Netflix gagged me shoving the recommendation for The Hunting Wives down my throat, and I’d seen some buzz about it online, from reviews calling it a “bonkers, bisexual cultural soap” to “chaotic and unhinged.” Reviews are only as shocked as a reviewer, and there’s irony when a reviewer talks about “pearl clutching” without just talking about women clutching each other’s naked pearls in just about every scene. It’s not the 1950s, Stephanie, relax. This is a series about bisexuality and polyamory that never once uses either of those words because they’re too liberal for Texas. They do use the word “cunt,” edgelord queens; mainly all they do for eight episodes (besides murder) is fuck.
One online Google reviewer who “grew up in Deep East Texas, was very active in my First Baptist Church,” noted about the swinger-heavy plot: “Maybe it's time to mention that Texas is one of the most swinging states in the nation, and I'm not talking swing dancing. These swingers tend to be hardcore church-going Republicans, leaders and teachers in their churches, who led Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops.”
Variety points out: “The irresistible cocktail of rich women and murder has undergone countless variations over the years: as a broadcast soap on “Desperate Housewives”; as an upscale celebrity vehicle on “Big Little Lies”; as a fully financed trip abroad on “The White Lotus.” But “The Hunting Wives,” series adapted by creator Rebecca Cutter (“Hightown”) from the novel of the same name, adds a new twist to this timeless formula.” Clocking at a Rotten Tomatoes 80 and IMDB 6.9/10 the sizzle is probably about as good as the steak here for a summer romp.
And by romp I mean it’s one of the only places conservatives can watch Texas women get naked with each other in the bathroom at an NRA party. Or is it? Apparently I don’t know what the fuck they do in Texas. I wondered the whole time if this is what goes on in Texas and I’ve had the wrong idea about them for my entire life. As a native Philadelphian (or “Yankee liberal” as they’d disparagingly call me in the show), my only clear understanding of Texas comes from football: while my team is the reigning Super Bowl champion, to watch their team win a Super Bowl, you’d have to own a VCR.
But riddle me this, Texas. “Y’all” really are out here talking out one side of your mouth about the Bible and Christian National churchy values while at the same time doing the sketchiest gun-murdery, orgy-totin’, chicks pegging their sherriff husband, random miscellaneous Brokeback "it's not gay if we don't use the word gay" behavior?
The Hunting Wives is based on a 2021 novel by May Cobb. There are many significant differences between the novel and the suspenseful series, the most dramatic being the very unpredictable and darker ending in the series that strays from the book, leaving the door open for a second season of the popular show. Money is just as much at stake in real life as it is in fiction.
The Variety review refers to a “red-state blue-state culture clash” which brings up my only real disappointment in the show. I waited throughout the full eight episodes for Massachusetts Yankee Sophie in her initially-conservative black dress, electric car and Birkenstocks, contrasted against the gaudy gold lamé, Botoxed, pageant-worthy barrel roll wigs of her bosom besties to actually exhibit the liberal values for which she was being mocked and shamed by them.
In one early scene, she accuses the misogynistic Trumpy Texas Governor candidate of making a racist speech, but after she becomes preoccupied banging his wife, rekindling her love affair with the bottle and getting accused of murder, she completely forgets about her alleged Cambridge liberal values. Her new gun-toting pals take her hunting, and Sophie’s own kid (once removed from her by CPS because she killed someone as a drunk driver) has to remind her that killing is wrong. And when the Texas Barbie Clique prattles on about how they don’t need to bomb abortion clinics because they’ve already shut them all down (!), there’s nary a peep from the Yank.
Why frame her as a lib if she doesn’t get to be one? The message “try pussy, go MAGA” seems a bit bizarre given that thanks to Trump a recent Gallup poll showed while Democrats support gay marriage at a rate of 88 percent, Republican support is now at an all-time low of 41 percent. So the show makes a mistake in trying to make anything about politics when it’s really a sex series with a murder problem. In one Variety interview Cobb talks about “not trying to pick a side,” while the show’s creator says, “When I was pitching this, I was asked, ‘Is this a show that both liberals and conservatives can watch?’ And I said, ‘Yes, absolutely, because I love people. My first job is never to be political or put my agenda in it.”
The politics are a weird little backdrop; the sex is why everyone’s here. The irony of the sex is that it IS what’s pretty fucking liberal. The men have multiple women partners and most of the women are exploratory lesbians. When fake-lib Sophie has the audacity to ask her girlfriend/affair partner/future Texas First Lady: “Do you and your husband have an open marriage?” the answer is “Open marriages are for liberals. We just keep it simple. I don’t sleep with other men, and when Jed and I see a girl we like, we go for it.” I’m not sure what this says about Texas, but in the show there’s also a disturbing relationship between the church and sex.
And by the way, the women who talked about not needing to bomb the Texas abortion clinics because they’d already closed them all are certain to have daddy doctors on tap to do their own private abortions, because apparently those babies (fathered by teenagers the women are screwing) are okay to kill. The Republican “party of family values” never ceases to amaze.