Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers for The Perfect Couple.
The Perfect Couple gives viewers that rare permission to gawk and dream alike: it’s filled with beautiful people leading beautiful lives.
People who know me will be shocked as I write these words, but I don’t look like Nicole Kidman. Or Dakota Fanning for that matter. Nor do I live in a multi-million dollar mansion off the beautiful Nantucket shoreline with servants, drugs, sex, and Botox at my beck and call. With that said, Netflix’s murder mystery, The Perfect Couple, resonated with me—a rather middling Catholic wife and mother who is much more likely to be eating too much popcorn and bingeing Netflix shows on a Saturday night than dancing fabulously in a cocktail dress with my friends to Megan Trainor’s Criminals like we see in that glorious opening credits of the smash-hit series.
OK, full honesty here: sometimes you might find me in my kitchen pretending to dance like this. Sometimes, too, you might find me dreaming I live off a Nantucket coast, especially during the summer when I’m lying on a less than pristine Texas beach, curled up with an Elin Hilderbrand novel that I’m only catching every other sentence of between a barking dog and delighted-to-be-at-the-beach-yet-also-because-of-this-screaming children.
As I watched The Perfect Couple, I thought about my propensity to daydream about others’ seemingly perfect lives. Friends and family who know me well know that it’s not difficult to find me lost in a book. Nor is it difficult to find me gazing at out-of-reach mansions on Zillow or scrolling through others’ untouchable lives on Instagram.
Their desire for outward acceptance eclipses any real effort to form authentic bonds, whether with each other or with their family and friends.
The Perfect Couple gives viewers that rare permission to gawk and dream alike: it’s filled with beautiful people leading beautiful lives. Viewers are offered a rare glimpse of a glitzy world most only ever dream about. We are given unfettered permission to stare as famous novelist Greer Winbury, played by the always stunning Nicole Kidman and her charming, handsome husband Tag (Liev Schrieber) plan a lush wedding by the ocean for their son Benji (Billy Howle) and his striking fiancée Amelia Sacks (Eve Hewson).
The series juxtaposes the 29-year-old marriage of “the perfect couple,” Greer and Tag, with the one just beginning in the next generation, Benji and Amelia. Similar to viewers like me, Amelia is an outsider to Nantucket culture, and she wonders if she’ll ever fit in with this pristine family—and their fantasy life. Unsurprisingly, Greer doesn’t believe she will, but that doesn’t stop her daughter-in-law, or her friends, from trying.
Amelia also wonders if it’s worth the effort to even try to do so, even with all its seeming perks. In the show’s beginning, Amelia and her beautiful model maid-of-honor Merritt Monaco (Meghann Fahy) share selfies as they lounge poolside at the Winbury mansion, curating posts to inspire envy before a wedding that is undoubtedly being planned with every intention to accomplish just that.
As further case in point, when the youngest Winbury son, Will (Sam Nivola), feels sad after a recent breakup, Merritt playfully flirts with him and snaps a photo with him, tagging him publicly on purpose. Merritt’s keenly aware that her tanned, bikini-clad body, and radiant smile set against the scenic ocean view and multi-million dollar home will be just the thing to cheer Will up and make his ex jealous. Importantly, the envy only works if such a photo is posted for the world to see. No authentic emotional connection occurs between the two.
After all, of course, Merritt’s uninterested in Will—even if the youngest Winbury shoots her longing looks. The “perfect couple” and the radiant smile Will’s ex-girlfriend theoretically sees online is a sham, as are most of the “perfect” relationships the series depicts. Picture-perfect lives are all staged.
Soon after this picture is shared, audiences discover Merrit has been having an affair with Will’s dad. Nothing is as it seems to the outside viewers of this family’s life.
The next day, Merritt is found dead, floating in the water by the Winbury’s house. Her best friend’s wedding is called off, and everyone at the wedding party becomes marked as a potential criminal. Or to put it Catholic terms, they are all marked as potentially sinful. Whereas they may have seemed perfect on the outside, now it’s evident to the entire world that they are not. As journalists swarm the house, the Winbury family and their circle’s sin is on display.
Greer, a romance novelist, has promoted her seemingly perfect life with Tag as part of her brand, crafting an image of an idyllic marriage to boost book sales. However, the real issue in their relationship is not Tag’s affair with Merritt nor even the violence that happens at their estate. What stands out as even more problematic in the show’s parameters is the couple’s mutual fixation on maintaining their affluent, seemingly perfect Nantucket lifestyle at the expense of real human connection. Their desire for outward acceptance eclipses any real effort to form authentic bonds, whether with each other or with their family and friends.
Greer and Tag don’t seem to know if the other one has killed Merrit, or care: they only want to maintain their surface-level happiness.
While watching the show, I couldn’t help but notice parallels between its portrayal of lifestyle marketing—through both book promotions and social media—and the concerning trend of idealizing couple and family perfectionism to the point of idolizing couple and family perfectionism, a phenomenon I’ve observed increasingly within church communities, including my own Catholic circle.
It’s freeing to remember that God always sees beneath the surface, even when we humans often get tricked into only skimming the top, or scrolling the lies.
In one of the early scenes when we first see Greer and Tag alone, they’re relaxing outside their exquisite home, sharing a moment that would read to outsiders as at first intimate and loving. Instead, Greer uses this precious time to mock their Nantucket neighbors, observing judgmentally, “Anyone who wears flip-flops outside of the confines of their own house should be arrested.”
Immediately, I was reminded of a story I saw this summer about appropriate attire at Mass, which discussed “women who dress inappropriately” at church. Like Greer, the article mentioned “flip-flops” specifically. I am not saying that this is a perfect comparison: the writer does not mention arrest, after all! Yet I do worry about a prevailing sentiment that families ought to look and act a certain way or risk not being fully included in church life.
Catholics often focus on the idea of the “domestic church,” which emphasizes the unique call of holiness for Catholic couples and families. Vatican II document Lumen Gentium describes it this way:
The family is, so to speak, the domestic church. In it parents should, by their word and example, be the first preachers of the faith to their children; they should encourage them in the vocation which is proper to each of them, fostering with special care vocation to a sacred state.
What Lumen Gentium suggests is that Catholic couples and parents ought to build authentic, loving relationships first and foremost with the Lord, and then springing from that, with each other.
What it does not suggest is that Catholic couples and parents ought to place a universal ban on wearing flip-flops to Mass. Or that they ought to police other couples and parents about what they are wearing to Mass.
The ending of The Perfect Couple leaves its main characters at a crossroads, including Greer, its protagonist romance novelist. Greer “breaks up” the perfect couple starring in her book series, a couple supposedly based on her relationship with Tag. This decision hints that perhaps she’s ready to face the imperfect truth of her own marriage. It seems neither she nor Tag murdered Merritt, viewers and the couple discover alike, yet their refusal to try to unearth the truth about the murder together showed the evil beneath the surface of their outwardly beautiful lives, and marriage.
First Samuel 16:7 reminds us, “The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” In a culture obsessed with perfect appearances, both in the culture writ large and (in my mind) more sinisterly in church life, it’s freeing to remember that God always sees beneath the surface, even when we humans often get tricked into only skimming the top, or scrolling the lies.
There is no perfect couple, or human. For this, I’m thankful to God, who offers loving grace not for our polished appearances, but for our sincere efforts to love one another, flaws and all.
Yes, even when those flaws include my bad kitchen dancing.
