The Hunting Wives

The Netflix series The Hunting Wives is a soapy murder mystery full of nudity and intrigue, about a group of Texas women who are up to no good. It stars Brittany Snow as a woman who follows her husband from the East Coast to Texas for a job working for a rich businessman and budding politician (Dermot Mulroney). Sophie is immediately enchanted by his sultry wife, played by Malin Åkerman. If you always thought Desperate Housewives would be better if more of the housewives were having sex with each other, this might just be the show for you. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:19Linda Holmes?

  The Netflix series The Hunting Wives is a soapy murder mystery full of nudity and intrigue about a group of Texas women who are up to no good. If you always thought Desperate Housewives would be better if more of the housewives were having sex with each other, this might just be the show for you. I'm Linda Holmes, and today we're talking about The Hunting Wives on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

• 0:46Linda Holmes?

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• 2:21Linda Holmes?

  I'm delighted to say that joining me today is Catherine Van Arundel. She is a critic for Vulture and New York Magazine, who writes about TV and comedy. Welcome back, Catherine. Hello. I'm so excited to be here. I know. Also, joining us is Christina Tucker. She's the co-host of the podcast, Wait, Is This a Date? Hello, Christina. Well, howdy to y'all, let me say. I know. Oh, boy. All right, we're gonna get into it. The Hunting Wives begins with a woman named Sophie, played by Brittany Snow, who follows her husband from the East Coast to Texas for a job working for a rich businessman and budding politician named, of course, Jed. Jed is played by Dermot Mulroney, who is not Dylan McDermott.

• 3:06Linda Holmes?

  Sophie is immediately enchanted by Jed's sultry wife, Margot, played by Mollin Ackerman. Do you have a pad? Um, I'm not sure. Let me.

• 3:18Linda Holmes?

  Let me check. I have a tampon, thanks, but I can't use that. She makes even that sultry. That's what we're saying. Margot's bestie, Callie, is a gun enthusiast and the wife of the local sheriff. She is immediately suspicious of Sophie and jealous of Margot's interest in her. Jill, played by Katie Lowe's, is the wife of the local preacher and dotes, sometimes uncomfortably, upon her teenage son, Brad. But before Sophie is even fully settled into her new town, a dead body appears in the woods, and Sophie becomes highly motivated to figure out exactly how the intrigue among her new friends might be connected to that development. The show is based on a book by May Cobb. It's streaming on Netflix.

• 4:02Linda Holmes?

  I do want to say, before we get started, there's a lot of sex on this show. We're gonna talk about the sex on this show. We're gonna probably talk about some of the specific sex acts on this show. So depending on your circumstances, where you're listening, just be conscious of that. We just wanted to make you aware. Christina, I am dying to know, what did you think about The Hunting Wives?

• 4:21Speaker 03

  You know, Lynda, I'm gonna have to give that a ye and also a ha, because I had a darn tootin' good time hanging out with The Hunting Wives. I've always have a fondness for Malin Akerman. I think 27 Dresses was really like a formative movie for me at that time.

• 4:36Linda Holmes?

  Agreed.

• 4:36Speaker 03

  I think similarly, Brittany Snow, as like the late millennial I am, I'm always just like, yep, those are two women I love to see getting work done. I love to see them working together and I love to see them working so intimately together. I would also like to say, this show is so silly and over the top, but with the just a right amount of winks that you're like, thank you. Thank you for spoon feeding this directly into my mouth, because I did need that.

• 5:00Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  I had a great time and I'm fist pumping for season two.

• 5:04Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 5:04Speaker 03

  Let's go.

• 5:05Linda Holmes?

  Absolutely. Catherine, how about you?

• 5:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, I had a very similar reaction. I was trying to figure out how to describe the show and sort of what makes the show feel different than a lot of very similar shows that have come out in the last several years and they get described as like, it's like murder and soap and it's sexy. And then you watch them and they just feel incredibly like, everything about all of those elements have been dialed back and it feels very safe and very predictable. And like, The Hunting Wives is an actually satisfying and actually a little bit risque version of this show that you see made a lot.

