Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | March 23, 2026
I’ve watched the first two episodes of Imperfect Women — that’s probably going to be my limit. It’s one of the most wretchedly written “prestige” series I’ve ever had the misfortune to sit through. I have no idea why Elisabeth Moss, Kerry Washington, Kate Mara, or Joel Kinnaman signed up for it. I can only assume Apple greenlit it because of the cast, and I can only assume the cast agreed to make it because Apple bought all of them new wings for their homes. It’s circular reasoning.
Typically, with a series this awful, I’ll endure the whole thing and write a spoiler piece so I can spare everyone who watched the first couple of episodes the effort of watching the rest. And based on what I’ve seen, it really is effort. Not because it’s difficult or challenging — it’s neither — but because it’s so profoundly bland that it actively slips off the brain. You’re not watching it so much as letting it happen to you.
As it turns out, though, I don’t think I need to watch the rest. I’ve seen House of Cards, Billions, Dark Places, and a half-dozen other projects starring Corey Stoll. Corey Stoll always plays the villain or the red-herring villain — the guy the series wants you to think is the villain. He has made an entire career out of being the most evil man in any given room, whether or not the show is ready to admit it yet.
But this is Imperfect Women. I’m not convinced it has any cards up its sleeve. Joel Kinnaman is already doing the heavy lifting as the character the show wants you to suspect — the grieving widower with a rich family and a reputation to protect (and Kerry Washington’s character is supporting red-herring, as the woman already having an affair with the widower). Stoll, meanwhile, plays Elisabeth Moss’s loving, supportive husband who — in the first two episodes — is mildly irritated that his wife is too preoccupied with the murder of her best friend, played by Kate Mara.
So. Based on the Prestige Mystery Principle and the Transitive Property of Corey Stoll, I’m calling it: Corey Stoll is the murderer. I don’t know his motive, though his slightly oily, supportive-husband energy suggests he was sleeping with Kate Mara’s character and got possessive when he suspected she was involved with Davide — the brooding artist who serves as the series’s first red herring.
It’s Occam’s Razor, Corey Stoll edition. Res Ipsa Corey Stoll.
