Special Operations — Lioness – Autopsy of a series without anesthesia

Special Operations: Lioness: full review

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The living room's air conditioning was so cold it felt like a morgue, and the teenager in row 3 was chewing popcorn as if trying to bury the sound of his own existence. I, with €9.50 burning a hole in my pocket, sat down to watch how Taylor Sheridan, the king of the dirty western, tried to sell us another dose of adrenaline packaged in espionage clichés. The first episode already showed the necrosis of the concept: a young marine, Cruz Manuelos (Laysla De Oliveira), recruited to infiltrate a terrorist organization, while boss Joe McNamara (Zoe Saldaña) looks more like a gym instructor than a CIA agent.

The premise, in theory, has a solid hook: the vulnerability of a young woman facing the military machinery. But in practice, it becomes a parade of tropes where action replaces psychology and noise covers the narrative void. The diagnosis is clear: brain death at minute 12, when the camera stays static on a glass of water that is never drunk, a sign of narrative rigor mortis. The editing jumps from a training scene to a shootout without transition, as if the editor had lost his scissors and kept cutting at random.

Joe's dialogue: "We have to go into stealth mode," sounds like a 90s survival manual, and Cruz's response, "What about plan B?", gets lost in a sound echo that seems like a defective ultrasound resonance. It's a sequence that screams desperation due to the lack of real tension, where danger is merely decorative and not existential. The audience, accustomed to series like The Americans or Homeland, immediately notices that the brain is missing here, only the muscle remains.

Direction and staging

Sheridan, accustomed to the vastness of the desert, gets trapped here in office corridors lit with tungsten lights that recall a low-budget operating room. The camera, instead of being the surgeon who cuts with precision, behaves like a medical student who hasn't yet learned how to hold a scalpel. In the warehouse assault scene, the long take cuts abruptly when the camera wobbles, revealing the purulent tissue of the set: visible cables, monitor reflections, and a cheap wig that peels off Tucker's character (LaMonica Garrett) at the climax. It's a production failure that breaks immersion violently, reminding us that we are watching a fiction built in a hurry and with no love. The acting direction is equally erratic; characters enter and exit scenes without clear motivation, as if the director didn't know what to do with them once the action stops.

Script and performances

Taylor Sheridan delivers a script that seems to have been written under the influence of insufficient anesthesia. The dialogues are so flat they could serve as a surfboard for kids. Zoe Saldaña, although she tries to inject energy, ends up looking like a nurse administering a dose of adrenaline without knowing what it's for. Her Joe McNamara lacks the moral depth that her previous characters possessed; she is an empty authority figure, defined only by her ability to shout orders. Laysla De Oliveira shows flashes of ferocity, but her character decomposes into an emotional cellular degradation every time the plot takes an unexpected turn that makes no sense. Dave Annable as Neal McNamara seems like an extra who missed the script meeting, providing a paternal warmth that clashes with the cold and calculating tone of the series. The chemistry between the protagonists is non-existent, replaced by an artificial tension that convinces no one, not even the most naive.

Production design and sound

The production design is a collage of recycled sets from other action series, with brick walls that look like papier-mâché under the clinical lighting. Andrew Lockington's soundtrack tries to be epic, but it sounds like an artificial heartbeat that repeats without variation, creating an auditory rigidity that exhausts the viewer. The sound of the gunshots is so overloaded it feels like an ultrasound resonance piercing the eardrums. There is no room for silence, for breathing, for doubt. Everything is noise, everything is impact, everything is a succession of blows that leave no time to process what just happened. It is a sensory experience that feels more like a punishment than a pleasure.

The best

Zoe Saldaña: She brings charisma and physical presence, although the material denies her space to shine. Training scenes: Some combat choreographies are well choreographed and show an analog texture of celluloid that recalls the classics of the 80s. * Lockington's soundtrack: Moments of musical tension that, when they work, manage to elevate the adrenaline.

The worst

Sheridan's script: Survival manual dialogues, plot without coherence, and characters that disintegrate. Editing: Abrupt cuts, continuity errors, and an editing that seems to have been done without scissors. * Production: Recycled sets, clinical lighting that crushes the atmosphere, and sound effects that blow out the ears.

The Verdict of Claqueta Ácida

Lioness is a television autopsy where the only thing that bleeds is the viewer's patience. Each episode is an incision without anesthesia that leaves the audience in a state of shock and with the feeling of having paid €9.50 for a session of psychological torture. There is no redemption, only a slow necrosis of credibility. In short: aborting the series would be an act of mercy. 💀

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⚔️ Editorial Duel: Second Opinion Camilo K.O.'s score: 8.5/10

The rebuttal from Camilo K.O. (Adrenaline Demolisher)

In stark disagreement with the review given by Bastian Noir.

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Duelo editorial natural entre las visiones antagónicas de Bastian Noir y el consejo de redacción. "Menos charla de psicólogo barato y más pólvora quemada."