Wilderness Series Premiere: Grade Prime Video's Revenge Thriller
Look what that cheating bastard (almost) made her do in the Wilderness series premiere.
The Prime Video drama stars Jenna Coleman (Doctor Who) as Oliva "Liv" Taylor, a happily married journalist — that is until she discovers that her husband Will Taylor (The Haunting of Bly Manor's Oliver Jackson-Cohen) is sleeping with another woman. Liv sets off some alarm bells of her own as she explains (via voiceover) that she spent most of her life being quiet, even as her father cheated on her mother, and pretending to be whatever the other person needed. (Seems healthy!) But when she met Will, she could finally just be her. It was her mistake to think that was OK, when the Greek chorus of all women was telling her, "It's never safe."
Will and Liv move from England to the states when he gets a job as an events manager. They have a swanky apartment that his company set them up with, and they can't keep their hands off each other. Sounds great, right? Not so fast. After Will returns from a work trip, Liv sees a text on his phone from "Sol": "I can't stop thinking about you inside me."
When Liv confronts Will, he gets mad that she violated his trust and read his texts (seriously dude?), then claims it was just a woman at the conference who was flirting with him and nothing happened. But if that's true, why does he have this Emily woman under a different name in his phone? Liv kicks him out on Christmas Eve, then proceeds to do all the cliched stuff you've seen in countless other shows and movies: she confides in her friend, tearfully watches their wedding video, trashes their apartment and burns his clothes.
Somehow, Will manages to weasel his way back into Liv's life with tickets for the trip she's always dreamed off. He explains that he made an idiotic mistake that's not worth torturing their marriage over because she's his person. So the pair set off to what should have been their honeymoon road trip from the Grand Canyon to Las Vegas.
But three weeks before the vacation, Liv found incriminating emails on Will's computer, including a video of him having sex with another woman (Pretty Little Liars' Ashley Benson). Liv watched in shock and disgust as Will promised her that he will leave his wife.
Instead of becoming her mother, who is still consumed by her ex-husband, Liv's voiceover tells us, "There was another way, a clean way, a way that freed me from a life of watching him move on without me." Back in Arizona, Liv imagines different ways of offing her husband, which prove to be too messy. The location is "the perfect place for an accident," but it's "just the how of it." She almost finds the ideal scenario, nearly pushing him off a cliff, when a nearby stranger interrupts the moment and asks for help.
In her second attempt, she decides to go "utterly mundane" and cut the straps on the raft they're riding down the rocky waters. When Will goes overboard during a choppy wave, Liv just stares at him. After breaking out of her trance, she reaches for him to help him back up and ends up falling into the water herself. Will dives back in and swims after her. Perhaps forgiveness is possible after all, because they start fooling around back at their hotel that night. But then Liv overhears Will take a call from his mistress.
No, this isn't a story about a happily ever after. We want blood and death and "a look inside the mind of the sick f—k who did it," and in this case, "the sick f—k is me," Liv's voiceover declares as she stands in front of a grave.
What did you think of the Wilderness premiere? Grade it below, then hit the comments.