“He has everyone fooled.”
The finale of “Imperfect Women” is here and all questions have been answered in a breakneck, fast-paced episode that exposes how ineffective the justice system can be and how the illusion of family structure can turn toxic. We not only learn, with certainty, who killed Nancy, but we also get a better picture of who Mary and Eleanor are.
Let’s break down episode eight: The Bridge.
Criminal Justice or Injustice
The legal system proves to be the season’s secondary villain. Jumping right back in from the end of episode seven, Howard is released due to a lack of evidence, and he immediately reclaims the girls from protective care. His malice toward Mary has grown into something even more dangerous; he’s convinced she’s the reason he was arrested and she begs and pleads with him to no avail.
Meanwhile, the police have found their perfect scapegoat: Scott Reed. With phone records showing Nancy called him multiple times the night she died, Detective Ganz is satisfied. The walls are closing in on the wrong man, leading to a brutal fallout between our leads. In an excruciating exchange of insults, Mary and Eleanor’s friendship seemingly hits a breaking point.
Multiple times throughout the season, both Mary and Eleanor have tried to point the detectives in the right direction, but it’s clear Ganz’s disdain for them colors how she approaches this investigation. Sure, there’s not nearly as much evidence against Howard as there is against Scott; however, when someone says “I literally saw this man standing over her dead body,” wouldn’t that warrant a follow-up? The police’s sheer incompetency throughout the season was infuriating and very similar to reality.
Leaning on Family
With nowhere else to turn, Eleanor flies private to see her mother (played by the incomparable Sheryl Lee Ralph). Ralph delivers a quiet but powerhouse performance as the strict, never-satisfied matriarch. Yet, beneath the tension, we get a breakthrough. Eleanor finally weeps for the version of herself she lost to Robert, and her mother offers a rare moment of grace: “Don’t shut down. Be better than me.”
It’s a thrill to see Ralph and Kerry Washington play an embattled mother-daughter pairing, both trying to bear the weight of years of emotional strain and coming out of the other side with mutual understanding.
At the legal aid office, we see a different kind of generational trauma. Mary and Howard’s oldest son, Marcus, reveals he knows exactly who his father is, telling the legal aid lawyer that Howard is a serial cheater who has fooled everyone. It’s a disquieting reminder that kids see more than parents give them credit for. His mother appreciates his support, but she genuinely looked horrified that he was even aware of how awful Howard is.
The actual custody hearing itself was a bit brutal for Mary as Howard’s lawyer really dug into her history of Adderall abuse. Despite a brave testimony from Jenny regarding Howard’s physical violence, the judge delivers a crushing blow: neither parent is deemed safe. The girls are headed to foster care. No one expected this to happen, but frankly the judge isn’t entirely wrong here. Mary needs to address her addiction ASAP before something worse happens. The show doesn’t really go any further than this, though; the drug abuse thread pretty much ends here.
Testimony and the Moment of Truth
Adding to all this craziness, Scott Reed’s lawyer reached out to both Mary and Eleanor. When they visit him, the truth of Nancy’s final moments is revealed. Nancy hadn’t called Scott out of some misguided form of love; she called him to not only reckon with the truth of the abuse he inflicted on her as a child, but to ask him to scare Howard away because she needed protection. On the night she died, Scott was on the phone, listening as Nancy confronted Howard. He arrived just in time to see Howard standing over Nancy’s dead body and removing the Claddagh ring from her hand.
The final moments of the episode are chaotic and genuinely frightening. Howard tracks Mary to her motel, threatening her with a knife from their kitchen with a plan to stage her suicide. In a poetic callback to Nancy’s final move, Mary tricks Howard into letting her call Eleanor, leaving the line open so El can hear his confession.
We finally get the full story of the night Nancy died, complete with flashbacks. Nancy and Howard argued viciously (I still don’t know why she would meet this unhinged man in the middle of the night alone, under a bridge). The fight turned violent and in his rage, Howard shoved Nancy into the wall, killing her instantly.
Mary’s quick thinking helped to save her own life, Eleanor’s car helped with taking down Howard, and the knife he had at her back previously ended him once and for all. Nancy’s death is avenged by her two best friends, and more specifically by the best friend whom she betrayed so deeply. It’s a bit poetic.
Mysterious Endings
The episode concludes with a jump to the near future that feels intentionally provocative. Eleanor has found a new partner, seemingly at peace. But the final shot of Mary and Robert throwing a birthday party for Juniper is the one that lingers. With an enigmatic smile to Robert (the man she previously called “barely a person”), Mary seems to have found serenity as she steps into the life Nancy used to have. Her roleplaying has come full circle.
Final Thoughts
The episode really did a lot of work to tie up any remaining loose ends, Mary’s Adderall abuse notwithstanding. Crucially, Eleanor got the closure she needed with Robert and her mother. Mary is back with her children, where she wants to be. Robert is out of prison, but who knows what his alcohol abuse looks like now.
Nancy’s death caused a series of catastrophic events, but brought peace and understanding in the end. It just took the threat of jail and another death to get there. This is as happy of an ending as these complicated people are going to get.
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