"Why Women Kill" Wants to Tell Us Why Men Suck, But It Really Has Nothing [New] to Say at All

Saturday, August 17, 2019 at 1:51 p.m. PDT

Marc Cherry’s latest attempt at a post-Desperate Housewives hit is just that…an attempt. After premiering on Thursday, August 16, 2019 on CBS All Access (AKA the streaming service no one wants to pay for), Why Women Kill shows us three decades of the “differing” *troubles* of three women across time. There’s Ginnifer Goodwin (best known as Snow White from Once Upon a Time), Lucy Liu, and some other actress who will look familiar but you won’t be able to quite place…(Hint: You may recognize her from The Good Place, Killing Eve or the 2019 revival of Veronica Mars).

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The show kicks off to an exciting start with comic-book-style opening credits followed by close-up “interviews” with The Husbands of the show. At first start, you’re pulled in thinking, gee, these writers really put in a strong, creative effort with this new series!

…but then, when the “story” or “stories” begin/s and when the hour ends with close-up “interviews” with The Wives, it’s hard not to come away feeling like you’ve seen this all before. The interview segments, the colorful comic-book-style opening credits, and the narrative choice to tell stories over three time periods (the 1960s, the 1980s and present day) are really just a creative package meant to disguise a lack of originality.

In the 1960s, we meet “Beth Ann”/Ginnifer Goodwin/Snow White, who’s clearly been typecast as a goody-goody, well-behaved woman. In Why Women Kill, she’s so well behaved, she even responds to a tap on a teacup like an insta-robot. The series will presumably question the strength of her robotic wifely responses as the season progresses, for later in the pilot episode she discovers that (GASP!) her husband is cheating on her with the pretty blonde waitress at the diner. Woo! What original storytelling!

Despite the lack of originality for Goodwin’s tale, her story is arguably the warmest of the series, which most likely has something to do with the warmth that Goodwin brings to the role…yeah, sorry, that was a very uncreative sentence, much like the story itself!

Lucy Liu’s tale in the 1980s might perhaps be the coldest, which again, has something to do with the coldness of the character/actress. While Goodwin’s husband cheats on her with another woman, Liu’s husband cheats on her with…BIGGER GASP!…another man.

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Finally, the 2019 story manages to round out the series’ attempt at diversity. We have whites in the ‘60s, Asians in the ‘80s, and…BIGGEST GASP!…a black bisexual feminist polygamist in 2019, because, you know, all feminists must be black AND bisexual AND into open marriages. While Liu leaves you feeling cold, actress Kirby Howell-Baptiste does little to leave you feeling sympathetic to her problems. At the risk of upsetting non-monogamists/pro-open-relationship types, I ain’t here to feel sorry for you when your man falls for your “girlfriend” that you moved into your home. That’s what you get for being greedy!

The writers’ attempts at feminism with Howell-Baptiste’s character have a surprisingly anti-feminist message, as their feminist characterizations are H-I-G-H on shrillness. (Watch carefully for the scenes in which Howell-Baptiste denounces the idea of pizza for dinner and her very careful cutdown of the lazy, sexist construction worker revamping her home.) More problematically, this wannabe-feminist show seems to suggest that a woman’s problems revolve entirely around infidelity. With three decades of stories to tell, you’d think the writers could, I don’t know, share a story about some other problem women face, such as voting rights, positions of power, sexual harassment, workplace bullying, unfair pay differentials, the struggle to become president, something…anything?!?

Nope, sorry, girls, that’s all we got. Men cheat. Men suck. They must die. End story.

It’s hard to tell or say much about Why Women Kill based on the pilot, mostly because, well, the pilot doesn’t say much, and the show doesn’t have much to say. Separating the women across three decades might seem creative or unique, but it ends up leaving the characters and actresses feeling isolated and disconnected, much like our present-day technology-saturated climate. Worse yet, the effort is transparent; the cross-decade storytelling is merely a narrative device meant to wrap cliché stories in new wrapping paper. Unfortunately, for Why Women Kill, a wrapped empty box is still empty inside.

“Infidelity is the greatest problem women face…ACROSS GENERATIONS!!!”

…said no feminist ever.

Before you throw tomatoes at us for this review, just know that we get it — the show, perhaps, arguably, might just be intended to be light summer fluff. For that reason, it may succeed in its wide-audience reach and thus its appeal to the lowest common denominator. But if that’s the case, Why Women Kill needs to be a whole lot funnier than it currently stands. We honestly had trouble even thinking of what to snark about while watching the premiere (sans Snow White’s teacup, of course).

If you want to decide for yourself, Why Women Kill is available to stream on CBS All Access. The season runs (10?) episodes, with one new episode dropping each week, beginning Thursday, August 15, 2019. The commercial-free option will set you back $9.99/month, but hey, if you sign up for the one-week free trial and then cancel, CBS All Access will eventually send you a 50% off promo code for the next two months, so you’ll be able to watch the entire season free of commercials for just $4.99/month. But don’t tell them we told you!

Will you watch Why Women Kill, or would you rather watch Why We Sleep with the back of your eyelids instead?

(P.S. For much better options on CBS All Access, we strongly recommend BrainDead and Tell Me a Story.)