By George & Josh Bate
The following is a NON-SPOILER REVIEW of all eight episodes of Imperfect Women
The new Apple TV series Imperfect Women is the latest in a long string of film and television show adaptations of hit domestic thriller novels. Recent years have seen the likes of Freida McFadden’s The Housemaid, Elin Hilderbrand’s The Perfect Couple, and Patricia Highsmith’s Deep Water translate popular stories of suburban secrets and obsession into successful movies and shows, and now Araminta Hall’s hit thriller novel Imperfect Women joins their ranks. Like the adaptations that have come before it, the eight-episode series created and executive produced by Annie Weisman (Physical) entertains with its dramatic flair and twisty narrative, even if it dabbles too much in the melodramatic and not substantially enough in its social commentary.
Imperfect Women chronicles the aftermath of a devastating murder and its consequences for the decades-long friendship of three women – Eleanor (Kerry Washington), Mary (Elisabeth Moss), and Nancy (Kate Mara). The story that unravels sees the women reassess their once-iron clad friendship as they reckon with guilt, retribution, love, and betrayal.
The series divides its eight episodes into three chapters, each dedicated to the perspective of one of the three friends. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the chapters get exponentially better as they progress, with the first dedicated to Washington’s Eleanor being the weakest of the bunch. Regardless of differences in quality though, watching each of the chapters feels like the cinematic equivalent of reading one of the aforementioned domestic thrillers. There’s twists and turns. There’s flashbacks that make you reevaluate what you’ve seen previously. There’s characters floating in the background initially, who eventually emerge as major players. There’s a tantalizing cliffhanger capping off every episode. Imperfect Women has all the trappings of the modal domestic thriller novel, for better and for worse.
One of the more simultaneously appealing and frustrating elements of the new series is its propensity for melodrama. Everything is taken seriously and yet one can’t help but crack a smile or chuckle at how over-the-top and lacking in subtlety various moments are. Some of the narrations are unintentionally funny in how expansive and theatrical they are, while various character decisions appear like they’re the product of superficial research into cookie-cutter ‘good guy and ‘bad guy’ behaviors in media. While this propensity gives the series an entertaining pulp-y quality, it also means the show can’t quite ever shake off its cheap thrills, light-reading quality.
But, like these kinds of books, Imperfect Women is difficult to keep your eyes off of. The murder mystery at its core keeps one guessing as all manner of discoveries are made and suspects are investigated. Assumptions viewers will make from the get-go about character relationships or dynamics will be contested, with each and every reveal peeling back the layers of betrayal and infidelity bubbling under the surface. While the resolution of the whodunnit arrives far too soon in the trajectory of the eight episodes and the finale lacks the kind of wild last-minute twist one would expect from this kind of series, it nonetheless makes for suspenseful, edge-of-your-seat television.
Side-by-side with the central murder mystery is commentary about women’s roles in modern society and the juxtaposition of domesticity and autonomy that lands with the softest of thuds. Each of the three women come from vastly different economic, racial, and familial backgrounds and live vastly different lives in the present day. Kerry Washington’s Eleanor, for instance, is a Black woman from a wealthy Boston family, who runs a successful company. Kate Mara’s Nancy, meanwhile, is a trailer park girl-turned-socialite, who is dedicated to her volunteering work as she struggles with imposer syndrome. And Elisabeth Moss’ Mary is a former academic who now is a stay-at-home mom of three. The series makes no judgments on the differing lifestyles of the women, instead converging on an admirable, albeit repetitive, message that women are free to have the careers and or/families they want while also supporting one another along the way.
The problem with this message, however, is its failure to expand into something more substantial or nuanced. The series seems content throwing in superficial narrations about the different roles our leading women occupy but is unwilling to give this commentary the depth it deserves. What’s left then is a show far more interested in the deception and secrets of the women. This may work well in tandem with the show’s more cheap-thrills sensibilities, but it prevents the series from evolving into anything more substantial or subversive.
As an examination of the virtues and pitfalls of adult friendships among women, Imperfect Women stumbles. The series bolsters a stacked cast, full of actors who regularly headline big movies and shows. Not only are there leads Washington, Moss, and Mara lead, but there’s also Joel Kinnaman, Corey Stoll, Leslie Odom Jr., Wilson Bethel, Keith Carradine, and Sheryl Lee Ralph in the mix as well. And yet, despite the acting talent on display, no one has any chemistry in the show.
It’s difficult to buy into the three women being self-professed “soul mates” (although this is kind of the point, as the show exposes the cracks in a friendship we once thought to be pristine). It’s similarly difficult to buy into any prong of the two love triangles in the series, each feeling more forced than the last. Startled is the word that comes to mind in arriving upon the conclusion that a show filled with a cast most others could only dream of fails so resoundingly in fostering even a semblance of chemistry among its stars.
VERDICT: 6.5/10
The new Apple TV series Imperfect Women is the latest in a long string of film and television adaptations of hit domestic thriller novels. Like The Housemaid, The Perfect Couple, and countless other similar movies/series, creator and executive producer Annie Weisman’s show indulges in a pulp-y quality and plenty of over-the-top moments as it plays out like the cinematic equivalent of a domestic thriller novel – there’s twists and turns, there’s cliffhangers at the end of every chapter/episode, there’s flashbacks that make you reevaluate what you’ve seen previously, and, of course, there’s a story filled to the brim with deception, obsession, infidelity, secrets, guilt, and murder, albeit one solved too prematurely in the course of the eight episodes. The cheap-thrills, light-reading quality of the series means, however, that its commentary on women’s roles in society comes up short and lacks necessary nuance. While bolstering a cast most shows could only dream of, the series startles with a complete lack of chemistry amongst any of its stars, whether it be among the three friends at the heart of the story or any prong on the show’s two love triangles. Imperfect Women may be an imperfect series, but it makes for the kind of light, suspenseful, and edge-of-your-seat entertainment the domestic thriller genre of literature evokes.