Summary
Imperfect Women continues to become more compelling as it goes, and in “Mary,” it reaches perhaps its darkest juncture yet.
If there’s a better argument for giving a show a chance than Imperfect Women, I struggle to think of one. Apple TV+’s female-focused murder-mystery started out as a deeply off-putting story about the world’s least likeable people, but it has steadily morphed across the weeks to become a surprisingly nuanced and engaging drama. The change in perspective was definitely helpful, and the way that Nancy’s viewpoint introduced a new suspect really worked. Episode 6 doubles down on that suspect, really pushing Howard as the potential killer, but using Mary’s point of view to build more jeopardy around him.
It’d be easy to say that Nancy and Mary are simply more compelling characters than Eleanor and Robert, which, on some level, I do believe is true. But that doesn’t quite work, since this episode also makes Eleanor seem a lot more sympathetic, even though she’s barely in it. It’s probably more accurate to say that this is a show really coming into its own with time, deepening its emotional contours and contorting its mystery, albeit in a way that has required a broader view of the entire picture than the earliest episodes necessarily allowed.
Smartly, though, there’s a clear refusal to allow the formal gimmicks to play out the same way every time. In Mary’s case, her narration is framed as a piece of creative writing she has penned, based on her own experiences, which she’s reading aloud to a group who reflexively consider her “lead character” immoral and unlikeable, and the salacious mystery surrounding Nancy’s death to be the much more interesting component. It’s a clever choice, since it’s drawing attention to how off-putting the characters are, while also reiterating Mary’s core feelings that she has always felt somewhat separate from Nancy and Eleanor. At one point, she even says that being friends with Nancy is the most interesting thing about her.
But this narration also reveals some important backstory, including the fact that Mary was once one of Howard’s students, and that their relationship began as an affair, which led to his ex-wife’s attempted suicide. Even this, though, is later upended, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, since it’s very much the payoff to an episode-long effort to portray Howard as an incredibly dangerous, somewhat psychotic abuser.
Mary has a drug habit and has an ongoing relationship with a store clerk to procure Adderall, which she isn’t supposed to be taking, thanks to some nebulous spiralling event in her past that jeopardised the lives of her children. Howard uses this fact to gaslight and manipulate Mary at every opportunity. They had once discussed Mary pursuing her own career once their kids had grown up, but Howard has secured a new job in Ohio and plans to uproot the entire family to take it, whether Mary — or indeed their children — like it or not. He also leverages Mary’s drug habit to get him off the hook when she confronts him about having found a page from his book — translating the collected works of the obscure Roman poet Catullus — hidden in Nancy’s scrapbook. The page has a certain phrase underlined; Howard had underlined the same one while courting Mary herself, establishing a pattern of wooing behaviour that even Mary, in her increasingly drug-addled state, recognises for what it is.
Imperfect Women Episode 6 does a good job with the drug thing. It isn’t like Mary is ripping lines on the kitchen island, but she pops pills more frequently as she discovers more damning information suggesting Howard’s relationship with Nancy. This causes her to spiral in other ways. What were once idle little statements to “Nancy” become fully-fledged visions of the woman herself, giving the latter part of the episode a ghostly, ambiguous quality that rather suits it. But it largely avoids the trope of a grieving woman losing her marbles, because Mary consistently sees through Howard’s bullshit either way.
Corey Stoll and Elizabeth Moss in Imperfect Women | Image via Apple TV+
We might as well talk about suspects, especially since the show is doubling down on Howard as the prime one. Marcus corroborates Eleanor’s story about picking him up on the night Nancy died and paying off his bookie, which means she’s pretty much guaranteed to be innocent. This revelation also leads to a reconciliation between Mary and Eleanor, since the former reveals the latter has been lying to protect her son, and the best small acting moment of the hour, when Elisabeth Moss has to swallow back her rage about Marcus’s gambling after promising him that she wouldn’t get mad. She really is very good at this sort of thing.
Howard, then, is definitely the frontrunner, but he’s not the only one. When Ganz stops by to speak to Mary and Howard, Mary gives her a bunch of possible leads, including the fact that Robert knew about the affair and pretended not to, which Howard supports with some convenient testimony about Robert becoming “prickly” when he doesn’t get what he wants. But she also mentions Scott, Nancy’s step-dad, who claims to have had no contact with Nancy for 20 years. We know this isn’t true, and so does Howard, but he can’t say anything about it without giving away how he knows, so he keeps quiet. But it raises more suspicion around Scott.
Ganz also heard from a bartender that Mary had to be “poured into a taxi” on the night Nancy died, which Howard also corroborates by giving her an alibi, but it’s impossible to tell whether he’s telling the truth or assuming that the same alibi — that he put Mary to bed at 10:30 p.m. — will also cover him. Later, during Marcus’s confession scene, he happens to mention that Howard wasn’t even home on the night of Nancy’s murder. Mary keeps this in mind, and it supports her theory that he’s the elusive “David”, but it isn’t the only thing.
The smoking gun discovery comes when Mary discovers Nancy’s claddagh ring hidden in the closet. Since this gives the impression that Howard killed her and took the ring from her corpse, Mary pays a visit to Howard’s ex-wife, Jenny, who confirms that Howard’s story of their separation was all bogus. Mary wasn’t the first of his students that he had slept with, but she was the one Jenny was closest to, so that was the point she decided enough was enough. She never hurt herself, either — she shows off her slender, scar-free wrists to prove it. The only scar she got from her marriage to Howard was a bad one on her knee after he threw her down two flights of stairs. And he said Robert was prickly!
In a final stinger, Howard calls Eleanor’s phone to tell her that Artemis, Mary’s daughter, is in the hospital. She took a bunch of Mary’s hidden Adderall pills, but given that we saw Mary stash them earlier in a place where no child could reach, the implication is that Howard might have tried to kill his own daughter to direct suspicion onto Mary. I told you this show was getting dark
