Resisting Everything but Temptation

Day 30, for my dear kerithwyn (with an extra side of huge long distance hugs): Wax poetic about a show you love that hasn't received proper fandom appreciation.

Ohhhh, how to pick just one? The list is indeed long. I feel like you've all gotten the idea I kinda like 12 Monkeys and Jeremiah and Miracles and Lost Girl. I was thinking about The King: Eternal Monarch and Being Erica, which I haven't talked about much, or SW: The Clone Wars, but I already posted about that one thanks to the prompt from musesfool.

For today, I'll pick one that I think kerithwyn might like, if she hasn't seen it already? It's called Imposters, a show that ran for two seasons in 2017-18, and is now available on Netflix. If I'd done Yuletide this year, it was one I would have asked for. Look how pretty they are!



This is a show where Inbar Lavi plays a lifelong con artist whose specialty is getting people to fall in love with her, then making off with every single thing of value they own. Things quickly get sticky when her latest victim, Ezra, meets her previous victim, Richard, and they realize they've been conned by the same woman in two completely different personas.

I really don't want to give too much away about the plot, because it's full of wonderful surprises. But it ends up with a trio of unlikely comrades in arms, the third of whom is Jules, an artist with a lifetime of psychological issues that she's still working on. From there, it becomes a show of road trips, hijinks, clever (and not so clever) cons, with tons of ship potential all around.

And as if the three of them aren't more than enough to love, this show also features Uma Thurman, Rachel Skarsten, and Paul Adelstein in recurring roles, as well as several other fantastic actors. All the characters are so well-written (and I'm including the secondary and tertiary characters, here), with fully developed personalities, histories, motivations, and growth.

The head writer and show creator wrote the screenplay for Practical Magic, I just learned, and three episodes of Mozart in the Jungle, as well some other good quirky/romantic movies. And I also just learned he had a TV pilot in 2021 starring the actress who plays Jules, the actor who played Richard, and William Jackson Harper from The Good Place, but apparently it didn't get picked up. Bummer. Hopefully he'll have another one soon!

I think one of the things that makes a great con artist story great is when the consequences for everyone involved feel like poetic justice, and this show is amazing at that. Throughout, the storylines and character choices pay off with satisfying results, and even the bad guys are mesmerizing—with some of them becoming characters you genuinely care about. (I also love that when the characters went to Mexico, they actually filmed it in Mexico, rather than filming in Vancouver and putting a filter over it.)

Despite the fact that I wish there'd been more, the ending of the show is satisfying, but open-ended enough to give you plenty of ideas for what happens next. It's pretty much perfect, for my money, and I'm perpetually sad that fandom seems to have almost entirely missed it. For anyone who loved Leverage (or Hustle) and doesn't know about it—I'm telling you.

If right now, today, I could pick a single show to get another season, it would be Imposters.