Netflix heard us complaining about the lack of eroticism in modern media and gifted us with eight episodes of Malin Åkerman’s boobs and explicit sex scenes between her, Brittany Snow, and Jaime Ray Newman (Grimm) in The Hunting Wives (Not to be confused with The Hunting Party). Not altogether, mind you. The threesomes in the show involve Åkerman, Dermot Mulroney, and Lauren Bowles (True Blood). There is also a lot of making out, masturbation, blow jobs, one scene that involves consensual fisting, and one errant penis that appears in a scene when someone answers their door naked in the middle of the night.
I figured I should get all of that information out in front of the review because there’s no way to talk about The Hunting Wives without talking about all the sex, and if that’s not what you’re into, you can back out of this review now.
Brittany Snow is Sophie, she and her husband (Evan Jonigkeit from The Night House) relocate from Boston to Texas because he got a job working for Jed Banks (Mulroney), a powerful oil tycoon, doing … ah, you know what. I’m not entirely sure what he does for Banks. They mention that he’s an architect a couple of times, but we only ever see him interacting with Banks at his lavish parties. So I don’t know what an oil tycoon needs an architect for. But it doesn’t matter. The husband’s sole purpose in The Hunting Wives is to constantly be wondering where Sophie spent the night while her affair with Margo Banks (Åkerman) quickly gets out of control.
Margo is the Queen Bee of The Hunting Wives, the stereotypical group of socialite Mean Girls who reign supreme in their community. Callie (Newman) is the Sheriff’s wife. She’s an aggressive sharpshooter who loves to hunt. She and Margo have been secretly sleeping together for a while. Callie has an unhealthy attachment to Margo and resents Sophie from the beginning for capturing Margo’s attention.
Katie Lowes (Scandal) plays the local mega-church’s preacher’s wife, Jill. She is a Good Christian Woman whose main priority is her son, the high school sports star. Naturally, she’s the prude of the group and spends a lot of time worrying about how clean her house is and that her son’s girlfriend, Abby, is trying to trap him into marriage. It turns out those fears are completely misdirected. The teenage son is also sleeping with Margo in his limited spare time, unbeknownst to his mother. And that’s where the real threat is.
There are also two other women in the Hunting Wives clique. But they barely exist beyond clinking cocktail glasses, reaction shots, and chiming in as a Greek Chorus when something outlandish happens.
As much as this is a story about Sophie, Margo is the more compelling character. I’m honestly not sure whether I’m jealous of Margo’s libido or exhausted by it. She’s got sexual partners all over town. Wide-eyed, vanilla, Sophie is her newest plaything. Margo quickly takes her under her wing and indoctrinates her into their group, which spends its time drinking and hunting. Being a good, Massachusetts liberal, Sophie is anti-gun and doesn’t drink alcohol after a car accident. The Hunting Wives hand her a drink and take her boar hunting, outfitting her with camouflage and both a rifle and a handgun before she knows what’s happening. Utterly dazzled by Margo’s attention and feeling herself freed by her affections, Sophie throws all of the morals she brought with her to Texas out the window without much thought.
The Hunting Wives is also the story of Sophie’s sexual liberation. At one point in her pillow talk with Margo, Sophie reveals that she previously miscarried and had a hysterectomy that has left her feeling incomplete. Now she finds the heteronormative life she’s been living with her husband and son unfulfilling. But you can’t have liberation without conflict. And on Netflix, you can’t have a show about badly behaving rich people without a murder.
As Sophie reluctantly finds herself thrust into Margo’s hedonistic lifestyle, a teenage girl is murdered. It’s not just any teenage girl, though, it’s one the Hunting Wives know. Abby, Jill’s son’s girlfriend, is found shot dead in the woods. And it turns out the gun that shot her is the one Sophie’s new friends convinced her to buy. Sophie becomes the prime suspect in the murder, and she turns to her new friends and lover to help prove her innocence.
What unfolds is a twisted melodrama of a murder mystery centered on the group’s sexual dynamics and the power Margo wields over everyone around her. In her efforts to clear her name, Sophie reveals the delicate web of lies Margo has built her life on and how they are related to Abby’s murder. All of which comes apart at the end, with Sophie caught up in its silken strands.
The Hunting Wives would be just another Netflix soap opera a la Virgin River if it weren’t for all of the sex and nudity. I haven’t read the book it’s based on, but it probably rides the line between smutty beach read and trashy romance based on the dialogue.
Malin Åkerman is always fun to watch. Brittany Snow, who is not the strongest actor, is cast well as the naive, corruptible ingenue, who always looks like a deer caught in headlights. Chrissy Metz (This Is Us) is criminally underutilized as Abby’s mother, who lives on the outskirts of the social group. Karen Rodriguez (Shining Girls) is great as Detective Salazar, the only one on the local police force who seems interested in uncovering the true culprit of Abby’s murder.
There are a lot of red-state/MAGA talking points thrown around the series. Everyone is pro-NRA, anti-abortion, and white women’s tears are weaponized effectively. It’s such regressive thinking for a story about such sexually “liberal” women that it’s off-putting, even though you probably can’t tell a story about Texas socialites without all of that.
I thought I was getting something between GCB and Landman when I started watching this show. But Netflix really wasn’t messing around when they labeled The Hunting Wives an “erotic thriller.” Keep that in mind when you decide to watch it.
All episodes of The Hunting Wives are available to stream on Netflix.
