The Perfect Couple: Ranking the Most Reprehensible Characters

This article contains spoilers for The Perfect Couple.

Almost everyone on The Perfect Couple is terrible. The Winbury family, secluded from real life in a bubble of privilege, has always been able to make unpleasant things go away with a snap of their fingers, a well-timed NDA, good connections and a boatload of cash. Entitlement in the upper echelons of society might be a good look for some people, but for the Winburys and their inner circle, the protective nature of wealth seems to just encourage bad behavior.  

In the premiere of The Perfect Couple, that behavior causes the death of an innocent woman. When maid-of-honor Merritt Monaco dies on the night of her best friend’s wedding, the cops have reason to suspect (checks notes) basically every single member of the Winbury circle due to their callous, careless, or otherwise idiotic behavior. The motivations range from impulsive to calculated, but they’re all pretty convinced that they’re protected by a cushion of immunity. The family generally is able to make most problems just “go away,” so why should this be any different? 

Watching The Perfect Couple, there’s really no one to root for. With the exception of the supporting players, such as the cops and various townspeople, the moments of sympathy for these characters are few and far between. That’s what makes it such great fun to binge watch. We’re not rooting for the characters. No! We’re rooting for all their dirty secrets to be revealed, one by one, like a juicy episode of Jerry Springer. As those secrets are uncovered, we get to level our collective judgment, sitting from the comfort of our couches with a good snack nearby. Oh what fun it is to judge these truly awful people. They’d do the same to us. So let’s dive in, ranking the characters from best to worst. 

15 (TIE). Chloe Carter (Mia Isaac) and Officer Dan Carter (Michael Beach)

Chloe and Dan are happy living a modest life on Nantucket. Surrounded by cottage-core opulence, they do their best to keep their heads down and do their respective jobs while still getting along with the wealthier residents. Chloe is sweet on Will Winbury, and Dan tolerates the rest of the Winburys in the name of making peace with everyone. They do nothing to provoke anyone at any time, and are always looking to be helpful in whatever way they can be. No notes. Great family.  

13. Detective Nikki Henry (Donna Lynne Champlin)

Look, I love Detective Henry’s sass and no-nonsense attitude, but she could be a bit kinder to the local law enforcement on the case. Other than that, she’s a straight shootin’ clean cop who just wants to bring a murderer to justice, and I can fully respect that. 

12. Merritt Monaco (Meghann Fahy)

I feel terrible for Merritt, really, I do, but even though she’s the murder victim here, she’s not totally a doe-eyed innocent. Merritt was having an affair with a married man, and while she fully did not deserve to die, she did have some bad karma floating around her aura. Did she really think that the perpetually stoned Tag Winbury would give it all up just to be with her? Perhaps her only crime was thinking with her heart and not with her head. 

11. Gosia (Irina Dubova)

Who knows what Gosia, the Winbury’s trusted housekeeper, has done in the name of protecting the family? For some reason, she seems fiercely loyal to them, scowling at anyone who isn’t in the nuclear family unit. We never fully find out why she’s so loyal — maybe they just pay her really well? — but we definitely get the sense that she’s voluntarily covered up a thing or two in her service to this sketchy family. 

10 (Tie). Benji Winbury (Billy Howle) and Will Winbury (Sam Nivola)

The two youngest Winbury boys are generally fine, but they both make incredibly poor decisions when it comes to the women in their lives. Benji hides sexy pictures of his fiancées super-hot bestie so he can paint a portrait of her later on, and this seems like bad judgment. He also presents her with a portrait of herself as a wedding gift. Always check the registry, dude. Or ask. Because an unwanted portrait isn’t it, my guy. 

Benji’s complete lack of attention to what Amelia really wants definitely belies a lifetime of egocentric thinking, and his brother Will suffers from the same issue. Will, however, is only 17 (going on 18, the magic age that will release his and everyone else’s trust funds). His teen brain might put him a bit lower on this list, but he ends up in a tie with his older bro because he decides to sail off into the night, in a storm, and takes Chloe with him. They end up mostly unscathed, but that is some seriously poor decision making. Maybe the powers that be should wait a few more years before letting him have his trust money. 

8. Isabel Nallet (Isabelle Adjani)

Isabel is weird. She’s supposedly a very good family friend to the Winburys, but Greer can’t seem to stand her, and Tag — after having bedded her on at least one occasion — seems  indifferent to her. Why, exactly, is she hanging around for so long? And why does she think it’s a good idea to be sleeping with Thomas? For all we know, she may have been around when he was in diapers, and now she’s having an affair with him while his pregnant wife sleeps alone? Gross. She’s very fun and I adore her arch responses to the idiots around her, but I just know if I met her, I would immediately despise her and that the feeling would be mutual. 

7. Shooter Dival (Ishaan Khatter)

While Shooter seems like a cuddly softboy, he also kisses his best friend’s fiancée on their wedding weekend. This seems like something an asshole would do. He also loans Greer $300,000 without asking why she needs it. Being able to loan that type of money to someone for no reason at all feels very suspect somehow. Is it fair to judge Shooter for having gobs of money? Probably not. But I’m gonna do it anyway. 