• 5:45Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 5:46Speaker 04

  And there's a scene that's a little bit late in the season and I'm not going to describe the exact circumstances, but like, somebody is asked to describe a person who has done something to her. They're like interviewing her about this perpetrator and she's like, "He was a little angry and also horny." And this to me, as soon as I heard this line, I was like, yeah, that's the show. That's where we are. It's perfect.

• 6:11Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, actually true. When I watched this, I had basically the same reaction. I want to make clear that like, the reason to watch this show is that it's a good time and it's very silly. But I was actually kind of interested in it as a genre piece. I think you can legitimately say, this is much more than similar things, actually about female desire and is almost completely uninterested in not only male desire, but like, most of the women's desire for men in this show is

• 6:42Speaker 04

  Sort of unsatisfying to them, or like not necessarily what they want, or it's kind of like dysfunctional.

• 6:47Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 6:48Speaker 04

  And they-

• 6:48Speaker 03

  Corrupt in some way.

• 6:49Speaker 04

  And most of the women in this show find their most satisfying sexual relationships with other women. I mean, that was my sense at least. It's not that there aren't men having sex in this, but it's like there are even some times when, you know, women who are interested in having sex with each other kind of find their way to that by kind of putting like, well, but it's really with these men, but it's not really us. It's really-

• 7:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:15Speaker 04

  I was interested in how that worked.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, there was a lot of interesting, like, actual queerness kind of baked into it. I think there is kind of what's to be said about the character of Margot. I think like she's kind of just approaching life with a very hedonistic energy. I think kind of anything probably sexually is on tap for her. But I do think like the experience that Sophie has in her relationship with Margot, and then with the relationship we learned she had once in her life later in the season, is really an interesting, like, actual kind of conversation about like what she has repressed, what queerness maybe she's repressing, where that has led her in her marriage and also later her life.

• 7:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:53Speaker 03

  You know, of course, I'm ha-ha-ing, I'm ho-ho-ho-ing, but I was also going, hmm.

• 7:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:57Speaker 03

  Interesting. Oh, hmm, okay.

• 7:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, the way that the Sophie character is introduced is this very classic fish out of water. She's like, I'm a liberal, I'm from Boston, I don't know what to do with all these conservative women. And then it turns out very quickly that she has all of these constraints that she has put on herself. And it's not that the show is saying that sort of a liberal person or a conservative person, like, actually, your expectations are wrong. Like, it's not trying to do a like, whoops, it's backwards. It is instead a just much more complicated depiction of sort of what all of these women want, where their expectations for themselves have come.

• 8:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 04

  And how they have figured out the way to negotiate something that is equally uninhabitable, sort of from both sides.

• 8:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:44Speaker 04

  It is so easy, and I have seen so many things that are this very simplistic, like, you are like this, and A plus B equals whatever. And this is

• 8:53Speaker 03

  Has no interest in that math whatsoever.

• 8:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:56Speaker 03

  Just none. And I do think like something that made me feel like this was a cut above the ones that feel a little less satisfying is, I hate to say it, but I think it's because of the body count. I do feel like this show took death in a way that was like, this is serious and quite dark. So.

• 9:12Speaker 04

  Oh, see, I absolutely thought you meant body count in a Love Island, USA sort of way.

• 9:16Linda Holmes?

  I did too. I did too. But you mean death.

• 9:17Speaker 03

  I mean, like the actual deaths. I mean, I do think both body counts were important.

• 9:21Linda Holmes?

  There's some death in it. Yeah.

• 9:22Speaker 03

  There is some death in it. And I feel like in a time where I feel like we are walking towards like this suggestion of like, oh, all of these people are dead. But like, then we do like a JK, everybody's still alive. It was kind of satisfying for a show to be like, nope, murders have been committed. And that's happening.

• 9:37Linda Holmes?

  I think that's right.

• 9:38Speaker 03

  I was like, yeah, you're just really sticking the landing in a way. I think a lot of shows feel like they pull back from.

