Why Women Kill

Season 2 of Why Women Kill surpasses the first season by concentrating on one story and one set of interconnected characters, boosted by an excellent cast.

“Why Women Kill” feels more comfortably familiar than recycled or old. There’s never a question of why we should care about any of these characters. Cherry and the performers make us care about all of their fates, even that of uptight, prissy Beth Ann and shallow, self-centered Simone. Goodwin and Liu may be camping up their performances, but they also take care to grant them enough humanity for the viewer to invest in what happens to each, or in what they do. Howell-Baptiste is also wonderful, although she purposefully makes Taylor harder to read than her co-stars’ women.

Thus far, the ’60s plotline appears to be the most emotional, the ’80s the most humorous, and the contemporary the most confusing. It remains to be seen if the end result of all this intrigue will be satisfying, but for now, the series’ arch tone and visual splendor are enough to stick around for the ride.

The acting is melodramatic without being too over the top, and Liu, especially, shines. ... The early episodes are charming and fun enough to make it worth sticking around to watch how it ends, whether it's in disaster or triumph.

Why Women Kill is able to find balance by imbuing its darkest moments with absurdity. What results is a tasty little slice of entertainment.

Bitingly funny, it echoes the best satiric elements of the ABC hit without the baggage of having too many characters with subplots that fall all over themselves.

The most compelling subplot is set in the present day, exploring the eruption in lawyer Taylor's open marriage to laid-back Eli when she brings home a playmate. [19 Aug - 1 Sep 2019, p.13]

It’s too bad that apparently we have to wait until the end of the season for these characters to connect. It’s obvious from the start of the series that they really could have benefited from each other.

If you’ve been missing “Desperate Housewives,” the new CBS All Access show “Why Women Kill,” debuting Aug. 15, is the series you’ve been waiting to see. But if you were over “Desperate Housewives” before it finished its eight-season run, well, “Why Women Kill” is kind of more of the same.

While Why Women Kill has nuanced leads, the show stumbles in its use of high camp. It’s a stylistic choice that adds levity but that allows the show—at least in the first two episodes made available to critics—to avoid interrogating the realities that drive its characters to take extreme measures.

Why Women Kill is akin to an overly complicated craft cocktail, boasting an intriguing brightness, namely in the form of Goodwin’s performance, but lacking balance in its competing flavors. It’s full of baffling tonal and narrative decisions that undermine what does work about the show.

The three stories track along efficiently yet predictably in the two episodes made available for critics. While the show exhibits a degree of Cherry’s colorful and quietly campy command of that fine line that separates a soap opera from a serious drama, something has been lost since the “Desperate Housewives” days.

Marc Cherry is the Mark Zuckerberg of complicated, high-camp women: He gives us the product we think we want, but in the end, it still only feels like a facsimile of the real thing.

All in all, it feels like a missed opportunity to do something escapist and clever. All three arcs feature a solid performance that's stuck in bad writing and weak characters.