In the third episode of Netflix’s The Hunting Wives, Sophie (Brittany Snow) posits a theory as to why her glamorous new best friend, Margo (Malin Akerman), might be sleeping with an inappropriately younger man. Perhaps, Sophie suggests, Margo sees the tryst as a second chance, a redo of her lonely and impoverished high school years.
Margo listens politely, even allowing that Sophie might have a point. But that’s not the real reason, she counters. She does what she does simply because she wants to — “because it’s fun.”
The Hunting Wives
The Bottom Line
Sudsy fun.
Airdate: Monday, July 21 (Netflix)
Cast: Brittany Snow, Malin Akerman, Dermot Mulroney, Jaime Ray Newman, Evan Jonigkeit, George Ferrier, Katie Lowes, Chrissy Metz
Developed by: Rebecca Cutter, based on the novel by May Cobb
In that, Margo and her series share a guiding philosophy. The Hunting Wives consistently prioritizes steamy scenes over sensible plotting or nuanced characters, juicy twists over deep emotions or big ideas. It might all be incredibly frustrating, if it were not also so wildly entertaining.
Created by Rebecca Cutter based on the book by May Cobb, The Hunting Wives is technically a mystery thriller, opening on a young woman stumbling through the woods as gunshots ring out around her. But in the three hours sent to critics (of an eight part season), it is first and foremost a soap about the wickedness of East Texas socialites.
Our way into this insular realm is Sophie, a former PR guru newly arrived from Boston with her architect husband, Graham (Evan Jongkeit). Initially, she sticks out like a sore thumb, with her aversion to firearms, her minimalist East Coast style (Graham describes it as “a little Soviet”) and the general sense of anxiety emanating from her watery blue eyes.
Nevertheless, Sophie attracts Margo’s interest after a bizarre meet-not-quite-cute that involves Margo stripping down to her skivvies in the bathroom as Sophie tries very hard not to watch. Soon enough, the queen bee (who also happens to be the wife of Graham’s billionaire boss, Jed, played by Dermot Mulroney) has inducted Sophie into her exclusive clique of hard-partying, gun-toting mean girls, who answer the newbie’s innocuous questions about their careers with an amused, “Work? We don’t work. We wife!”
On another, “classier” show, the spark between Sophie and Margo might be sublimated into a stormy friendship, or take episodes if not seasons to turn explicitly sexual. The Hunting Wives, however, never leaves as subtext what it can turn immediately into brazen text. Akerman lays it on deliciously thick, practically purring as Margo cozies up to Sophie under the guise of teaching her how to shoot or tempts her into a game of spin-the-bottle, while Snow reacts with dazed curiosity or barely contained longing.
And they’re far from the only ones getting hot and bothered. Sophie and Margo’s new connection is condoned by Jed, who likes to share his wife’s playthings, and resented by Callie (Jaime Ray Newman), Margo’s bestie and current sidepiece. It’s a secret, for now, from Margo’s high-school-aged hookup Brad (George Ferrier), who’s got a more age-appropriate girlfriend of his own, Abby (Madison Wolfe), who in turn has drawn the not-so-innocent attentions of their pastor, Pete (Paul Teal). And so on, and so on. When the citizens of Maple Brook aren’t getting down with all the naked abandon a TV-MA rating might allow, they’re flirting or masturbating or plotting revenge against their sexual rivals.
The Hunting Wives takes all of this about as seriously as you might hope, which is to say not at all. It’s not that there are no stakes. Margo and Jed’s wealth affords them incredible influence (he’s thinking of running for Texas governor, over her tentative objections) but also makes them vulnerable to muckrakers and extorters. Sophie’s fragility stems from a traumatic past she can’t seem to outrun, even from halfway across the country. Then there’s the death promised in the opening scenes, which has the potential to steer the series in a darker, sadder direction; it’s surely worth noting that the episode that deals with it most directly, the third, is also the one lightest on sexy nonsense.
On the whole, though, the series is far less concerned about making us feel or think very deeply than it is with satisfying our voyeuristic craving for beautiful rich people behaving very, very badly — as these do in spades, oscillating with lizard-brain impulsivity between unbridled lust and white-hot fury. While The Hunting Wives has some decent jokes (I snorted at a Brad groaning, “Abby, it ain’t my heart” when his pious girlfriend interrupts a make-out session to pray that God remove desire from their hearts), I more often found myself giggling at its utter outrageousness, and its total disinterest in playing anything coy.
More than anything, it’s that lack of pretense that sets The Hunting Wives apart. Where other red-state dramas, like Netflix’s Ransom Canyon, might prefer to tiptoe around words like “liberal” or “conservative,” this one comes straight out with it: Sophie is a Democrat who privately disparages her new frenemies as “little Marjorie Taylor Greens,” while they are vocal Republicans who snark that she probably considers them “deplorables.” True, no one on either side of the aisle actually lives up to their stated values; even anti-NRA Sophie warms to the pleasures of gun ownership in no time at all. But the observation that political affiliations — in Maple Brook as in the real world — often serve as cultural markers more than expressions of deeply held beliefs is savvy in its own right.
If soaps like Netflix’s Pulse favor a slow-burn approach, trying to get you to fall for its characters as hard as they do for each other before finally allowing them to kiss, The Hunting Wives demonstrates no interest whatsoever in concepts like true love or delayed gratification. Few of its unlikable, unrelatable ensemble seem worthy of or even capable of real romance, only of the sort of all-consuming horniness that might have them risk it all for a blowjob.
And while prestige dramas like HBO’s Succession might struggle to reconcile their high-minded ideas about the corrosive effects of extreme affluence with their baser wealth-porn pleasures, The Hunting Wives doesn’t even pretend it’s here for anything but a good time. Sure, these people are assholes, but you can tsk-tsk their greed on your own time; right now, they’re just here to act out for your titillation.
No one is likely to mistake The Hunting Wives for the deepest show of the summer, and certainly not for the nicest. Nor do I suspect anyone will argue it’s the smartest, though the sheer number of fizzy soaps that fall utterly flat should serve as proof that it takes a lot of smarts to make something this pleasurably stupid. But in terms of pure over-the-top fun, I suspect it’ll be hard to beat Margo and Sophie and friends screwing and backstabbing their way through Maple Brook, all the way to some vicious bloody end.