6. Broderick Graham (Tommy Flanagan)

Greer’s secret brother isn’t good, but he’s also not bad, exactly. In one of the best scenes in the entire series, he and Greer reveal the nature of their relationship while being questioned by the police. His severe look, so imposing in previous episodes, quickly morphs into the face of a sheepish, freeloading sibling. Broderick does say that he’s wanted by some bad dudes that he’s worked for, so it feels like he’s been violent for pay in the past. That’s not great. Also, he seems to be blackmailing his famous sister with the fact that she used to be a high-end escort and he was her pimp. I don’t really care how enlightened you are, tricking out your own sister for sex work is pretty low. Blackmailing her with that information once she’s passed that stage of her life? That’s even lower.  

5. Amelia Sacks (Eve Hewson)

I just don’t like Amelia. There. I said it. Her whole “I’m-just-a-poor-girl-nobody-knows-the-true-me” act is total bull. Walking out onto the front lawn of your mother-in-law’s crowded home to free a ladybug while you’re just in your underwear? No, girl. Just no. That’s not a thing we do in polite society, even if you’re trying to save the life of a cute insect. Did none of the windows in that house open? For all of her protestations that she’s a “normal girl,” Amelia really doesn’t seem to think about anyone’s needs other than her own. 

Sure, it’s very sad that her bestie was straight-up murdered the day before her wedding, but that also doesn’t give her the right to make out with her husband’s best man the day after the canceled wedding. In fact, Amelia could have prevented Merritt’s death altogether if she hadn’t agreed to marry Benji in the first place. Of course we can’t blame her for that, but I can put her here on the list due to her terrible judgment and holier-than-thou attitude. 

4. Greer Garrison Winbury (Nicole Kidman)

Ah, Greer: She of the mystery accent and cold heart. Greer belongs here not because of anything that she’s done explicitly, but because of her enabler status in the rest of her family. Her hard work as a best-selling novelist enables Tag to continue living his stoner playboy lifestyle, getting women pregnant and then sending them off to god knows where. She also looks the other way when her children engage in risky behaviors — like her son Thomas’s substance addictions or looking for leniency when Will crashes his boat. Her seemingly uncanny ability to cover up the worst things that have happened within the walls of that Nantucket estate leads me to believe that The Perfect Couple hasn’t even scratched the surface of the things she’s enabled her family to do over the decades. A second season is probably out of the question, but one can wonder. 

3. Tag Winbury (Liev Schreiber)

This man’s hobby is hitting seagulls with golf balls. I feel like that alone is enough to place him prominently on this list. However, he’s also a guy who has never worked a single day in his life, and doesn’t seem to have any aspirations or goals. He also sleeps with young women, gets them pregnant, and then abandons them on the regular. All of this is pretty reprehensible, but, if I’m being honest, since he’s played by an affable Liev Schreiber, I’d probably still share a joint with the guy … and then lecture him about animal cruelty. 

2. Abby Winbury (Dakota Fanning)

You know how I said I don’t like Amelia? Well, I also don’t like Abby, in fact, I love to hate her. 

Abby is just so openly and brazenly awful that she’s magnetic to watch. She talks about coveting skin products with placenta in them, orders Gosia to clean up huge messes that she’s made herself, and tosses gossipy, passive-aggressive insults into almost every conversation she has. She’s the best … I mean worst. And Dakota Fanning makes her a delight to watch on screen. But she’s also a murderer. 

When Abby decides to kill Merritt, we don’t see much emotion on her face. It’s much like she’s doing a chore or checking off something on her to-do list. It’s clear that Abby believes that the moneyed cocoon that she’s married into will protect her from harm, but unfortunately for her, she gets caught anyway. Sadly, we get the sense that the Winburys don’t really care about her either, as no one moves to help her as she and her pregnant belly get carted away by the cops. Which brings us to…

1. Thomas Winbury (Jack Reynor)

You probably thought that Abby would be number one on this list, right? Wrong! Thomas is legit the worst. Similar to his wife Abby, his antics are a delight to watch unfold on screen, and Jack Reynor has a gift for comedic timing that helps mask how terrible his character really is. But let’s check a few boxes, shall we? This guy is cheating on his pregnant wife. Check. He pulls a gun on another pregnant woman. Check. He steals prescription medication from a woman with cancer. Check! All of these are totally reprehensible behaviors that suggest that Thomas has acted recklessly for his entire life. And worst of all? He’s a crypto bro. Ugh. 

At the conclusion of the episode, which, presumably is the same night Abby gets arrested, we see him fighting with his lover, Isabel, back at the house. Um, shouldn’t he be at the station with his very pregnant wife? Or on the phone with a high-powered lawyer, attempting to get her some representation? Instead, he’s basically doing nothing, indicating that he’s worth nothing, and that is why he is unequivocally the worst of the Winburys. 

All six episodes of The Perfect Couple are available to stream on Netflix now.