• 9:42Speaker 04

  And even before landing, it feels like so many streaming seasons are like, we're gonna do it. You're gonna watch the whole season and then the finale, something's gonna happen. And you spend episode after episode just waiting for them to get to the part where it's fun. And The Hunting Wives is like, it's gonna be fun for minute two. The other thing that Christina and I were texting about when we were first watching this show, she was like, I'm gonna turn it on. And I was like, put on a timer and just see how long before you get to full frontal nudity. It's gonna be so, so short. And I think it is really setting those expectations from the beginning, but then doesn't just let that be like a fun thing. It's like, great, every single episode, you're gonna have something like that.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, you get so used to reading these kinds of thrillers about women and their close friendship. And you get to really, you know, be like, the way she stepped between her legs when they were, you know, shooting a gun, I bet that texturally means something. And then the show is like, it does. Smash cut to the next scene, in which they're actually doing that. Like, you're like, oh, okay, gotcha.

• 10:41Linda Holmes?

  Well, and, you know, we played that clip in the intro of Margot asking for a pad and them having a conversation about, I have a tampon and all that kind of stuff. And directly after that happens, Margot just kind of drops her dress so that she can stuff toilet paper in her underwear because she doesn't have a pad. It is a kind of disarming frankness. It's sort of like you have this thing of like, Is that sexy? If that's sexy, why is it sexy?

• 11:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:05Linda Holmes?

  It's bracing, I think, for Sophie. The idea is just she's shocked by this because of the frankness of it. So it's very hard for her to separate out. Like, on the one hand, I'm seeing this gorgeous woman's naked body. On the other hand, she's just experiencing how kind of uninhibited she is about her body and her period and all that kind of stuff. We've referenced a couple of times, there's a lot of sex in this show, but I don't think the sex in this show is random.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  Mm hmm. No.

• 11:33Linda Holmes?

  It doesn't feel like it's just supposed to be like just everybody having sex with everybody else. It's very often like the kind of sex that people are having is specific to the moment in the story. And what is the power relationship between these people? What are they getting out of this sex scene? What are they getting out of this relationship? And I think like, you know, I don't necessarily believe in like, all sex scenes should be as explicit as possible for the sake of being as explicit as possible. But there are times when, when you distinguish between the different sex acts that people perform, sometimes that has something to do with what's going on between them. And I think the show, in a few cases, like, does make an argument for that.

• 12:16Speaker 03

  Yes, there is pegging on this show. In a way that got my living room of rowdy homosexuals to hoot and also holler. And what was interesting about that scene, not only was it kind of like one of the first depictions I can really recall seeing, certainly on a Netflix program, but like, certainly nothing that explicitly.

• 12:35Linda Holmes?

  Right, because it's not just the act, it's also how much you can see and the way that it is shot.

• 12:39Speaker 03

  Like, the way that it's shot and that they don't cut away from the post of it. Like, there is a continuation of that scene that makes it feel lived in and not for shock value in a way, even though it is both shocking, not only because of the act, but also because of the conversation occurring during the act.

• 12:55Linda Holmes?

  Right.

• 12:55Speaker 03

  Which is, in another way, great character development. And it does tell you something you need to know more about, like, this couple.

• 13:01Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  It's like so silly, but also so interesting. And that's like my favorite intersection of things, when I'm like having a ball, tee hee heeing, and then I'm going, oh, but interesting.

• 13:11Linda Holmes?

  There had

• 13:12Speaker 04

  Has been in a lot of prestige television for many, many years. This conversation about the way that particularly HBO shows like Game of Thrones will add sex into scenes or there will be like exposition that's happening with sex in the background as a way to be like, see, you're learning about the world building, but also there's naked ladies always happening behind you. And honestly, if you were to tell me that this entire show were built as an elaborate joke on that idea and like a way of subverting the entire premise of like, what if sex is just this way of catching your attention? I mean, it is so much work to actually figure out why a character would be having the kind of sex that they are having in that moment.

