Ripped From Today's Headlines

 Been watching "Lioness" on Paramount, with Zoe Saldaña. (<---Did you catch the ñ there? I know what I'm doing.) It's got all the elements necessary to keep a Ferrerman interested in a show. These include violence, coarse language and female nudity, not necessarily in that order. It seems all the current shows have trigger warnings to alert people of the three mentioned above plus smoking and flashing lights- anything that might upset anyone for some reason. That's one way of looking at it, but another might be that it's to alert viewers like me to the goodies available in an episode. I like all of the above, though I have to admit flashing lights are extremely annoying. I'm not subject to seizures, but I bet I could be if exposed long enough. Worked with a guy we called "Morphine Joe" years back who shared with us that him and his two boys checked out Japanese anime because someone had told him the flashing lights could cause seizures. MJ was disappointed that they had not caused him seizures. Every time someone posts a meme that flashes on Bluesky or Facebook, I always say to myself, "Fucking Joe would love this!" and then I scroll down to get it out of my sight. Not for me!

"Lioness" is very watchable. It's about a CIA program that features goodlooking, hardcore, female warfighters that even a dolt like warwhore Pete Hegseth might sign off on, if they may or may not exist. It's not an all-female unit because, if it was, it would have to be one of those Dean Martin, "Matt Helm" movies that I haven't liked since I was a boy in the 60's. That would lead to silliness in bikinis. No one needs that anymore. It's 2026 now and maybe the CIA has smoking hot agents smoking bad guys all over the world. I'm sure they wouldn't confirm or deny. Who can say? Plausible deniability makes for good television. We get implausible deniability from our current government, which makes for bad government. The show doesn't hint who the president is in it, or what party he belongs to, and the CIA is supposed to be apolitical, but in their meetings, they are always talking about impending elections, and they seem to want to keep their current POTUS so, yeah, it's a republican. It's not Trump because he's an idiot and that would change the whole narrative of the show to his gameshow diplomacy and we can get that 24/7 on regular TV. Whoever this POTUS is though, they seem to like him because he keeps them busy. So, yeah, republican.

Every show about the CIA- by law, I think- has to mention that the agency is not allowed to kill Americans on US soil. "...on US soil..." I presume then that offshore is OK then. They always point that out. There's a Greek guy who is former CIA who is making the YouTube podcast rounds and he often repeats that. His name is something like "John Snuffalufagus" and he's interesting because he looks like a very harmless accountant- or so the government would have you believe... I can't confirm or deny if he's legit or not as it's YouTube and everybody has a story to tell. I just like how he talks about how the CIA lies and manipulates people and then he tells the interviewer how smart and insightful the guy is while he relates how they recruit assets. It's just cute when they <blush!> like a Ferrerman. 

On Lioness, the asset recruiting is always last minute, and they always recruit the worst candidate for the job and (so far) it's always a smoking hot Latina who makes me say, "¡AY CARUMBA!" throughout the show. I'm not complaining, though it does seem a bit DEI in these contemporaneously Trumpian times where women are all supposed to look like Fox news gals or have Mar Lago face. Such either/or is not palatable to me, or most guys when you get down to it. We shall see when the government takeover of CBS/Paramount is complete how much things change. I've always found diversity in women to be very desirable. I guess I'm not a patriot. 

Anyway, I do have a problem with the on-the-job-training of these women to be killers even when one is a MARSOC Marine and the other is a Army, Apache helicopter hotshot. The Marine didn't have a problem killing, but they imbedded her as a spy, having her get close to the daughter of a Saudi terrorism financier whom they wanted killed. She got close alright, as she and the daughter became lovers before she had to kill the dad. So, she was out of her element with the spy stuff until it was time to kill the guy. She also killed her lover's husband, thus saving her from the burka life she was sentenced to due to her arranged marriage. A happy ending, pretty much. That was season 1. In season 2, the helicopter pilot is the only woman in the world that can (via her father) get close enough to kill her uncle, who is a boss of one of the cartels. OK, that tracks. Will she, or won't she? She's another fish out of water getting OTJ spy training. And, though she has 882 kills on her Army record, they were all from a helicopter, pushing a button. Can she kill family up-close and personal? The Marine is her shadow in case she can't. They'll be fine. Will they fall in love? We'll see. We'd like to see, wouldn't we? 

So, the storylines are as suspect as any show could be, but viewers accept that. The more realistic takeaway from "Lioness" is when Nicole Kidman (she's a CIA boss) is talking with her very sketchy husband (non-CIA but he sure profits from her knowledge!) and they note that the Arab countries use religious conflict to deflect from the insane disparity of wealth between the leaders of the various oil-rich Islamic countries and the 99% of the people who would just rather live their lives in falafel peace but have been trained to hate Jews and Americans. You know, the real enemies. Does that sound familiar? It should. It's pretty fucking American too. It's the way of the world, isn't it? It's a goddamn shame but the 'we the people' of every nation do all the fighting and dying in support of all the Epstein class assholes of the world, regardless of race or religion. We all want to live in peace, but that is bad for their business. The show is a lot more realistic than I thought.