SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Imperfect Women Episode 1.

The Apple TV series Imperfect Women knows exactly what its audience wants. It’s the tried-and-true story of lives that seem idyllic but turn out to be a bigger mess than Los Angeles traffic. Viewers want to sink their teeth into the twisty, sultry, sometimes too much mystery under those picture-perfect scenes—and Episode 1, “Eleanor,” gives them plenty to gossip about.

As the title indicates, the premiere introduces Eleanor Bouchet as the show’s viewpoint character. Eleanor is perfectly played by Scandal star Kerry Washington, because the character swings back and forth from being an assertive woman in charge to being someone who waffles on anything having to do with emotions. The audience knows better what she wants than she does. But Washington makes Eleanor more sympathetic than frustrating, while still delivering the assertive moments that everyone will be expecting from the woman who was Olivia Pope.

It’s the cast that guides the audience along in a slow-paced and sort of clunky first chapter. Imperfect Women relies on a structural device that is becoming overdone: dropping the audience into the middle of the story and then telling key points through flashbacks. A lot of other TV shows are doing this at the moment (nobody does it better than Hulu’s Paradise), and it feels tired here. But viewers want to know who killed Eleanor’s best friend Nancy, if only because she and their other best friend Mary are so earnestly desperate to. Washington and Elisabeth Moss make viewers care about their characters, which makes it easy to look past the handful of flaws. And there are flaws—it’s in the title, after all.

The audience has a general guideline of where this story is going, even if they’ve never read the novel on which it’s based. These powerful and affluent people will turn out to have secrets, will turn on each other, will be deeply unhappy and searching for it. But the premiere wisely takes that as read and spends its time—too much time—getting the audience invested in the people, making the whodunit secondary. It is frustrating that there’s not more revealed about Nancy’s murder, because so many of the character scenes are slow and ponderous. That death is meant to be so shocking and yet the viewer has very little to work with in that respect.

However, there are enough “what the heck is wrong with this person” moments amongst the characters that the audience is still interested anyway. The biggest one is the moment on which the whole episode turns and the series really seems to start: Nancy’s husband Robert, to that point stoically played by For All Mankind star Joel Kinnaman, loses it when he sees a painting done by the man Nancy was having an affair with. He rips the painting off the wall and throws it out of the house. It’s a visceral moment from Kinnaman (who once again finds himself in a state of domestic strife), but it also establishes that Robert might be a murder suspect. Which is not shocking, but certainly dangerous given the twist near the end of Episode 1.

A conversation with Mary spells out that Eleanor has her own personal connection with Robert, and this cannot end well in any way. Either she is about to hook up with her best friend’s widower, or she’s getting too close to the person who killed her. Props to Kinnaman for making Robert a character that the audience doesn’t want to immediately suspect and write off; the male characters in Imperfect Women have their own appeal. Most notably, All Rise star Wilson Bethel makes just one brief appearance at Nancy’s memorial—but because it’s Wilson Bethel, the audience knows he’s going to make a lasting impact.

“Eleanor” would be better if it were more balanced and a little faster-paced, instead of the murder mystery feeling like a secondary concern. But this cast is ably suited to pry into all the dark corners that Apple TV viewers want to see. They know the tone of the story, and so they’re all playing just the right amount of guarded, just the right amount of off-kilter. Imperfect Women has set the stage for a classic dissection of the rich and famous.

Imperfect Women streams Wednesdays on Apple TV. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Apple TV.

Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.