With its premise firmly in place, “Land of Women” hits the notes you can expect from an Eva Longoria joint—romance and capers. As such, it’s pretty satisfying in the way the genre can be, hitting well-worn beats with aplomb. There’s beautiful scenery here, intergenerational learning there, poisoning here, and furtive glances there. It’s comfy like an old sweater without much of a lesson or moral to get in the way of its overarching sense of warmth.
Still, it does push cultural mores a bit, mostly by allowing its central female triad more room than women normally get on screen. Longoria’s Gala is bad with people, lacking the ability to modulate herself to meet the expectations of whoever she’s talking to. In another series, she might be blamed or punished for this trait. But “Land of Women” presents it as just a quirk of her personality, allowing our heroine to muddle through, mostly succeeding in her aims.
Likewise, the show presents daughter Kate’s gender identity as important but not all-consuming. She’s trans, and while we see her mother and grandmother react to birth, believing she’ll be a boy, by the time we meet them in the show’s present some fifteen years later, everyone’s fully transitioned. There are still difficulties – Kate faces some bigots, made more powerful when armed with institutional power. But she also makes friends, engages in teenage rebellion, and creates art, as is her emo, rich-girl destiny. As such, “Land of Women” presents her trans-ness as one part of her personality and background, affecting but not defining how she interacts with the world.
The show gives similar latitude to Julia, played with delicious whimsy by Maura in the current timeline. She’s a free spirit, a girl who slept around, ran away, and never lost her sense of adventure – when we meet her, she’s selling drugs at the fancy retirement home Gala pays for. There’s a whole paternity plotline, interacting nicely with randy-grandmother jokes. But as with its other characters, “Land of Women” refrains from shaming Julia. Instead, it notes her personal flaws, pushes her to grow, and condemns the systems that punish women so much more severely for straying from society’s narrow expectations.
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