by Johnny Loftus for Decider
Cruz Manuelos blasts down Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay Bridge in a Mercedes-Benz, straight toward her undercover life as Zara Adid, the newest friend of Aaliyah Amrohi. She’s in contact with her boss on a burner phone, and they decide that Zara’s university major will be undecided. “It’s boring as fuck,” Joe says. “That’s the point. Don’t let her friends dig into you. Answer their questions with a question.” As Cruz will soon discover, this is more difficult than it sounds. But for now, she pauses. She gazes across the Bay, feeling the sun on her face. And then she tosses the burner off the bridge. Inside the op, Bobby and Tex will monitor her progress via listening devices. But beyond that Cruz will be on her own. She takes a deep breath and gets into character.
Laysla De Oliveira is so great in these moments in the early episodes of Special Ops: Lioness, because she allows us to be with Cruz as she walks boldly but carefully on the precarious line between her new professional reality and her constructed identity. A highly-trained Marine, Cruz is familiar with the chain of command, and with how to take orders. But we also know enough about her past to understand that with Joe, there is something deeper driving her. She doesn’t want to let her new boss down, perhaps because she senses that a lot of others have. But there’s also a pragmatism shared between them. As operators in a high stakes environment where the landmarks are always shifting and the road disappears with each mile traveled, Cruz and Joe know the only thing to do is to keep pushing through. But in their performances, De Oliveira and Zoe Saldaña also reveal these characters’ more fraught inner lives, where the consequences are different – more personal – and what’s lost is ever more difficult to get back.
In that respect, Joe is taking fire from all sides. With Cruz inserted into her mark’s mansion party, and Two Cups, Tucker, and Randy leased out to a cocky CIA case officer called Kyle (Thad Luckinball), she comes home for the night, only to discover her daughter Kate canoodling with a boy on the couch. “We’re way past ‘ma’am,’” Joe says, switching into her work voice and absolutely melting the kid where he stands. But Kate is obstinate – “You can’t just show up every six months, play parent, and lay down the law” – and Joe’s husband Neil sounds a similar note of frustration. Her repeated absences from their homelife make it difficult to present a united front on the day-to-day issues of raising two kids, and especially a teenager.
Read the rest of the recap, HERE.