TV Show Analysis Essay on Imposter

Introduction

In the series of Imposter, a con artist named Maddie Johnson takes on multiple victims, and she pretends to give them "everything they ever needed." However, little do the victims know that she is a con woman. She takes all of their assets and leaves behind a trail of broken hearts. In these relationships with the victims; Maddie changes into a different personality each time. For one victim she is "Ava," for another "Cece," and another "Alice," and yet another knows her as "Saffron" As the season continues Maddie is troubled in her last con victims, Patrick, due to her having real intimate feelings toward the target. The three previous wounded, heartbroken con victims, Ezra Bloom (Rob Heaps), Richard Evans (Parker Young), and Jules Langmore (Marianne Rendon), end up finding each other. The big plot twist in the series is that now the three victims plan on finding Maddie and her co-workers, Max (Brian Benben) and Sally (Katherine LaNasato), to recover what they had taken from them. Throughout all the class discussions and different articles and even the series Imposter, they all connect back to a big topic of satire and many moral issues.

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As I was talking and discussing the different aspects seen in the series with peers, anything big or small you do will, in turn, come back and haunt you as seen with Maddie and her co-workers and even the victims. These aspects are being seen; we as well can or are experiencing it in our own daily life.

As I was watching the series of Imposter, multiple things stood out to me. Such as the character of Lenny Cohen. Lenny Cohen was a character that only appeared in the shows when any of the other characters were in trouble and could not complete their mission. The writer of the show made Lenny look like a scary person that everyone was afraid of when she came around. In a way, I feel her character is something that present today in the world, we would call it feminism. Nowadays, women are characterized just like Lenny was in the series, as someone that is big, scary, and as we all know, women are known to come around when something needs to be figured out or cleaned up. I liked how the writer described Lenny Cohen and showed the viewers the feminist perspective. However, what bothered me the most was that the author mainly focused on the idea that women are people who we should be afraid of.

One of my favorite scenes that included Lenny was the scene of "the shark boy in the alley." In this scene, she had arrived to fix up a problem with Maddie, but on the way, she ran into a little boy dressed up as the hammer man. They had a conversation about good vs. bad guys. She replies," Is a shark good or bad?"(Brooks & Adelstein) The little boy says bad because it eats people. He follows with the question, "are you good or bad?"(Brooks & Adelstein) Lenny just says that she is the fire from the beginning that she is just "I am." This shows that you can't just characterize someone as being bad or good just by how they look or are known for. We have to give everyone a chance to be themself in our own eyes.

In reading the article "Niceness, Flattery, and Deceit,"; one of the main points that were seen multiple times in the series of Imposter was `` `lying." The roots of lying come from the repeated mantra "you have to be nice to get ahead."(Troup pg 59-74) In other words, this means that saying little white lies can help you achieve more in life. However, most people do not realize the effect it can bring in the long run. I always told myself and my close friends that it is better to be honest with yourself and others than a lie because those lies can always come back to haunt you when you least expect it. As I watched, Imposter multiple characters were using this method, such as Maddie, Max, Sally, and even the conned ones that used it as well.

"For a successful con. You need a willing mark. We wanted every single lie she told us."(Adelstein & Brooks) In this scene, Ezra and Jules are talking. He mentions that he believes that one day everything is going to catch up to her. However, they have been doing the same thing to get money to find Maddie. Eventually, all the cons they have done will catch up with them as well. Lying would just create a circle that eventually will come back to where it started.

Another scene that shows the work of lying is when they introduced Patrick as being in the FBI. I liked this scene because Maddie never expected this to occur. The person who was playing everybody, Maddie, got played. Also, out of all the people Maddie talked to, the only one she started to have real feelings for was faking it the entire time.

The last topic I wanted to talk about was satire. Satire is known to be the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues. In Imposter, the writer used it in multiple ways, such as through a character personality or even how someone views oneself. Jules is one character that portrayed satire throughout her character in the show. Jules was known as a passionate artist who was disappointed in the world after her wife Cece left her. Due to her being coned by Maddie, it left her devastated and ended up having a mental illness. However, in the series, the way they expressed her mental illness made her look crazy in the eye of the audience. In the scene where Jules, Ezra, and Richard were in the coffee shop, Jules got disturbed and stood up and started talking very loudly toward Ezra and Richard in front of all the other customers; making her look ill, and seen as a crazy lady. What bothered me was that the way they use satire to describe Jules's character downgraded her as a person.

Another character that used satire was Richard. Richard is a sensitive golden boy who thought he finally had it all when he married his trophy wife, Alice. After she leaves Richard's money, he decides to search for Alice hoping that there still a chance to reconcile. The way they used satire on Richard portrayed him as someone who needed a lady so badly to be happy in life. When in fact we know that is not true.

Conclusion

Overall, I enjoyed watching the Imposter show. Also, being able to discuss our thoughts and opinions about any topic that we came across with my peers was great because we got to see their viewpoint as well. The use of satire, seeing the views of Good vs. Bad, and viewing how the works of lying can fall under "niceness" was very helpful for us because we can take those lessons in our journey of life.