I watched both episodes - I have to agree with both Humanton’s assessment and Joe M’s. I simply did not buy the lead character as a con artist. He doesn’t need to be sympathetic, he needs to be interesting, and he wasn’t. In addition, if they wanted him to “go straight,” he shouldn’t have gone back to Middleton to marry his girlfriend - leading two lives with two wives isn’t “going straight.” I totally did not buy his idea that he could somehow salvage his Middleton persona with money from the other persona’s money.
Well, we didn’t get to see where they were going with it, but I have to expect that his twisted morality would at some point be called into serious question (probably before the end of a full season), and he would be asked what the fuck he thought he was doing.
At some point the thing would have to fall apart.
By the second episode they had the girlfriend snooping into his life, and had introduced a more suspicious, more world-weary sister to knock his work out of balance. At that pace, I’d probably have given him a comeuppance halfway through the season, and make the final arc about him cleaning up his messes.
Nor did his father. I don’t think what the lead imagines he can do is necessarily what is plausible. He would have had to have failed eventually. He’s just desperate and flailing - only pretending not to be. You’re witnessing the life of a kid who has grown up faking it the whole way.
