By Matt Gannon
As trends on television grow faster and more plentiful than weeds, the one (and maybe only) trend that seems to have fallen out of fashion is the good old soap. Sex and violence and betrayal all wrapped into a colorful world where no one ever seems to worry about money or consequences. It’s way more serious than it needs to be, but also without taking itself very seriously at all.
Why Women Kill, CBS All Access’ new series about marriage infidelity, calls back to the classic soaps of the past. It’s massively flawed, and while it can be trashy fun at times, it mostly comes off as more exhausting than anything.
The three women at the center of this story are Beth Ann (1960s housewife Ginnifer Goodwin), Simone (rich 1980s party hostess Lucy Liu), and Taylor (a modern-day bisexual Kirby Howell-Baptiste in an open marriage). All three are fantastic leads, and it’s a shame that the nature of the show doesn’t allow them to share the same scenes together. Liu seems to understand the campy material best, and her over-the-top performance flawlessly matches her bombastic dialogue. Goodwin has the most dramatic weight of the three, and while she hasn’t quite hit the right comedic tone yet (and thus feels a little out of place), she is very impressive. Most of the modern-day scenes surprisingly focus more on Howell-Baptiste’s husband (played by Reid Scott) rather than the wife herself, but Scott carries scenes well, and even with her limited time, Howell-Baptiste holds a lot of promise for the future.
One of the most striking things about the show is how visually nice it is. As more and more shows these days lean towards darker palettes and dim lighting, the bright neon set design and costumes sticks out in the best way possible, and it would end up being garish if it didn’t fit the tone so well.
But how have relationships between husbands and wives evolved over time? This seems to be the big question that the series is posing, and yet it doesn’t seem to know how to answer. It certainly knows that Goodwin’s Beth Ann doesn’t deserve her situation of near-servitude, but should it praise or condemn Howell-Baptiste and Scott’s openness? This seems like one reason why it doesn’t spend as much effort in the present-day. It wants to show that a marriage like theirs is progressive, but the writers still seem to have some reservations about it, creating the idea that an open agreement like theirs can only create issues.
With how good Liu is and with how well she understands what she’s supposed to do, it’s a shame that her storyline is the worst of all. Maybe looking at it from a modern perspective gives the viewer a little too much sympathy for her husband (who is gay and cheating on her with a series of men), but the condemnation of his suicide attempt as a coward’s way out all seems in very bad taste. It also doesn’t help that Liu (whose character is not given an age but is already on husband number three) has a love interest who is only two days away from eighteen in the first episode. Nothing illegal occurs, but romantic scenes between the two come off as less steamy and more unsettling.
The creators aren’t presenting anything radically new, and it’s obvious that they’re not trying to. And they don’t need to. But what could have been a fun recall of classic soaps just ends up falling more than it flies.
Why Women Kill isn’t a terrible show. It’s entertaining enough, and if you don’t think about it too much then it can be a good time, but the talent of its three leads and its snappy dialogue feels wasted on isolated stories and writing that just can’t seem to make up its mind on what it’s trying to do.
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