Diksha Sundriyal
As the investigation into Nancy’s murder gets even more twisted, the narrative of Apple TV+’s ‘Imperfect Women‘ takes a turn, unfolding from the perspective of Mary. After being in the background so far, her side of the story comes into the spotlight, leading to some shocking revelations. It picks up after Eleanor and Mary’s fight, following Eleanor’s confession about her affair with Robert and the letter he wrote. Later, she goes to her writing workshop, where she writes her and Howard’s story, focusing on the beginning of their affair, while he was still married to his wife, Jenny. Her classmates find her protagonist unlikable and tell her to focus on Nancy instead. This is when she finds out about the video and that Eleanor is now a person of interest in the case. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Mary Makes a Shocking Discovery
While she strolls through a supermarket, Mary compares her life to Nancy’s and her seemingly perfect world. The trip ends with her buying Adderall. Later that night, she tells her girls bedtime stories. When the girls are asleep and the house is quiet, she watches the news where Eleanor and Robert’s affair has launched an investigation into them and their whereabouts during the murder. Of course, Mary doesn’t believe Eleanor did it. While she comments on the news, Howard returns home. She is surprised because he wasn’t supposed to come until later the next day. But not only is he early, but he is also in high spirits. His interview in Ohio was a success. While it’s great that he got the job, Mary isn’t entirely happy about the possibility of having to move the whole family to Ohio.
Mary’s muted reaction leads to a minor argument, which makes it clear that her dreams don’t exactly matter in the relationship. When she tells him that they’d promised that she’d get her chance at building a career once he was established and the children were a bit older. But he reminds her that times have changed, and this is what’s best for them now. Mary eventually relents, and she ends the night by popping a pill, telling herself she is in control. The next morning, the cops show up at her house asking about Robert and Eleanor. Mary makes it clear that her friend is not the kind of person who kills people, but that Robert has famously had a bad temper. Mary also mentions Robert’s letter and is frustrated when the cop simply dismisses her leads. But then, the line of questioning changes.
The cops ask her where she was around the time of the murder. From a conversation with the bartender, they know that Mary was pretty drunk. This leads her to have a flashback, with Howard putting her to bed while himself dressed to go out. The next morning, while her husband leaves to talk to a real estate agent in Ohio, Mary looks through Nancy’s scrapbook, and by a stroke of luck or due to some divine intervention, she ends up finding a piece of paper. It turns out to be from the book that Howard wrote years ago, and the line highlighted on the paper is the one that Howard had read to Mary several times, the line she thought belonged to them as a couple.
Mary’s Search for Truth Leads Her to the Signs of the Past
When Mary takes the page to Howard and confronts him about why Nancy had that in the first place, he finds ways to explain it away as a random occurrence. He tries to evade the question, saying that perhaps she bought the book, but then says that he gifted it to her. Then he deflects the whole thing by talking about Mary’s addiction to pills and what happened the last time her condition got bad. It endangered the lives of one of their girls, and he is not sure if they can go through it again. While Howard strikes at Mary’s weak point, the hit is not strong enough to distract her from what’s right in front of her. He and Nancy were having an affair right under her nose, and she had no idea.
Eventually, Mary realizes that the whole thing had already revealed itself to her on the night of the ballet. She had noticed some tension between Nancy and Howard, and her husband had been visibly upset even when he returned home. She didn’t talk to Howard back then, though now she wishes she had. But she did decide to talk to Nancy. When she reached her home, she saw her friend driving away, so she followed her. When she asked Nancy what had happened, the latter blamed her husband. She said that Robert’s addiction turned him into a different kind of person, and she didn’t want to be around him at the time.
When Mary asks why she didn’t ask her or Eleanor for help, Nancy says that it’s because Howard has had experience tackling people with addictions. This is pointed at her, which makes her defensive, but it does the job. The conversation ends there, with Mary believing everything Nancy told her. As she thinks about it and how naive she was to believe those lies, Marcus shows up. He comes clean about getting in trouble with his bookie and then calling Eleanor to bail him out. Maru realizes that her friend is trying to protect her son, which is why there is a gap in her alibi. Still, she tells him that he should come to her the next time. This leads Marcus to note that that night when he returned home, he’d wanted to come clean, but she was asleep, and Howard was not at home.
Mary Talks to Howard’s Ex-Wife
When Marcus reveals that his father was not at home the night of Nancy’s murder, Mary’s head starts to spin. She remembers the blazer he wore that night, so she starts looking for it in the wardrobe. But she ends up finding a secret spot where Howard had hidden Nancy’s ring. Realizing that Nancy used to wear that ring almost all the time, including the night she was murdered, makes Mary wonder if Howard is the killer. She decides to get out of the house, but before she leaves, she is confronted by Nancy’s ghost. When Mary asks how she could do this to her friend, Nancy asks her, isn’t this what she did to Jenny? While Mary tries to tell herself that it was different, she isn’t entirely convinced.
Mary drives down to Howard’s ex-wife Jenny’s house. She wonders if, when they started dating, he read poetry to her. She wonders if this is a thing he does with all the women he has affairs with. But the conversation takes a different turn when Jenny reveals that Howard didn’t leave her to be with Mary. Rather, he’d had several affairs by that time. Mary was Jenny’s promising student, so when Howard had an affair with her, she decided to end things. Howard begged her to stay, and when she didn’t, he pushed her down the stairs. He also lied to Mary that Jenny was unstable and had slit her wrists. Jenny wishes she had warned Mary about him, and how he is not someone who likes to be left. But Mary knows, even with all the clear signs in front of her, she wouldn’t have believed anything Jenny said.
Mary’s Daughter Meets a Tragic Fate
All of this is too much to process for her, so Mary goes to Eleanor and tells her everything. She admits that she knew about him having other affairs, including an instance when he had sex with one of his students while Mary was bathing their daughter. Still, he’d always come back to her, and that’s what she thought mattered. But now, she wishes she’d done something back then. Perhaps Nancy would still be alive. Eleanor tells her not to blame herself, and the women reconcile, especially as Mary thanks Eleanor for helping her son. And then Eleanor’s phone rings. It is Howard, asking about Mary. At first, Mary doesn’t want to talk to him, but then he mentions that something has happened to their daughter, Artemis.
When Mary and Eleanor reach the hospital, little Artemis is being treated by doctors. It turns out she swallowed the pills from Mary’s box. While the girl goes into a seizure, Mary is devastated that she is the one responsible for her daughter’s current state. Her husband looks at her the same way. Though it does make one wonder. Did Artemis swallow the pills by herself, or did Howard do it because he knew that, this time, Mary couldn’t forgive him for having an affair? This time, she would leave him, so he made a play to stop her, or worse, to put her in a position where walking away wouldn’t be an option anymore.
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