'The Perfect Couple' Premiere Recap: Happy Wedding Eve

The Perfect Couple

Happy Wedding Eve

Season 1 Episode 1

Editor’s Rating 3 stars ***

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Photo: Seacia Pavao/Netflix

Ah, Nantucket in the summer. Sunbathers are relaxing on the beach, the whales are putting on an acrobatic show out in the Atlantic, and dead bodies are washing up on the shores of $40 million dollar “cottages” on the morning of very expensive, high-profile weddings. There’s just nothing like it, is there? That is exactly how we kick off things on the journey of The Perfect Couple — we are closing out the summer season in style … and possibly murder. Fun!

You want to know the exact moment I knew The Perfect Couple was right for me? That we were in for a sudsy beach read in TV form? It was the moment I saw those opening credits. A choreographed group dance number to Meghan Trainor’s “Criminals”? When you get Nicole Kidman and Liev Schrieber to gleefully perform a line dance for a show about secrets and murder, well, we’ve won, okay? Yeah, Nicole Kidman might be the “we come to this place for magic” lady but she is also a fucking Academy Award winner; The woman commits and it’s clear she is committing to this vibe. A vibe that says we are here to entertain. A vibe that says, “Yes, someone is dead and everyone is a suspect, but we are having fun.” And if that’s not your particular vibe, not to be mean, but you should get off this ride.

This is all a compliment, by the way. The first episode of The Perfect Couple, based on the queen of the beach read Elin Hilderbrand’s novel of the same name, gives me a lot of hope that the six-episode limited series will not only be enjoyable end-of-the-summer fare, but will ultimately be a satisfying yarn. This first episode sets up the entire mystery at hand and introduces us to a truckload of characters with a whole heap of personality — and in under 60 minutes, no less.

We are gathered here today for the nuptials of Amelia Sacks, a normie zoologist, and Benjamin “Benji” Winbury, son of famed author Greer Garrison Winbury and trust fund DILF (so says his daughter-in-law, yes, for real) Tag Winbury. The Winburys are extremely loaded and come with all the pretentious fixings. We get a quick look at Amelia and Benji’s beachside rehearsal dinner on the Winbury estate, Summerland — more expensive and elaborate than many people’s weddings — where things seem to be going along swimmingly. We’re happy! The champers is flowing! The bride and groom-to-be seem excited and in love. But you never realize just how creepy the sentiment “I love this woman to death” is until you immediately cut from that line to blood-curdling screaming and some type of water-based struggle.

“We’ve got a floater,” a Nantucket Deputy named Carl tells his boss, Chief of Police Dan Carter, in the wee hours of the following morning. The wedding will be called off — the investigation has begun. The episode uses the interrogations of some of the characters to dump a whole lot of exposition in a short amount of time. There’s Gosia, the Winbury housekeeper who definitely has a thing for Tag; Roger, the wedding planner, who calls the Winburys “kill someone and get away with it” rich; Isabel, a family friend from France who describes Greer as “having a stick up her asshole”; and pregnant wife of eldest Winbury son Thomas, Abby, who is quite unbothered about saying things like “Gosia wants to fuck Tag so bad. I bet she rubs one out to that little baby picture of his she keeps next to her bed” during a police interrogation.

Friends, I did not know I needed Dakota Fanning as a heinous rich bitch, but now I cannot believe I lived so long without Dakota Fanning as a heinous rich bitch. What a gift. Fanning plays the boundless entitlement and cutting passive aggressiveness with aplomb. Abby is the scariest of mean girls — the ones who do it all with a smile. Later, we learn that Amelia’s mother Karen is dying of cancer, and they moved up the wedding to the Fourth of July weekend to make sure she could be there (or, as Gosia puts it, “accommodate [her] dying schedule”). When Karen and Amelia’s father Bruce arrive at the Winbury estate, Abby greets them with a cheerful “so happy we could rearrange our plans for the Fourth to be here.” She is the worst and also the best.

There’s one more character currently pulled in for questioning: Amelia, in her wedding dress and in a state of complete shock after finding the body in the water. The Perfect Couple waits until the end of the episode to reveal the victim, but based on not only the characters we see during the short time we spend at the crime scene, but also the fact that really only Amelia is beside herself over the death, it wasn’t much of a surprise to learn that the morning of her wedding, Amelia found her best friend and maid of honor Merritt Monaco dead in the water. Even if you guessed that big episode one reveal before it happened, it doesn’t mean there isn’t still a lot of mystery to mull over. We still don’t know the exact cause of death — at this point, it could be some sort of accident. If Merritt was murdered, though, there is more than one motive, and there is a whole gaggle of suspects.

At the moment, two at the top of the list are for sure the titular Perfect Couple — Greer and Tag. Once we return to the morning of the rehearsal dinner to get the full story of that day, we watch Greer discover in real time that Tag is having an affair. When the jeweler delivers the rings for Benji and Amelia (it says so much about Greer that she is the one picking these out, doesn’t it?), the woman asks her about the gorgeous gold bracelet with the pave diamonds that Tag bought for her. You immediately see on Greer’s face that not only did she never receive that bracelet, but she knows exactly what it means: Tag bought it for someone else. When Greer finds the receipt — for a cool $18,476 — we get a good look at the bracelet, too. Eagle-eyed viewers, I’m sure, spotted that same bracelet on Merritt’s wrist when she was giving her toast at the rehearsal. Perhaps Greer spotted it, too.