• 13:56Speaker 04

  And how much information is too much information? Like, how much is a viewer's brain actually still going to be able to receive from a plot perspective? While they are also watching the pegging? It is really masterfully done, I think, in that respect. I think the other thing about it is, as we were saying, it's unusual to see on a Netflix show. This was not originally designed as a Netflix show. It was originally meant to be on Starz. And I do think that there is something on Netflix, because so many shows look the same, not just sort of have the same structures and same patterns, but like the cinematography is very the same. I noticed from the opening credits of this thing, I was like, somebody spent way more money on the credits of this than I feel like is typical for a Netflix show.

• 14:41Speaker 03

  We watched the credits every time. We were like, this is bang.

• 14:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's right. And like, your eye wants something new after a while, you know? It's nice.

• 14:49Linda Holmes?

  And I also feel like this aesthetic of sort of Texas or the West, you know, a lot of cowboy hats and stuff like that, has become so hot right now. And when I saw kind of like the key art for this and like read the basic description, I was like, is this like Yellowstone with women? And so I was pleasantly surprised that it doesn't feel retro to me. It doesn't feel. You know, like it's kind of longing for a different era of television. It feels contemporary to me.

• 15:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:22Linda Holmes?

  One of the other dynamics that I like, the fact that it updates, and you sort of alluded to this, Christina, with the thing about like, when she steps between her legs hunting, that's probably means something. It's so common to see these stories about women who become obsessed with each other. And it's so rare to see that actually acknowledged as like, that's probably

• 15:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:42Linda Holmes?

  because she's hot for her, right?

• 15:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's a gay reason for the feelings that you're having.

• 15:48Linda Holmes?

  As opposed to just like, if you think about something like Single White Female or something like that, you'll see like, the jealousy of the boyfriend and like,

• 15:55Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 15:55Linda Holmes?

  they'll almost go there, but they won't quite go there in terms of like, she's obsessed with this woman because she's so hot for her. And I sort of like the fact that they just go ahead and they say, okay, if you're gonna do a story of like, a woman's kind of, you know, becoming obsessed with and fixated on this woman that she meets, who she's fascinated by, like, the word fascinated has sometimes like, covered up so much.

• 16:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 16:18Linda Holmes?

  And I think with this, they're like, yeah, like, in the same way that if she was straight and it was a dude, like, you would understand what it means that she's fascinated with him, you know what I mean?

• 16:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. I do want to say, I do want to just fight Sophie's husband. I don't know where he's at, but I don't even really want to fight him. I just want to push him into like, a wet pile of leaves or something. I just, that guy, I just, blech, blech.

• 16:40Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, pushman out, prick or bush.

• 16:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:41Linda Holmes?

  Blech. There are really not a lot of like, super good dudes

• 16:46Speaker 03

  No.

• 16:46Linda Holmes?

  in this show, I will say that.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  No, I mean, I'm always happy to see my King Dermot. I'm just like, yeah, what are we doing?

• 16:53Linda Holmes?

  And he's really good in this.

• 16:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're absolutely giving me that big text in, he's yee-hawn as much as I have in this episode, you know, he's having a time.

• 17:01Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, he's a Jed who could only be a Jed, you know?

• 17:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:05Linda Holmes?

  And if I have a quibble, Margot is having an affair with a high school student. I am over that as a thing that is treated as scandal, rather than what it actually is, which is very dangerous and, you know, bad for people. I think they kind of want you to think like, he's 18, he's about to go to college.

• 17:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:23Linda Holmes?

  But it's like, I was over that when they did it on the WB shows of, of the 90s and aughts. I do not like that story. I wish they had not done it.

• 17:31Speaker 03

  We could do something else there.

• 17:33Linda Holmes?

  Just put him in college. It's not that hard. It's so much less weird if you just put him in college. But other than that, for the most part, I think they navigate all of this like, with a certain

• 17:44Linda Holmes?

  Verve and also.

• 17:46Speaker 03

  Certainly with Verve, I would say.

• 17:48Linda Holmes?

  It's like you said, it's silly, but it's also like weirdly transgressive at times in a way that I appreciated. You know?

