When The Hunting Wives premiered on Netflix, I’ll admit I was curious. Housewives with guns? Lesbian affairs? A murder mystery in East Texas dripping in Aquanet and duplicity? Sure, why not. I’m a veteran of both Bravo and true crime podcasts. I thought I was ready.

But eight episodes later, I’m mostly left thinking: bless their hearts – because this was trying way too hard to be Big Little Lies with a cowboy boot twist. It ended up somewhere between Desperate Housewives and a well-funded megachurch fever dream.

At the center of it all is Sophie (played convincingly by Brittany Snow), a Yankee transplant who’s just moved to the fictional town of Maple Brook. She’s liberal, not a drinker, and frankly too sensible to be sniffing around this sugar-drenched circle of Southern socialites. And yet… like most of us when we’re bored, lonely, and overwhelmed by motherhood, she caves to peer pressure. Fast.

Enter Margo (Malin Akerman), the magnetic HBIC of the “Hunting Wives,” a bougie gun-toting clique of women who treat brunch like battle strategy. Margo is flirty, manipulative, and very interested in Sophie, both as a new friend and a potential conquest. And suddenly, our reluctant heroine is drinking again, hunting (sort of), and wrapped up in a web of secrets, sex, and Southern-fried scandal that ends in the murder of a teenage girl.

Representation? More Like a Token Blessing

Now, look, I see what they were trying to do here. The show tries to check the diversity box with a single token woman of color in the friend group. But let’s be honest: representation is more than just casting someone with melanin and giving them five lines. It’s about authenticity. The Hunting Wives fails to reflect any real nuance or depth when it comes to identity, power, or race – and instead relies heavily on the tired trope of rich white women behaving badly.

It isn’t exactly groundbreaking that women like Margo and her designer-clad posse are hiding more skeletons than a political PAC. We’ve known forever that the most pristine Southern belles often have the most to hide. They’re masters at double-talk, passive-aggression, and smiling while stabbing you through a decorative throw pillow. There’s a reason “bless your heart” is a warning, not a comfort.

Wigs, Wives, and Worn-Out Tropes

Let’s talk about production. The wigs? Distracting. The Southern accents? Inconsistent at best, offensive at worst. And the storyline? A mix of Real Housewives, Revenge, and an adult episode of Pretty Little Liars, except this time the Liars all have concealed carry permits and country club memberships.

There are moments – especially in the back half of the series – where things heat up. A teenager ends up dead. Sophie becomes the prime suspect. Blackout drinking (yes, really) plays a major role in the unfolding mystery. And, not so subtly, the lesbian tension between Sophie and Margo turns into a full-blown affair, adding an unexpected, but not unwelcome, layer of queer chaos.

Still, the murder mystery is so obvious that I found myself solving it before Sophie even opened her second bottle of chardonnay.

The Bright Spots (Yes, There Are Some)

Brittany Snow does a great job carrying the emotional weight of a woman unraveling. She’s believable, relatable, and just bewildered enough to draw us in. And Malin Akerman? She’s clearly having fun playing Margo, and her scenes with Snow have a delicious tension that kept me watching even when the plot started losing steam.

But my personal favorite twist? Dermot Mulroney as Jed. Normally, he plays the brooding romantic, the guy you root for in rom-coms. Here? He’s a scheming, power-hungry Southern man with God-complex energy and big political aspirations. It’s jarring in the best way. Watching him go dark is one of the few surprises the show actually delivers well.

Ultimately, The Hunting Wives is trying to be too many things at once: a murder mystery, a lesbian love story, a critique of performative femininity, and a deep dive into small-town Christian nationalism. But in trying to juggle it all, it doesn’t nail any of it.

It has the glossy feel of a prestige drama, but the narrative weight of a Bravo after-show. It teases at something more substantial but ends up chasing its own tail, sometimes literally, in the hunting scenes. So, should you watch it? Maybe. If you’re into soapy drama, don’t mind predictability, and love a good lesbian subplot sprinkled with Sunday service hypocrisy. Just don’t expect it to be smart. Expect it to be shiny – and sometimes, that’s enough.