Red Widow

I have been forced (by my wife) to watch every single episode of this turkey. The scenario is preposterous, the acting mediocre, and the casting is absurd - don't they think we know what a Russian accent sounds like? Could anyone look at her father and find him threatening? Sunday night, Marta - who is living in a multimillion dollar house in San Francisco and has no income, no skills, no work history, and no prospects - gives away a $100 thousand necklace and in a fit of stupidity destroys $75 thousand worth of stolen cocaine, knowing that several people have been killed (including her late husband) over it. Then when Schiller says he wants it back...she is surprised? WTF? If there were a death penalty for bad writing, the writers of "The Red Widow" would be in big trouble.

Marta Walraven (Radha Mitchell) comes from a crime family, and when her husband is gunned down, she finds herself entangled by his underworld business. Crime boss Nicholae Schiller (Goran Visnjic) blames her husband for stealing his drugs, and forces her to work for him. It turns out that her brother Irwin Petrov (Wil Traval) was actually the one who stole the drugs.

All the underworld crime drama isn't anything new. But in order to get involved, there has to be some rooting interest. The fact is there is nobody likable. Every character is problematic, even the kids. The girl is clueless. The boy is annoyingly idiotic. The family is completely dysfunctional. So who cares what happens to these people. Certainly not me.

Can Marta successfully transform herself from soccer-mom suburban housewife to big-league drug smuggler? She's quite delicious, and convincing, too, as she struggles with her new, and very much unwanted, role. She fumbles and stumbles, and we agonize over her struggle, rooting for this very nice young mother to succeed in the world of tough drug smuggling. Talk about being out of one's depth! But she is, after all, the daughter of a Russian mobster, so evidently she's got the genes for the job. "Marta, you've changed," her father says, impressed with her new toughness. Indeed! And we get to root for her to be successful in a serious criminal activity. I have to wonder how the writers will resolve the dilemma of allowing a criminal action to succeed, while not offering any approval of heroin smuggling.

Or will she succeed? If she does not, how will she keep her family safe? Who shot her husband dead? Who took the 75 kilos of heroin that had been stashed in her boat? Man, am I hooked on this show.

It helps that Radha Mitchell is intensely desirable. If there's a serious flaw in the plot, it's the way Bob shrugs off her advances, as she tries to befriend him, planning to bribe him to be a partner in the crime. It's hard enough to believe that Marta could enjoy a luxurious life in an expensive Marin County home while never noticing that her husband's rental-fishboat profession cannot possibly support such a rich lifestyle. It's much harder to believe that any man with normal hormones could blithely brush off the advances of such a woman, slender, sexy, and clearly interested in him. That just does not compute.

Marta is the heart of the show, and manages to be credible at both soccer-momhood, and wannabe-drug smuggler. One moment she's laughing with ice cream and her children – and then the phone rings, and she's back in the drug-smuggling world, and utterly terrified. That's what makes the show work. We love her, and we really want her to succeed in this awful Russian-mobster role. I can't wait until Sunday, and the next episode.

We've seen this a hundred times. The whole suspense is centered on the truth behind the opening event being withheld from the main character. And because of this undisclosed truth, the red widow embarks on an illegal and suspenseful journey. We are left with a few main characters and an idea that we must stay tuned as these characters are painfully developed, all while hoping the red widow will learn the truth! But, we all know she can't learn the truth until she is fully engaged and unable to leave her new life.

Unless: a nuclear bomb goes off like in "24", or a truly exceptionally twisted plot develops along with the characters like in "breaking bad", or an outrageous number of new interesting characters are introduced like in "game of thrones", OR the red widow starts kicking butt after a brain download like in the matrix....this will be a painful soap opera struggling to became a good action/drama. With a boring head bad guy and a lame group surrounding the mediocre red widow, I think it's clear this is likely to be a one season and done flop.

I was "held hostage" to this premiere of Red Widow for the whole 2 hours! It will be one show I will be watching every week as long as it is on! Hopefully it will remain on the air. Seems as though every new show I get involved in is cancelled - maybe this one will make it even tho the ratings on IMDb do not reflect my opinion.

This show is about a married woman with a family, who was not aware of the depth her husband was involved in with the Mob and is left with a debt that has to be paid back after her husband is brutally murdered or there will be consequences to her and her family. She has relatives involved in the Mob and she goes to them for advice.