by Johnny Loftus for Decider
Over a quiet meal at an upscale Washington, DC restaurant, Joe was delivering a progress report about Cruz to Meade as Special Ops: Lioness Episode 2 (“The Beating”) opens. They agreed it was smart for their new recruit to justify her constructed identity not having any social media by saying it’s forbidden by her conservative father. And with their mark, Aaliyah Amrohi (Stephanie Nur), having landed in America, Meade emphasized that Cruz should remain at Bragg and be invisible to the outside world. What if Aaliyah were to run into her on the streets of Georgetown? Unlikely, but it’s important to maintain operational security. And while Cruz is for sure settling into her new role (not without friction, but more on that in a second), this restaurant scene is more important for what it reveals about Joe’s relationship with Meade. Her CIA supervisor can also ask Joe about her husband and home life, and when that happens, we can watch Zoe Saldaña adjust Joe’s emotions in real time, her face becoming drawn and full of tension. “We do the best we can.” Charlie (Celestina Harris), her younger daughter, is a good student. But Kate (Hannah Love Lanier), her daughter who flat out said “I hate when she’s here” about Joe, well…
The resentment is real with this one, who rightly bristles at racist comments she receives at school. Her dad says she can’t beat the hate out of someone. “But you can try,” she answers, and Neil knows that’s exactly what her mother would say. And at home, when Joe listens to Kate’s side of the story, it’s a scene that feels like a parallel to a later one, where Joe is explaining her reasoning to Cruz. Whether it’s mother to teenage daughter or boss to her new recruit, Special Ops: Lioness is careful to emphasize, Joe is certain in her words and always justifies her actions. She’s even got an answer for Kate when she walks in on mom strapping on her pistol. (Joe and Neil’s daughters apparently believe that their mother works as a translator.) “Why do I have a gun? To protect the people I work with.”
Kate isn’t the only one doing the fighting – there are haymakers all over this episode of Lioness. Like when Neil, who is a physician, must break the news of his six-year-old patient’s tumor to her parents. It’s terminal, and he accepts the father’s punch to his mouth, because it’s what he would’ve done. And while Joe has been quietly impressed with Cruz’s development on the job, “I want to put her through the grinder,” she tells Meade. “I have to be sure.” The grinder, we soon learn, involves a team of masked Delta Force operators (Joe refers to them as “CAG”: Combat Applications Group) interrupting Cruz on her nighttime run, putting her in zip ties and a shroud, and throwing her into a dungeon-like offshore prison. Isolation torture. Churning fire hose torture. Temperature torture. Heavy metal auditory torture. Torture with no official name for the torture. But if you think Cruz is just going to sit back and take it, you haven’t been watching. Anytime her captors approach, she lashes out with fists. They want to break her, so they’ll know when she’ll break under enemy torture. (Joe: “Everyone breaks.”) But Cruz is mostly just angry. “I’ve been through S.E.R.E. you fucking bitch!”
Read the rest of the recap, HERE.