The 2024 series remake of Cruel Intentions was initially meant to stream on Amazon Freevee, but now that Amazon has subsumed that AVOD service under the larger Prime Video umbrella, you can now watch it without commercials if you’re a Prime member. That’s probably the best thing we can say about this show.
Opening Shot: An overview of the campus of Manchester College, in the Washington, DC area.
The Gist: The members of the Delta Phi sorority get ready to greet potential new members, with Cece Caraway (Sara Silva) picking apart a “door stack” the girls are practicing. She wants everything to be perfect for the sorority’s president, Caroline Merteuil (Sarah Catherine Hook).
Caroline has bigger concerns, given what happened at the Greek formal three months prior. While her step-brother, Lucien Belmont (Zac Belmont), is busy having bathroom sex, Cece is making sure everything is lined up for Caroline’s ascension to president. However, things get derailed when, in the kitchen of the banquet hall, Lucien’s brothers at Alpha Gamma are hazing a pledge named Scott Russell (Khobe Clarke). Scott is taking it all in stride until he gets hit in the head with a beer can and passes out.
He doesn’t remember anything, but his congressman father (Jon Tenney) — a big contributor to the college — does. Dean Sheffield (Adam Arkin, who also directed the pilot), promises to tighten security on the Greek houses, including surprise raids looking for booze and other contraband.
One thing that Caroline thinks will help the Greek system, and Delta Phi specifically, is if incoming freshman Annie Grover (Savannah Lee Smith), the daughter of the U.S. vice president, pledges there. But the odds are stacked against that, as Annie’s mother was a sister at a rival sorority, and the Greek system is big on legacy members. Her plan is to have her very charming half-brother Lucien convince her to join Delta; if in the process Lucien gets into Annie’s pants, so be it. Caroline’s promise to her half-brother is to, well, um, something we don’t want to have printed under our byline.
Meanwhile, Lucien’s friend with bennies Blaise Powell (Savannah Lee Smith) sleeps with Scott to try to get him to spill on who exactly hit him with that beer can. In the meantime, Caroline is convinced that her Alpha Gamma boyfriend Rourke (Stephen Thomas Kalyn) did it, and decides to get him to admit it in front of everyone at his frat.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? This series version of Cruel Intentions is an updated version of the 1999 film Cruel Intentions that starred Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Reese Witherspoon and Selma Blair. If you think this show had been remade recently, you’re probably thinking of the 2022 Starz series Dangerous Liaisons, which itself was a remake of the 1988 period drama Dangerous Liasons (starring John Malkovich and Uma Thurman in what would be her breakout role, which was then remade into a 2022 Netflix movie); the French novel Les Liaisons dangereuses was the basis of the story in Cruel Intentions.
Our Take: This remake of Cruel Intentions, created by Phoebe Fisher and Sara Goodman, certainly goes into the category of “Why?” It’s certainly a chance to take advantage of some well-known intellectual property, but taking the story of the film, transferring it from high school to college, and making everyone horny for each other for eight episodes just makes the show more insufferable than thrilling or even sexy.
We’re not sure if it’s because some of the actors have to deal with mouthfuls of words that come out sounding like speeches rather than actual human dialogue or if it’s because not one of the characters we’re introduced to in the first episode are at all likeable or even relatable. But we kept watching the first episode with abject contempt for both the characters and the clunky dialogue they were foisting on our ears.
Everything feels so low stakes, too; sure, Caroline and Lucien are a couple of nasty manipulators, as are most of their friends, but the goal of that manipulation, which is to keep the Greek system alive on campus, doesn’t feel like the kind of thing people’s lives should get ruined over. Sure, when you’re in college, the fate of your sorority or frat and the rivalries you have feel like everything. But when looked at from the outside, it feels like such a ridiculous thing to worry about.
Perhaps we’re just burned out on “rich people being assholes” series, but when that kind of story is foisted on us with clumsy dialogue and over-the-top acting, it makes us even less inclined to keep watching.
Sex and Skin: We mentioned the bathroom sex scene, and we’re sure there will be more sex as the series goes along.
Parting Shot: Lucien knocks on Annie’s door, but she doesn’t answer; she’s busy getting briefed on Greek system scandals by campus newspaper reporter Beatrice Worth (Brooke Lena Johnson) — she’s the person who was having bathroom sex with Lucien at the formal.
Sleeper Star: Sara Silva’s character Cece might be the most sincere character. Sure, she’s intense, but her reasoning behind wanting to be a TA for poly sci professor Hank Chadwick (Sean Patrick Thomas) actually showed her thinking of others in addition to herself.
Most Pilot-y Line: “You’ve been off fucking a poor person,” Caroline says to Lucien during the formal, one of many clumsy lines that wouldn’t come out of normal humans’ mouths.
Our Call: SKIP IT. Cruel Intentions tries to be edgy but only ends up being eye-rollingly bad, with characters that are very easily hateable and stakes that are so low, you wonder why everyone is expending all this energy in the first place.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.