• 17:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, I like when silly like popcorn TV makes me think like 10% more than I need to. I think that's fun and I think that's interesting. And the show gave me that and a lot of ladies having sex, which I love.

• 18:07Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 18:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's the amount of thought that you can if you want, but don't have to take out of it. And I truly just could not get over how much it was like, this is how Taylor Sheridan shows think that they are plotted and are not, right? This is the kind of like density of betrayal and surprise that they believe that they are regularly providing. And it is because there's this intense attachment often to needing people to be heroic. This is not a show that has any kind of hang up about like, I need to have to root for these people.

• 18:43Linda Holmes?

  No.

• 18:43Speaker 04

  It has totally discarded the shackles of relatability and is just all the way out in pegging zone. So it's really delightful.

• 18:52Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 18:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:53Linda Holmes?

  I think they did a decent job of leaving the door open for another season for themselves without putting me in a position where I got to the end and I was like, after all that, you didn't give me anything.

• 19:03Speaker 03

  Right, it gave us questions, it gave us answers. And then it also was like, and if you had a couple of more thoughts, you could go this way. And I was like, okay, that's fun.

• 19:11Linda Holmes?

  Right.

• 19:12Speaker 04

  The information matters, like whether or not it was a satisfying answer to those questions matters. The pacing of them matters. But the thing that soap operas know and that so often streamers forget is that it should be as interesting to watch people learn that information as to see the answer itself.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  Yes, absolutely.

• 19:32Speaker 04

  And how people receive it, how it then spreads among the network. That's the story, like the answer is not the story. And in particular, I wanted to just call out Brittany Snow's incredible ability to just have a gassed facial expressions when she learns something.

• 19:49Speaker 03

  Her eyes are so big.

• 19:50Speaker 04

  As a millennial, I have Brittany Snow being aghast sort of etched into my brain.

• 19:55Speaker 03

  She lives there.

• 19:56Speaker 04

  So I know what's coming, I know the expression and then you see it and you're like, she's just flummoxed. She gonna do it angry or she gonna do it like overwhelmed this time? And every time it's fun and satisfying and it understands how to play to those beats.

• 20:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. And similarly, I will say Katie Lowe's, who I've loved since Scandal.

• 20:12Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  It's just so fun to get to like, watch her kind of do something that I was like, wow, this like slightly Marsha Gay Hardin-esque role for you. I'm like, I'm loving it. I'm loving it.

• 20:21Linda Holmes?

  Yeah. I mean, I think they're genuinely having a great time with the acting and sort of with these really like, over the top doesn't feel adequate. There are parts of it where it's just so ridiculous in a really enjoyable way. And yet, they kind of manage to pull it back now and then. So you can actually feel like it's a person.

• 20:41Speaker 03

  It's a human.

• 20:42Linda Holmes?

  It has a humanity to it. And I do think a lot of that is down to Brittany Snow and also Malin Akram, who I think really like, has figured out this femme fatale erotic thriller lead.

• 20:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:55Linda Holmes?

  Thing.

• 20:56Speaker 03

  Pitch perfectly.

• 20:57Linda Holmes?

  And is really just playing the heck out of it. And you see her really going for it in certain moments and also kind of able to pull it back to that very cool, you know, Sharon Stone, kind of like, energy of iciness, but also sometimes this energy of over the top sexiness. And I think she's great in this. I had such a good time watching her in this. And I hadn't really seen her do this exact thing before. And I, I was glad for her. Good job.

• 21:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is like a fun update on like, a type of character that she often gets. Like, she's often like, you know, is hot, like as her character, but it's fun to give her like, a little more edge.

• 21:37Linda Holmes?

  Love it. Well, we want to know what you think about The Hunting Lives. Find us at facebook.com/PCHH. That brings us to the end of our show. Catherine Van Aarondonk, Christina Tucker, thank you so much for being here. I would not have wanted to talk about The Hunting Lives with anyone else. What a delight. Thank you. It was an honor. This episode was produced by Carly Rubin, Liz Metzger, and Mike Katzif, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all next time.

• 22:13Speaker 00

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