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It’s weird to call a genre of TV shows “beach reads” but it’s a good way to describe them, given that they’re based on novels that can be given that moniker. They usually feature wealthy people whose envious lives hide secrets. Imperfect Women, the new Apple TV thriller, is in that category, but is a bit different.
IMPERFECT WOMEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: As a woman is led to an interrogation room, we hear her say, “It feels cheap to call it a friendship. It was something else, like a kinship, deep within our souls.”
The Gist: Elanor (Kerry Washington), Mary (Elisabeth Moss) and Nancy (Kate Mara) have been friends for 25 years, and are as close as ever. Elanor is the woman being called in for questioning, being asked when she last saw the victim of a murder. It was the night before, when the friends got together for dinner to celebrate one of their birthdays.
It’s at dinner where Nancy tells Elanor — but not Mary — that she’s been sleeping with a guy named David and she really needs to end it. Elanor advises her that sneaking around on her husband Robert (Joel Kinnaman) is not a way to deal with their relationship issues.
Overnight, as she’s sleeping next to Jordan (Rome Flynn), one of her subordinates at the non-profit she runs, Eli gets panicked texts and calls from Robert. She goes over to Robert and Nancy’s sprawling mansion and tells him the truth about Nancy. That’s when the police show up to tell them some tragic news.
After Eli goes to identify Nancy’s body, she takes the lead on a few items, like telling Mary and her husband Howard (Corey Stoll). Of course, Mary is devastated, but she’s also hurt that Nancy didn’t trust her enough to tell her about her affair with David. In a bit of angry backlash, she tells Eli that Nancy told her things that Eli doesn’t know about, namely involving the friend group’s history — including Robert — during their early days.
Eli also consoles Nancy’s teenage daughter Cora (Audrey Zahn); she had a difficult relationship with Nancy, but feels downright scared to be alone in the house with her father. Robert has a history of violent outbursts, especially when drunk, and Cora asks Eli to stay at the house as a buffer. But Eli tells Robert that “I don’t think it’s a good idea to stay here.”
Photo: Apple TVWhat Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Annie Weisman and based on the novel by Araminta Hall (Washington and Moss are EPs, and the first episode was directed by Lesli Linka Glatter), Imperfect Women gives off a similar vibe to other series based on “beach reads,” like Big Little Lies.
Our Take: Imperfect Women doesn’t sit as firmly into the “rich people being awful” as some of the other shows in the “beach read” genre, but there is certainly money being thrown about here, given the lavish-looking places where these characters live and work.
The reason why it doesn’t sit as firmly in that genre is that Nancy’s death is going to tear apart what Mary and Eli thought their friend group was all about, and the secrets that the three of them kept from each other will not just be revealed as the police get to the bottom of Nancy’s murder, but in flashbacks, as well. At the very least, that makes things a little different, because this friend group has such a long history to explore.
The problem comes with how this story is being told. We get the voiceover of Eli telling detective Bethany Ganz (Ana Ortiz) and her cartoonishly misogynistic partner about how solid the trio’s friendship was, but we don’t really see any evidence of it. Sure, we’ll get that in the flashbacks, but viewers enter the story at more or less the trio’s worst moment. Even the copious acting skills of Moss and Washington showing us their reactions to Nancy’s death can’t bring us to the point where we can envision just how close Eli, Mary and Nancy really were.
Perhaps we don’t need to see evidence of their bond as things unravel, because the story is about how that bond was built on lies, deception and secrets. But it sure would help us to see more scenes where the three friends are bonding, confiding and relying on each other in order to make what comes later have even more impact.
At this point, the only roles that seem to have any kind of depth to them are Washington’s and Kinnaman’s; the reason for that is something we can’t spoil, however. Moss isn’t just there to play “mom of 3”, though, and it feels like Stoll wouldn’t sign on to play “milquetoast husband and dad.” What we’re curious about, though, is at what point in the season will we see these characters evolve beyond what we saw in the first episode.
Photo: Apple TVPerformance Worth Watching: Kerry Washington is the clear lead in this show, playing Eli as a strong woman who knows what she wants, and doesn’t want, out of relationships. But we also know she has secrets she wants to keep hidden from Mary and others.
Sex And Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: Someone takes pictures of Eli and Robert, and a mysterious man (Leslie Odom Jr.) is sitting in the car with him.
Sleeper Star: It’s strange to see Joel Kinnaman as an uptight scion of a wealthy family, and when his usual shaggy energy pops out in certain scenes, it makes us want to know more about who Robert really is.
Most Pilot-y Line: “What’s the French expression? It’s fucking boring,” Robert says to Eli about the ballet.
Our Call: STREAM IT. While we’re skeptical that the twists and turns of Imperfect Women are really going to surprise us, we are curious enough about those twists and turns to keep watching.
How To Watch Imperfect Women
Apple TV comes with a seven-day free trial for new subscribers and has just one ad-free streaming plan available for $13.99/month.
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.
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