestic abuse would catalyze this particular woman into becoming the resourceful, take-no-prisoners asset to law enforcement she's become. The confession inspires Martina to help Molly, and in one fell swoop, a character moment informs a case moment. It's solid scripting.
Credit: ABC
Where it falls apart is in the actual mission to rescue Martina's family and bring down the cartel. Molly and Dan's escapade plays out like some weird mock-up of an action movie. In many ways, the aesthetic and tone of this show feels like something that's trying awfully hard to be Quentin Tarantino-esque, and it shows as we see guns blazing, glass flying everywhere, and a big explosion to cap it all off. The climax wants us to believe there's danger all around, and that one of these characters could die at any minute, but there isn't really any palpable sense of dread, no feeling that both Molly and Dan are risking everything for this mission. Hell, they've taken up the entire task on their own, keeping it a secret from their superiors. They're essentially on their own, and it isn't until after we get back that Molly's boss tells her, "If I find out you had anything to do with rescuing Martina Alvarez's family, I'm going to fire you." It would have helped the climax a lot to have those stakes established beforehand, as opposed to after the fact.
Credit: ABC
Hopefully, the show doesn't intend to make this issue an ongoing story, with her boss getting closer to finding the truth and threatening to fire her once he does, because that's not really a story that's going to carry much weight when the entire premise is based around a Texas Ranger capturing America's most dangerous women. And really, this just isn't a show that need that level of serialization. Killer Women is perfectly fine as a series of one-off crime cases with a sassy lead whose backstory and personal life are background sketches in the broader tapestry of her career. Sure, it's great that she threatens Jake at the end with public exposure if he doesn't grant her the divorce, and it's great that she and Dan reconcile at the bar while a Mexican band plays cheerily onstage, and it's even great that she has a brother (Michael Trucco) who seems to genuinely care a lot about the kind of crap she gets herself into on a weekly basis, but those issues aren't always going to be germane to the plot. Killer Women will work best as a show that knows how silly it is, and embraces that camp value. Yes, it's a show that thinks it's a lot more dangerous and sexy than it actually is, but that doesn't mean it still can't be a fun, silly hour of entertaining pablum.