10 thoughts I had watching The Perfect Couple
Like, isn't Nicole Kidman making out with her best friend's ex-husband awkward?
*Note: Most definitely contains spoilers for the Netflix series of The Perfect Couple. You’ve been warned!
So, like most women over 30 with a Netflix subscription, I smashed its latest opulent mystery series, The Perfect Couple, over the last week. (I’d say weekend normally, but the TV was hogged by footy finals. Can’t wait for the season to be over.)
Starring Nicole Kidman and Liev Shreiber, and based on the book by Elin Hildebrand, the story centres on a wealthy family who have gathered at their holiday home in Nantucket for their middle son’s wedding. However, when the maid of honour turns up dead, it turns out everyone has a secret - one they might be willing to kill for.
It obviously ticks so many boxes - ridiculous awful rich white people, murder mystery, secretssecretslieslies (my fav genre), a handsome friend, enough twists to keep you guessing, and provides some solid water cooler chat. More champagne thrown in peoples’ faces would have been welcome, but at least there was a brawl over a wedding cake.
I also found it SO WEIRD that Nicole Kidman had to play an on-screen wife of her best friend in REAL life’s EX-husband, Liev Schrieber, but the arts are… full open and everyone is probably ENM and much cooler than me, I guess?
Anyway. Once it ended and the suspect was revealed, I had thoughts and questions. Like…
10 questions about The Perfect Couple on Netflix
1. How did Abby even know about the pregnancy?
So, -AGAIN, SPOILER SPOLIER- in the end, the killer was Abby, the wannabe-high-society wife of the excruciatingly hetero older brother, Thomas. In a flashback sequence, we were shown that Abby (played with DELICIOUS highbrow bitchery by Dakota Fanning) drugged and drowned Merritt to avoid waiting for her husband’s inheritance. With Merritt pregnant, another heir meant splitting the cash pie, and waiting another 18 years to get it.
Look, solid motive. Except… when did she find out about the pregnancy? We know the father of the baby, Daddy Tag, only found out at the party, and he’s not gonna chat about it. Youngest brother Will overheard, but wouldn’t have run to his awful brother. Merritt herself would not have discussed it with her, neither would her best mate, or even Greer. So… how did Tom and Abby even get wind? And even if they did… crushing the pills in the middle of the night seemed so calculated for very new information, no?
2. How did Greer not have 300K?
In one plotline that turned out to be a major red herring, Greer gets her son’s hot/rich mate to loan her a casual $300g’s (G’s? I don’t know, my account doesn’t work in Gs, more c’s, lower case…) to send to her brother. But like… you are extremely wealthy, throwing book launches and elaborate weddings and dinners? Where’s your own cash? I get a lot was in the family trust, but she’s meant to be like a Liane Moriaty or JK Rowling - couldn’t she use her own dough? And why the bro’s friend, out of all people? It was weird and unexplained.
3. Why was Greer so secretive about her brother to the cops?
Sorry, but I did guess he was related the minute he also had a (questionable) English accent. That said, why was this such a secret? Obviously her escort past was a secret, but why couldn’t her kids know she had a brother she was estranged from? Why didn’t she tell the cops right away he wasn’t a hit man? Like… why the secrecy for something so basic?
4. Why did they keep talking about the Turkish Mafia?
Loved the cops, especially the female, she was funny and real. But they kept going on and on about Greer’s brother’s connections to the underground and his criminal past but it really had… absolutely no connection to anything?
5. Who gives their best friend’s fiancé pictures of themselves in a bikini to paint?
How weird was this plot point? I thought for sure Benji was lying (side note - what rich snob family is calling their kid Benji?) when he said Merritt gave him some pics to paint her in. Trying to imagine a world where I casually hand my best friend’s husband some pictures of me a bikini and say, “Paint me like one of your French girls”.
6. When did Liev Shreiber become a Certified Daddy?
Okay… right? Like, legit never thought about him, other than he was once Mr. Naomi Watts. Like never. Then all of a sudden, Tag Winbury is… hot? And like, really cool in the dance scene? I mean, a major awful player and the character is awful, but like, as for Liev… hello, my new Jewish friend!
7. Why was Chloe allowed to keep hanging out with Will?
In one of the final scenes, we see Chloe, the policeman’s daughter, hanging at the home with youngest son Will. This is after Will came into her window at night, took her on a boat in a storm, and after the policeman got to know how horrible the Winbury family is. Why on earth is he still letting her hang out with these awful and terrifying people?
8. Why did Merritt have to die?
When Abby drugs and drowns Merritt, killing both her and her unborn child (rough), it does come to mind that there may have been some easier (if not still extremely horrible) solutions for our villain(s). Like… threatening her? Making her take a different kind of pill? Cashing in on the money when Will turns 18, which was well before Merritt would have the baby? Seemed… extreme.
9. How was Abby actually found guilty?
While we see how the cops put together Abby’s motive, what actually placed her at the scene of the crime? No witnesses, no DNA, no confession… there was something about her hand cream or shampoo or something, as well as washing a glass, but that’s pretty weak. Would have been better for a real smoking gun that we know would hold up in court.
10. What was with the weird book ending at the zoo?
So, as well as it being extremely strange that Amelia didn’t RUN from this awful family with every interaction, the ending was even stranger. We skip forward six months, and Amelia is working at a zoo. Greer, her horrible, nasty, uptight mother in law, is suddenly all chummy and writing a book about her, wanting to get tea. Like… what? Why is she suddenly nice? What happened to her son? They’re friends, even after you completely ruined her relationship? How does her family feel about this book? Why can’t you just leave her alone? This kind of ruined it.
Overall, felt it was a great mystery. I know every episode I changed who I thought the culprit was, believing I was so clever and a step ahead, only to change my mind at every turn.
I have heard many people believe the maid would have been good (always cleaning up Tag’s messes), and in the book, it turns out to be an accidental drowning after Merritt mistakenly inhales a sleeping pill. This obviously would have SUCKED on TV, and I’m glad they changed it.
Overall, it had enough fun twists to keep us guessing, and Nicole at her best, as an uptight, psychotic b*tch - and I mean that as a compliment. What did you think?
Yeah. I'd be interested to hear what others thought. I'll watch a Kidman movie under duress but it HAS to be worth it.