Villainess Review: Kara Clayton (Bull)

The CBS series, Bull, had its share of fantastic villainesses, and just like the show's first season, the second season began with a very fiendish one in the form of Kara Clayton. She is married to elderly and very wealthy Marcus Clayton, and the episode (and second season overall) began with Kara approaching Marcus and making a pair of attempts to coerce him to change their prenuptial agreement. After Marcus refused, Kara suddenly took out a knife and stabbed herself three times, prompting Marcus to take the weapon away from his wife, only for Kara to pull out the true weapon--a gun--and shoot her husband to death. She fired three shots at Marcus and donned latex gloves during the murder; gloves that she later shredded.

The self-inflicted knife "attack" was done to make it appear that Marcus attacked Kara in a rage, leading Kara to shoot her husband in self-defense, which was the story she told to Dr. Jason Bull, who was representing Marcus' company, Clayton Communications, against Kara. Kara went all out in this plan, as she stabbed herself in three potentially fatal places, narrowly missing a vital artery, her liver, and even her heart! She was offered a $500 million settlement to waive her rights to the company, and let's be honest, a half of a billion dollars is money you just take and run like you're Sonic the Hedgehog. Any one of us would take that much; even half would satisfy pretty much anyone. Not Kara. Not only did she repeat that she was attacked, she mentioned that the company was worth six BILLION dollars...and she wanted it all! WOW!

So the trial took place, with Kara on a wheelchair and connected to an oxygen tank. The details of the prenup were revealed: Kara was paid for meeting certain obligations, which even included intimacy with her husband, with the starting rate being $1 million and doubling with each year that passed. Kara portrayed Marcus as being controlling and violent on that night, claiming that he attacked Kara with a knife after she refused to sleep with him, leading to the "self-defense" killing. But there was one problem: no fingerprints on the gun, a detail that was mentioned when Benny Colón cross-examined the villainess. The cross-examination also revealed that Kara majored in anatomy, which played a role in her scheme, as she had to know the right places to stab herself with the knife, which also had no prints due to the gloves she wore. Speaking of the gloves, pieces of them were found in the shredder, and that ended up being Kara's undoing, as she was convicted of first-degree murder.

Bull's second season opener was titled, "School for Scandal," and it aired on September 26, 2017. There were two things I loved the most about this episode: the villainess, Kara Clayton, and the actress playing her, Minka Kelly. I never thought I'd see Minka Kelly playing a villainess, so when I did, I just absolutely loved her performance. Kara was scheming, deceptive, elaborate, and most of all, greedy. She wanted it all; she saw $500 million as nothing more than a few pennies! And she was willing to nearly kill herself to get it as part of her murderous scheme! The beauty of this episode was that this was a howcatchem, meaning that we see Kara's villainous personality play out throughout the episode. Kelly played Kara's ruthless and greedy demeanor very well, and she did an amazing job acting out Kara's "victim" act as well. I'd have to say that Kara Clayton is one of the best villainesses on the series, and it's not only because of the depths of her evil personality, but also because of how well Minka Kelly played her.

Of course, Minka Kelly is best known for playing Lyla Garrity for four seasons on Friday Night Lights, and she also starred on ABC's short-lived Charlie's Angels reboot in 2011. During that same year, Kelly played main protagonist Sara Matthews in The Roommate, playing opposite Leighton Meester in the highly popular thriller.

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