In the song “Anthem,” Leonard Cohen sings, “There is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
In the book “A Farewell to Arms,” Ernest Hemingway writes that the world breaks people, and that many are stronger in the broken places, but those it does not break, it kills.
The new AppleTV+ limited series “Imperfect Women” catalyzes at the intersection of those two quotes. Based on the book of the same name by Araminta Hall, and starring an acting trifecta of Kerry Washington, Elizabeth Moss, and Kate Mara, this suspenseful murder mystery alludes to the art of kintsugi in its opening titles. Liquid gold pours into the cracks that life and lies have left in three porcelain women. It is a point that cannot be missed. Created by showrunner Annie Weisman, “Imperfect Women” opens with the friendship between these women and progressively cracks them open to see whether the surviving two will break after one of them dies.
We begin with Eleanor (Washington), as police escort her down a long institutional hallway. As the music swells and tension builds, Eleanor’s voiceover confesses her bond with Mara‘s Nancy, and Moss’s Mary is too powerful to be called friendship. It is a “kinship from deep in our souls,” and it was supposed to last forever. But the mystery-thriller gods say ha. Nancy’s murder leaves the friendship, the attached husbands and lovers, and even brothers in a shambles. Hidden desires, unburied pasts, envy versus guilt, and all kinds of terrible behavior interrupt what was ostensibly idyllic—you know, the yoozh. In hitting its genre beats, “Imperfect Women” is an eight-hour view inside a salacious confessional.
The first three episodes follow Eleanor in her ‘girl, are you okay’ crush on Nancy’s widower (Joel Kinnaman). I have to tell you, writing “widower” instead of “husband” made me giggle. The term doesn’t get as many RPMs as widow. In relation to this series, that’s appropriate. The women are the center of this universe, and it’s their decisions that will either keep them alive or shatter them. Episodes 4 and 5 swing into Nancy’s story, past and present, while 6 and 7 dissect Mary, before closing out in the final 8th, revealing everything that hadn’t shocked us up until then.
We’ve seen a lot of this subgenre recently, featuring the interior lives of women—wealthy ones contrasted with “ambitious” ones. The latter of the two, who are forever held in a position of adjacency, are told they don’t belong because they weren’t born with their diamond rings. Instead, they gained them by attraction or by wits. Often both. Always with a traumatic past for the outsider. “His and Hers,” “All Her Fault,” and now “Imperfect Women” are recent entries in this sometimes winning, sometimes sagging category of women-led adaptations that finds its ultimate It Girls in films, like “Gone Girl” and shows like “Big Little Lies.”
Listen, you can watch “Imperfect Women,” and it will be fine. You know when you ask someone how you look, and they say “fine,” and you feel less than complimented? It’s fine like that, like the absence of an opinion either way. Except for one thing: These women are acting their faces off. Because that’s what they do. They’re great, no denying it. The plot twists are also specific to the characters; there’s growth and, ultimately, reasons to root for Elle and Mary. Cheers to Leslie Odom Jr., as Eleanor’s brother Donovan, who adds sparkle and juiciness, turning this basic bubbly into mimosa moments worth sipping. Even so, the series left me slightly buzzed, mostly sober. There is nothing wrong with “Imperfect Women,” but that is neither praise nor criticism. It’s just fine.
