3 out of 5

Developed by: Hannah Shakespeare

Let’s first acknowledge that networks are jerks.  Some of it I get – it’s a business.  And the goal of any and every business is to keep making money, and to hopefully make more money today than you did yesterday.  Furthermore, I can appreciate that sometimes you can’t afford to let something ‘grow’ on a big network because it’s too easy – especially with today’s up-to-the-second-feedback environment – to get pegged as the family-friendly station, or the watered down station.  And so show’s will get canceled and pulled after an episode, after two, after half a season, after a cliffhanger.  It happens.

Now ‘Killer Women’ wasn’t anything especially new, but besides some forced attempts at edginess, the show had potential to be a less cynical and more episodic Justified… with a female lead.  As I’ve remarked and remarked again, I’ve been accused of misogyny on occasion, half-jokingly, half-serious, and I maintain that I just expect equality across the board.  Men can cry, and women can be dicks.  And I liked that there was a show with a female lead; a show that was definitely geared more toward women and, yes, had Battlestar boy eye-candy Tricia Helfer as the lead with always nice hair, but didn’t take steps to over-soap the plotlines, which is generally the “what you want” assumption for this gender-targeted genre.  I’m sure that’s just my ignorant boy opinion, but I’ll let it stand.

As evidence as to how fucking difficult it is to try to hit a niche market, though, ABC bungled the advertising – first by pushing Modern Family’s Sofia Vergara’s role as executive producer (creating the weirdass dynamic where she’s accepted in her strong sassy fictional role on ‘Family’ but when crossing into the real world as a person with some power incites subconscious ire ’cause pretty chicks get it all), then by trying to toughen the image of the show by trying to use ’empowering’ words like bitch and badass in the promos.  I say bungled, but it was sort of a logical move.  You don’t want people to view it as a normal chick show, and Sofia is popular, so…?  But it resulted in a lot of negative internettling, and thus itchy fingers on the cancellation trigger for producers, I’m sure.  The stone was already cast, then: ratings were poor, people took to the boards with mostly negative comments, and I believe after two episodes, the order came down.

I have no problem with the network up to this point.  Had episode 3 never aired, fine, I was enjoying the pleasant popcorn of the show, but them’s the breaks.  What I don’t dig is when expectations are set, and ABC announced that they would let the show run out to 8 episodes.  Sweet.  And then episode 6 aired, and it turned out it was the last.  I’m sorry, it was actually episode 7: the “previously on” bit showed clips from episode 6, which sure, was apparently streamable online, so there’s that, but why even bother with the shuffle?  It just seemed like they couldn’t drop the show fast enough after making a promise they didn’t want to keep, and then bungled the conclusion as much as they bungled the intro.  Meep.

That’ll be longer than the review.  ‘Killer Women’ was about Texas Ranger Molly Parker, with each week’s plot focusing on a woman-perpetrated crime, while some ongoing threads about Parker’s abusive, separated-from husband, her DEA boyfriend, and her up-to-no-good brother kick around in the background, respectably blended in to current events so the show maintained a sense of moving forward.  Helfer, as Parker, was an absolute highlight: her sex kitten role on Battlestar annoyed me.  I was always intrigued when she got to play the role with a little more emotion, and ‘Killer’ gives her a chance to do a full emotional dance, but always with a strong backbone.  I believed she could be her role, which I can’t usually (almost always) say for beautiful women cast in what are generally considered positions lacking in glamor (sorry, all you real life beautiful lady scientists and cops and whatever else), and Helfer / the scripters gave the character several fun quirks which actually worked to smooth out the part and not just as distraction from the whole ex-beauty Queen shtick.  Now I don’t have an ear for accents, so maybe hers came and went, but the overall vibe of the show felt Texas enough to convince me, letting the perpetual cowboy hats and rural settings slink around more comfortably than, say ‘Justified,’ which I feel goes a bit over-South with things sometimes (though is probably more true to life…?  I have no idea.  Don’t look at me.).  The supporting cast was enjoyable (especially chief Luis Zea, played by Alex Fernandez), and though its generally easy to guess the villain, the show was never really trying to be anything but casual entertainment, so that’s fine.

I watch a lot of TV.  And not a lot of it is great.  Most of it is filler.  Most of it could go off the air and I wouldn’t bat an eye.  I’m not crying over ‘Killer Women’s cancellation (man tears), but it was a top pick in my popcorn rotation, with it’s fun gender-twist on the rogue hero genre and enough characterization to not just feel like an interchangeable copycat show.  So it’s unfortunate that it couldn’t find a niche for its niche.  Keep watching Downton Abbey, ladies.