Just the idea of Tag having an affair serious enough to warrant such a purchase, even if she has yet to figure out who he’s cheating with, is enough to throw Greer off her axis a bit. Benji walks in right after Greer finds the receipt. He’s there to talk to his mother about being nicer to Amelia. Like, if you’re wondering whether or not Greer could kill a person, just watch that moment in the kitchen when Amelia takes a bite of a croissant and Greer says, “Wedding dress be damned, huh?” You could’ve just tipped me over into a coffin at that point. So, yes, Benji is right that Greer isn’t a fan of Amelia, most likely because Amelia doesn’t care about keeping up appearances or acting the part of a Winbury. Greer doesn’t take the accusations well, trying to explain that she’s just watching out for her son — she doesn’t buy that Amelia has feelings for him the way he does for her, and she wishes she would show a little more interest in being part of the family. Greer is, obviously, a woman obsessed with keeping up appearances, but her anger is kicked up a few levels due to Tag’s extracurriculars. She tells Benji that marriage doesn’t necessarily mean devotion — something we know she’s dealing with at that very moment. And if you don’t think Greer could be deceptive enough to cover up a murder, it’s worth noting that Benji walks into that room demanding his mother try harder to be nicer to his fiancée and walks out of it telling Greer that he’ll get Amelia to try harder to be a part of the family.

Greer also lets her emotions come to the surface a bit when she’s on the phone with her editor, Enid. Greer has a new novel coming out — she’s made her name with her Dash & Dolly series of novels — and People magazine is doing a big interview with her and Tag this week. The headline will apparently be, ahem “The Perfect Couple,” playing up Greer and Tag’s 29 years of marriage and enviable love — they are the inspiration for Dash & Dolly, after all. Greer wants to lean away from that angle, but she’s too deep into this idyllic picture she’s painted for her adoring readers to get out of it now. All of this anger and frustration might boil over at the exact wrong time for Merritt.

And speaking of Merritt, she’s kind of the opposite of Greer in most ways. She’s warm and open and free. Sure, both Abby and Isabel mention she “likes to have a good time,” which is definitely their code for “slutty,” and Abby has a heart-warming story about Merritt being a gold digger in the past, but mostly she seems like a pretty great friend. We get a poolside conversation between Amelia and Merritt the day of the rehearsal in which Amelia worries that she isn’t head over heels for Benji (no one tell Greer she’s right). Merritt assures her that it’s just cold feet but also tells her that if she wants to call this wedding off she has every right to — Merritt will back her friend up no matter what she decides. She also immediately decides that Abby is a huge bitch (true) and the gals also have a nice conversation about how Greer’s butthole is definitely bleached and waxed and that’s just real friendship right there.

Merritt is sweet to Will, who just got dumped and definitely has a crush on Merritt. Is it a strong enough crush to get overwhelmingly jealous? She also seems quite attached to Amelia. Could their closeness bother Benji? And then there’s the mysterious best man, Shooter Dival. Amelia’s definitely lusting over him, but does he have anything to do with what happens to Merritt? Like I said, the suspect list is a long one at the moment — it’s time for The Perfect Couple to start whittling it down.

• Other crime scene details: There’s a trail of blood leading to the water from two Adirondack chairs. There is one broken glass in the sand and one with a lipstick stain still sitting on one of the chairs.

• Okay, hi, hello, I am already obsessed with our police duo. Chief Carter is a man born and bred in Nantucket, and although he isn’t one of them, you can tell he has experience handling the uber-wealthy lot. He certainly doesn’t love the detective from out of town the DA sends in to “babysit” — Detective Nikki Henry. She is rough around the edges and does not give a shit. She’s here to get the job done. Although, she will admit when a donut is out of this world, she’s not a monster. They have a rough start but I cannot wait until these two become a real team.

• When Chief Carter informs his teen daughter Chloe that her wedding catering gig will be canceled because someone died, she starts to freak out. It might have something to do with the bloody shirt she’s hiding in her room.

• Um, couldn’t Amelia have found a window to free that ladybug? Would’ve saved us all a lot of trouble.

• People getting strange phone calls and ignoring them: Greer dismisses a call from a Broderick Graham and looks rather vexed about it; Merritt gets a call from a DL and explains that it’s a codename for a guy she used to hook up with.

• One of my favorite details from the interrogations is when Gosia tells the police that Greer has a gift-wrapping room in her house but it’s Gosia who actually does all the gift wrapping, and all from her bedroom. So not only does Greer force someone else to do that job, but she still wants people to think she does it for herself.

• I don’t think it can be a coincidence that we learn about Tom’s favorite pastime, pill roulette, in which you toss a bunch of random prescription pills together and take one at random and get an extended scene in which Karen tucks away three pills from a baggie with a caution sign on it. Let’s expect that to come into play at some point, right?