{"id":12753,"date":"2025-07-21T11:05:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T11:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/12753\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T11:05:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T11:05:13","slug":"malin-akerman-in-netflixs-sudsy-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/12753\/","title":{"rendered":"Malin Akerman in Netflix’s Sudsy Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn the third episode of Netflix\u2019s The Hunting Wives, Sophie (Brittany Snow<\/a>) posits a theory as to why her glamorous new best friend, Margo (Malin Akerman<\/a>), 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tMargo listens politely, even allowing that Sophie might have a point. But that\u2019s not the real reason, she counters. She does what she does simply because she wants to \u2014 \u201cbecause it\u2019s fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe Hunting Wives\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tSudsy fun.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAirdate: 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\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tCreated 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. <\/p>\n

\n\tOur 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 \u201ca little Soviet\u201d) and the general sense of anxiety emanating from her watery blue eyes.<\/p>\n

\n\tNevertheless, Sophie attracts Margo\u2019s 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\u2019s billionaire boss, Jed, played by Dermot Mulroney<\/a>) has inducted Sophie into her exclusive clique of hard-partying, gun-toting mean girls, who answer the newbie\u2019s innocuous questions about their careers with an amused, \u201cWork? We don\u2019t work. We wife!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn another, \u201cclassier\u201d 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. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd they\u2019re far from the only ones getting hot and bothered. Sophie and Margo\u2019s new connection is condoned by Jed, who likes to share his wife\u2019s playthings, and resented by Callie (Jaime Ray Newman), Margo\u2019s bestie and current sidepiece. It\u2019s a secret, for now, from Margo\u2019s high-school-aged hookup Brad (George Ferrier), who\u2019s 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\u2019t getting down with all the naked abandon a TV-MA rating might allow, they\u2019re flirting or masturbating or plotting revenge against their sexual rivals.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Hunting Wives takes all of this about as seriously as you might hope, which is to say not at all. It\u2019s not that there are no stakes. Margo and Jed\u2019s wealth affords them incredible influence (he\u2019s thinking of running for Texas governor, over her tentative objections) but also makes them vulnerable to muckrakers and extorters. Sophie\u2019s fragility stems from a traumatic past she can\u2019t seem to outrun, even from halfway across the country. Then there\u2019s the death promised in the opening scenes, which has the potential to steer the series in a darker, sadder direction; it\u2019s surely worth noting that the episode that deals with it most directly, the third, is also the one lightest on sexy nonsense.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn 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 \u2014 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, \u201cAbby, it ain\u2019t my heart\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tMore than anything, it\u2019s that lack of pretense that sets The Hunting Wives apart. Where other red-state dramas, like Netflix\u2019s Ransom Canyon<\/a>, might prefer to tiptoe around words like \u201cliberal\u201d or \u201cconservative,\u201d this one comes straight out with it: Sophie is a Democrat who privately disparages her new frenemies as \u201clittle Marjorie Taylor Greens,\u201d while they are vocal Republicans who snark that she probably considers them \u201cdeplorables.\u201d 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 \u2014 in Maple Brook as in the real world \u2014 often serve as cultural markers more than expressions of deeply held beliefs is savvy in its own right.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf soaps like Netflix\u2019s Pulse <\/a>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.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd while prestige dramas like HBO\u2019s 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\u2019t even pretend it\u2019s 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\u2019re just here to act out for your titillation.<\/p>\n

\n\tNo 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\u2019s 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\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the third episode of Netflix\u2019s The Hunting Wives, Sophie (Brittany Snow) posits a theory as to why…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[11989,49,48,11990,75,11991],"class_list":["post-12753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-brittany-snow","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dermot-mulroney","tag-entertainment","tag-malin-akerman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}