TV Review: SPECIAL OPS: LIONESS: Season 1, Episode 8: Gone is the Illusion of Order [Paramount+]

Special Ops: Lioness Gone is the Illusion of Order Review

Paramount+‘s Special Ops: Lioness: Season 1, Episode 8: Gone is the Illusion of Order TV Show Review. Gone is the Illusion of Order features the ending of two storylines in Special Ops: Lioness: 1.) Cruz Manuelos’ undercover operation; and 2.) Joe (Zoe Saldaña)’s leadership role in the CIA’s Lioness program, though I doubt the latter is sustainable if Season 2 of Special Ops: Lioness is given the green light.

The Dressing Room Question

The dressing room question Aaliyah Amrohi (Stephanie Nur) poses to Cruz Manuelos (Laysla De Oliveira) in Gone is the Illusion of Order proceeds one of the most memorable moments in the episode. Instead of shrugging off the awkward closeness at the end of Wish the Fight Away, Aaliyah and Cruz speak about and examine it head-on in this episode. Aaliyah admits she hasn’t stopped thinking about that awkwardness, but there is something else that she doesn’t say, something that goes unsaid. There is a ticking clock clicking away. If Aaliyah does not bring this up now and doesn’t prompt an exploration of it at this moment, she will be married soon, on cultural and physical lockdown, and this question will never be investigated.

Crying in bed after Coitus

Cruz Manuelos crying in bed after having sex with Aaliyah Amroh is very telling of Cruz’s growing feelings for Aaliyah, Cruz’s awareness of a lack of happiness in her life, and of that missing element beginning to be filled. Cruz doesn’t want it filled by Aaliyah, but it’s happening. Perhaps Cruz didn’t believe she needed love in her life (just the military), but it’s happening. Watching Cruz cry bittersweet tears, tears of awareness, is a crystallization of her internal conflict with her assignment and her emotional turmoil. It is one of the best acting moments in the episode.

Asmar Ali Amrohi at the Wedding

Asmar Ali Amrohi (Bassem Youssef) being at the wedding was complete nonsense. He knows people want to kill him, yet he goes to a wedding days before it is to occur and sits there, a big goose with a target on its back. If the character acts in Gone is the Illusion of Order as he is portrayed (off-screen) in the earlier episodes of Special Ops: Lioness, his daughter, and his wife would think he wasn’t coming until he showed up on the day of the wedding, giving anyone hunting him little time to react.

Or show him at the wedding, but do not let his presence be known to anyone there except the viewer. Asmar could go to the wedding disguised as a caterer or someone else, telling himself, “Just be there; be there for your daughter. That’s enough. She doesn’t need to know you’re here.”

But no. Writer Taylor Sheridan had to make the smart villain, who had survived for decades, suddenly act stupidly and drop his guard when he didn’t have to, for the sole purpose of dying at the heroines’ hands.

The Husband

Ehsan Al Rashdi (Ray Corasani) shows his true colors with the conversation he has with (and in front of) Cruz Manuelos, illustrating that he is a full, bad member and representation of his culture.

Like Asmar Ali Amrohi, Ehsan is also an example of a dumbed-down character in Gone is the Illusion of Order. If you find out Cruz Manuelos is a U.S. Marine, and you are only a civilian with no kinetic training, why would you try to confront and fight the Marine in hand-to-hand combat? Why not just alert all of your ex-military guards? That is what you pay them for.

When I saw Ehsan run out of his office after finding out Cruz’s secret, I thought, “Please remain consistent with your smart person characterization, go tell your guards, and let them take care of Cruz.” But no. Like Asmar, Ehsan has been turned into a moron (call your guards!) so he can die in the hero’s blaze of glory.

Cruz Manuelos’ lack of intelligence during a key moment with Ehsan can be blamed on something other than needful ignorance. Cruz gives herself away by standing up for herself after the slap because she has no espionage training, not because her character’s actions are suddenly stupefied to fit within a predetermined storyline. If this were the film Body of Lies, CIA Near East Division Chief Ed Hoffman would be telling Cruz over an earpiece that “she’s blown” and to get out. Cruz, unfortunately, is flying solo on her mission, and in this instance, she doesn’t have sufficient situational awareness (the kind that comes from proper training and experience) and the ability to see that she’s just revealed herself to the enemy.

Unrequited Love Story Arc

Gone is the Illusion of Order is an entertaining episode, but it could have been much better. The fact that Asmar Ali Amrohi is a nice, ordinary guy and a father humanized this terrorist financier, with the viewer thinking, “Is this really him?”

Killing him and the woman-beating groom, Ehsan Al Rashdi, resolved their storylines, but the Aaliyah Amrohi/Cruz Manuelos storyline is left unresolved. This particular storyline became bigger and bigger as the season progressed, to the point of love, and then Cruz leaves and flees for her life. Cruz should have run. She should have fled. There is no time for anything else, but because of that, the viewer is saddled with an unsettled storyline.

Aaliyah Amrohi showing up in the kitchen after the murders, Cruz revealed, and the two having a verbal / emotional confrontation would have been completely cliché; the road-well traveled countless times, so many times in fact that its absence came to mind unbidden, but it also would have been food for the romantics who had become enamored with and were rooting for the doomed-from-the-beginning Aaliyah Amrohi/Cruz Manuelos relationship.

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