Stream It Or Skip It: ‘What/If’ On Netflix, Where Renée Zellweger Offers An Indecent Proposal To A Struggling Entrepreneur

Renée Zellweger has inched her way back into the spotlight in recent years after a self-imposed six-year hiatus. In 2016 she came back in Bridget Jones’ Baby and is slated to play Judy Garland in an upcoming film. So it would seem to be inevitable that she’d join other Oscar winners on some form of prestige TV. In the anthology series What/If, Zellweger plays a venture capitalist who gets what she wants… and she wants the husband of a struggling entrepreneur. Read on for more…

WHAT/IF: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: As she looks at the San Francisco skyline, venture capitalist Anne Montgomery (Renée Zellweger) stalks around her bedroom in a robe, dictating the introduction to her book into a digital recorder. The monologue is about sacrificing to succeed, and while she talks she writes a phrase on a piece of paper: “AT ANY COST”.

The Gist: On a stormy night a year later, we see Montgomery’s book At Any Cost in an apartment with a wedding video playing and a knocked-over vase. Lisa Donovan (Jane Levy) storms into Montgomery’s apartment demanding that she’s changed her mind and to stop doing what she’s doing.

Flash back three days. Lisa has been pitching her company, whose goal is to design drugs that are specialized depending on a patient’s genetic signatures, to venture capitalists, but no one is taking. Most are afraid of getting in Big Pharma’s crosshairs. She’s leveraged herself, her family, and her husband Sean (Blake Jenner) to fund the company, and its running out of money. Sean seems like the perfect husband; he’s a former major league pitcher who now works as a paramedic and a bartender, but always seems to be supportive of Lisa, to the point where he dons her Backstreet Boys t-shirt and lip-synchs “I Want It That Way” to her to cheer her up.

But there are secrets spinning around her: She finds out that Angela (Samantha Marie Ware), wife of Sean’s best friend Todd (Keith Powers) is having an affair with her boss, Dr. Ian Harris (Dave Annable), Angela wants her to keep it quiet. When Sean saves a family from a deliberately-set fire, a look at the dad who set it sets him off to the point where he puts his hands on Sean.

Just when Lisa, who started the company in honor of her sister, who died of leukemia that was resistant to treatment because of her genetic markers, is at her wits’ end trying to find funding, a long-legged benefactor comes forward: Anne Montgomery. She met Sean at the bar where he works, and she has a proposal for the two of them: $80 million for one night with Sean. At first, Lisa refuses. But the two of them realize how desperate things are, such as when her brother Marcos (Juan Castano) tells her that the money their parents gave her for the business was a loan off their restaurant’s mortgage. They accept Anne’s offer, but the contract has one stipulation: They are never to speak about the night Sean spends with Anne, or else the money will be forfeited.

When Lisa comes back to Anne’s apartment saying she’s changed her mind, Anne’s right-hand man Foster (Louis Herthum) tells her they left. Sean comes back home the next morning, bruises on his hands and seemingly a changed man, saying that “you got what you wanted” to Lisa, and not even wanting to discuss what Anne put him through.

Our Take: The idea behind What/If is that each season will tell a different morality tale, one where a single decision sets a number of people off on different life trajectories than they were on before that decision. Mike Kelley is the show’s creator; he’s perhaps best known as an EP of the ABC series Revenge, and this show has that kind of feel. It’s definitely slick, definitely soapy, more than a little retrograde, and most definitely cheesy as hell.

The script of the pilot readily acknowledges that the plot is reminiscent of “a bad ’90s movie,” Lisa tells Sean. Anne’s response, “I thought that movie was quite decent,” tells you that Kelley and his writers know that this is Indecent Proposal in reverse. It’s going to be the deeper story behind why Anne made this offer, what she knows about Sean, and how this affects the Donovans’ marriage that will be the draw of this series.

When we were watching the pilot, though, we just couldn’t help but shake our heads at the over-the-top silliness of so much of it. Zellweger, who built her career and won an Oscar playing underdog-type characters like Bridget Jones, is in the vixen role here, the hard-driving mogul who gets what she wants when she wants it. It’s a role that she has to strain to make believable; without the emotional context of why she is such a take-no-prisoners type, she looks pretty cartoonishly evil in the pilot. We know there’s something there, as Foster says to her after her night with Sean, “I think that when you’ve suffered terrible things, you become capable of terrible things.” But for now, she is just a squinty villain whose well-oiled legs are her version of Snidely Whiplash twirling his handlebar mustache.

Levy is more sincere than we’ve seen her in past roles, but her deadpan disdain comes through in the scene where Anne makes her proposal. You think she’s going to stand up to Anne, but she and Sean feel like their marriage can withstand anything. Big mistake, of course, but she doesn’t realize how big until Sean comes back so changed that he seems like a different person. That is where the intrigue of this series will be, and Levy seems to be up to the challenge of it.

The side stories — Angela’s infidelity, Marcos’ desire to settle down with his boyfriend — seem like distractions right now. But Kelley may have a reason for them that ties into the larger story. We just don’t see what it is yet.

Sex and Skin: As we mentioned, we see Anne’s legs a lot; they seem to be a signature of hers. The Donovans sleep together a couple of times, as married couples might do; we see Sean’s tush but there are lots of blankets on Lisa (nudity clauses are way obvious when they’re invoked on streaming shows. Not saying Levy shouldn’t have had one; that’s her prerogative. But it makes the show feel more like a network show than a streaming one).

Parting Shot: Anne is surrounded by photos of Sean and Lisa; it seems she’s been tracking Sean for a long time. She throws one of the pictures in the fireplace, and then we see newspaper clippings, social media photos, insurance and car registration forms, and an article about a man who died after being beaten by an unknown assailant.

Sleeper Star: This is a good spot to mention Daniella Pineda, who plays Cassidy, CFO of Lisa’s company. She seems too quick and quippy to be just a bit player in all this. She also calls Anne Montgomery her “spirit animal”. Hmm…

Most Pilot-y Line: “We still have a few hours to tell this bitch to go to hell. But you and me… we’re a lot stronger than she thinks we are,” Lisa tells Sean on the park bench where they first met. In the hands of Levy, the line works, but it still feels like too much of a case of severe foreshadowing to us.

Our Call: STREAM IT, but only if you’re a fan of pulpy, steamy shows like Revenge. What/If has some decent performances, but it feels like a show that should be on after Grey’s Anatomy, not on a streaming service.

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, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream What/If on Netflix