Summary
Imperfect Women really improves in “Louise”, delivering some layered character work while also introducing a new prime suspect.
The upside of a show in which none of the characters are likeable is that there is no shortage of people who might want to kill them. In the context of a murder-mystery, this is quite the boon, and it’s one that Imperfect Women, a show that I think I have perhaps been a little unnecessarily harsh on, seems to understand quite profoundly. Episode 5, “Louise”, does a very good job of building up what appears to be the story’s only sympathetic dynamic, and then delights in using it to wrong-foot us once again and introduce yet another potential suspect in Nancy’s death, this one even more surprising.
As with the previous episode, this one is also set entirely in the past, starting several weeks before Nancy’s death and then building up right to the eve of it, developing important new context all the while. Of particular importance is the evolution of Nancy and Howard’s relationship from its starting point, which Nancy describes as “babysitting Mary’s underemployed husband”, to its end, which includes pretty serious threats and a helping of sexual assault for good measure. It’s a testament to the quality of the episode that both extremes feel quite organic, even if the latter is a little sudden.
If “Louise” doesn’t necessarily shine a completely new light on Nancy, it at least changes the angle enough that her shadow takes on different proportions. Through Phil, she’s working as a creative consultant on a performance of Ariadne, a balletic retelling of the myth of Ariadne and Dionysus, which, it’s probably worth pointing out, revolves around the process leading to madness, with seven dancers comprising seven aspects of the same woman. That could be a coincidence, but I’m going to err on the side of it being quite deliberate.
Howard is also working on the project as a classics scholar, providing contextual notes to explain the mythology in the audience program. Phil is still calling him David (and Nancy “Louise”, hence the title). At first, the name mix-up is just written off as a funny cokehead faux pas, but it comes to represent something more for Nancy and Howard, whose relationship evolves through well-intentioned, thoughtful little gifts and moments of unexpected openness. Their new nicknames begin to represent alternate personae, alter egos that are, at least in Nancy’s case, perhaps truer than the image of a demure housewife that she projects to the world.
One of the ideas being toyed with here is that Nancy has a self-destructive streak. Howard calls her a “firestarter” during their flirtiest pre-affair exchange, which is an idea reflected elsewhere, too. Scott is still messaging her despite her telling him to leave her alone, but it’s reiterated multiple times that she reached out to him. In her initial exchange with Davide, from whom she had commissioned a painting for her and Robert’s anniversary, she’s a little flirty and quickly softens on the idea of showing off her scars in the photoshoot. Later, when she tells Howard about Scott and how she would sleep with him behind her mother’s back, she doesn’t frame the relationship as abusive, although she doesn’t correct Howard when he does. She also confesses to having enjoyed the danger and attention of that dynamic.
This isn’t to say that Nancy wasn’t abused by Scott — she quite clearly was. But it’s interesting to see how her response to that trauma manifests in the present day. She is likely retroactively giving herself more agency as a coping mechanism, but it’s telling that her response to uncertainty around Robert is not just to sleep with another man, but the husband of her best friend. It’s an impressive degree of self-destruction, though she does immediately feel bad about it (though not, importantly, bad enough to stop doing it.)
Where Imperfect Women Episode 5 works is in making this relationship seem feasible. Howard is initially polite and charming and sees something in Nancy that her rich friends don’t. He often comments on her intelligence; he tells her to take pride in her accomplishments. He sees her as more than a trophy wife. There’s a flirtatious contour to it, but it’s mostly framed as earnestness, especially since Howard can relate to Nancy’s humble beginnings. Financial pressure is putting undue strain on his relationship with Mary, and they barely have time to sleep, let alone to spend with each other. You can understand why they’d be attracted to each other.
Nancy’s internal justification is that Robert is trying to pluck up the courage to leave her. This suspicion comes from her having discovered the paperwork to separate their assets in the previous episode, and is supported by Robert’s worsening drinking problem and generally inattentive demeanour. There’s a funny bit where Nancy and Robert have dinner with Mary and Howard, and while the daughter of the latter couple is doing a cute little karaoke performance, Robert is absolutely killing a giant glass of wine. In his drunken state, he offers to have his family friend power lawyer, who owes him a favour, represent Marcus for free. It’s a power move wrapped up in an altruistic gesture, and when it’s rebuffed, he takes it out on Nancy.
But Nancy is wrong. Robert isn’t planning to leave her. He’s really stressed about having pushed his father to acquire a company that turned out to be riddled with debt, and his portion of the trust fund having been used to paper over the losses. In other words, all of Robert’s expenditure now has to go through his dad, and he’s worried that Nancy might leave him as a result. The separation of assets was to protect her money from his father. I mean, it’s kind of an insult that he thinks the only reason his wife is with him is for his money, but that’s the world he comes from. Nancy realises immediately that her revenge affair was a gross miscalculation. As a result, she just ghosts Howard completely.
Howard, understandably, doesn’t take this well. At the performance of Ariadne, he corners Nancy in one of the side rooms and demands an explanation; when she doesn’t give it, he threatens to tell Robert and sexually assaults her. Nancy, in return, tells him that neither Robert nor anyone else would ever believe that she’d sleep with him. It’s a vicious, albeit deserved, stinger, and the two leave things on terrible terms, supplying “David” with a credible motive for murder. Credit to Corey Stoll here, too, for really selling the wild pivot from bumbling academic to threatening abuser.
That night, though, Nancy contemplates confessing the affair to Robert, but the decision is taken out of her hands when her phone starts pinging with pictures of her and Howard — though Howard isn’t visible — having a tumble in the back of the Range Rover. We’ve already heard about this from Robert’s perspective. He did indeed go ballistic and start throwing things, as described. Nancy panicked and left, speeding away in the Range Rover, only to be followed by… Mary!
With that twist revealed, let me just draw attention to something else. Earlier, in the montage of Nancy’s liaisons with Howard, there’s a brief scene where they both — Howard is wearing a baseball cap, but I’m pretty sure it’s him — seem to be in a drugged-up party with Davide. Nancy drapes herself all over Davide, and then we cut to her staring at the portrait he painted of her, in which she’s naked (Robert destroyed it earlier in the season, if you recall). I’m not totally sure how we got from Nancy lying in Davide’s lap to Davide painting her completely nude, but the fact that this scene was included at all suggests to me that the intervening time might yield some more important clues.
For now, though, Mary has unexpectedly jumped to the top of the suspect list. It turns out you don’t cast Elisabeth Moss to just play a bored housewife after all.
