Elisabeth Moss, left, and Kerry Washington in Imperfect Women.Apple TV/Supplied
As a lover of wordplay, I’m amazed by how often the title of something invites its own criticism. Case in point: the new Apple TV+ limited series Imperfect Women. Throughout its eight episodes, I came up with several alternate titles – Imperfect Writing. Perfect Mess. But my favourite is Implausible Women. Because that’s an understatement.
Mary (Elisabeth Moss), Eleanor (Kerry Washington) and Nancy (Kate Mara) – even their names are implausible, for women born in the 1980s – met in university and indelibly bonded. Or so we’re told, more than once, even though they rarely seem to like each other.
Nancy, who was raised in hardscrabble Bakersfield, Calif., by a drunk mother and an evil stepfather, married rich. Her (improbable) husband, Robert (Joel Kinnaman), is a daddy-issues-plagued scion of a powerful, emotionally frigid family. Mary was a promising academic who gave it up after she got pregnant via her pompous then-married professor, Howard (Corey Stoll), and is now a stay-at-home mother of three. (Because it’s apparently impossible to combine motherhood with an academic career, despite the millions of women who do.) Eleanor, proudly single, comes from serious money and runs a generic international aid foundation from a ludicrously chic office.
All three live in Pasadena, in home-plus-wardrobe combinations that should be marketed by Mattel: Eleanor is Downtown Loft-plus-Funky Expensive Chic; Nancy is Family Mansion-plus-Groomed Society Lady; and Mary is Mid-Mod Clutter-plus-Billowy Peasant Dresses. (Moss, who gave birth shortly before filming this, should sue the costume designer for her criminally unflattering look.)
The series was created by Annie Weisman, based on the 2020 novel by Araminta Hall. Oh, and Eleanor is in love with Robert, Howard lusts after Nancy, Nancy ends up dead, and we’re meant to piece the story together via flashbacks, while ignoring some truly cavernous plot holes.
“Juicy” sex thrillers like this one are proliferating over our screens like virulent STDs – Disclaimer, Obsession, Surface, The Girlfriend, The Hunting Wives, The Perfect Couple, The Couple Next Door, The Woman in Cabin 10. To keep us hooked, they prioritize zesty plot twists over everything else. But if you constantly undermine your characters in favour of, “Wow, I didn’t see that coming!” – because it was literally impossible to, given what you were led to believe until this very second – you end up with risible people you just heap scorn on from your sofa.
I’m especially mad at this particular sex thriller for two reasons: One, the actors deserve better. Moss and Washington, both of whom are also executive producers, are required to play so much unearned drama, they’re reduced to Enunciating. Important. Sentences. (Sob.) Slowly.
Stoll, whom I usually like, does his best with a thankless part; he has one expert gaslighting scene in his kitchen, where he gets angry at Moss for an offence he committed. As for Kinnaman, sorry, but I never believe a word he says and that goes double here. The best character is Donovan, Eleanor’s playboy brother (Leslie Odom Jr.). A romantic thriller starring him I would watch on repeat.
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But the bigger reason I’m irked is that this series keeps insisting on the power of female friendship, while undermining it at every turn. Yes, women friends can say hard things to one another – but in my experience, they try to do it carefully and with love. They don’t holler soul-shattering, your-worst-fears-about-yourself-made-manifest, how-do-we-ever-come-back-from-this “truths” out in the street.
When a real friend is begging you for help, as Nancy does to Eleanor, they don’t say, “You deal with it!” and speed off. Real friends don’t tend to bellow, “Get out of my house!” or “Get out of my car!” at a friend who’s clearly in trouble – but these chicks do, both in the same episode! (In my notebook, I wrote “NAH” beside these choice moments.) And when they sleep with their best friend’s husband, they don’t justify it in overwritten voiceover with, “Some crashes send you hurtling through space at such velocity there’s nothing you can do to change your fate.”
Mainly if you want your overarching theme to be (as flatly stated in episode three, in case viewers were scrolling on their phones through episodes one and two), “Can you know everything there is to know about a person?” – never mind what a flimsy wire hanger of an idea that is, given that the answer is obviously no – then you can’t turn around in the next episode and extol friends for “seeing you down to your marrow and loving you anyway.”
Whatever you do, you don’t want to give the show’s best line to the detective (Ana Ortiz) who’s investigating Nancy’s murder: “This thing the three of you had, I’m not sure what to call it,” she says, “but it wasn’t friendship.”