A scalpel and rotary saw cut through the chest cavity of a dead man on a table. Three people, Abbi, Tilda, and Juan, watch as the scientist who interrupts him, Dr. Burke, says, "You don't see that every day," as he looks into his bloody trunk. The program cuts out and the word "Before" appears on the screen. Very soon, we will find out who the dead guy is and why everyone is around him.
The gist: Three Seattle-area college students, Abbi (Rhianna Jagpal), Tilda (Morgan Taylor Campbell), and Juan (Iñaki Godoy), begin to experience strange side effects when their prescription drugs start to run low. Abbi, a scientist desperate to be accepted into Oxford, releases pheromones that make her irresistible to everyone around her (in a dangerous way, she imagines a mob of zombies desperate to eat her brain). Tilda has super hearing and is able to scream so loud that she breaks glass. And Juan turns into a ferocious beast at night, losing consciousness and killing small animals, leading him to be known as the Terror of Tacoma. This leads Tilda to realize that her powers come from supernatural or mythical creatures: Tilda is a banshee, Abbi is a succubus, and Juan is a chupacabra.
Stars: Italia Ricci, Morgan Taylor Campbell, Rhianna Jagpal
The three of them were part of a genetics experiment seven years prior, led by Dr. Alex Sarkov (Rhys Nicholson), a quirky scientist who has been giving them their drugs to keep any weird side effects of their experiments at bay, but the drugs get lost. They have run out and after having a brief meeting with an unreliable Sarkov, the scientist mysteriously disappears. The trio of mutants, all desperate to quell his life-interrupting powers (at this point, aside from Juan killing small animals, women's powers are more of a pain in the butt than anything else), enter the Sarkov's office and discover that he is gone. , but his old associate Dr. Sydney Burke (Italia Ricci) is there to explain that his lab has been formally closed for years. Burke presents the three with some synthetic stem cells that could help cure them, but that's when Doug, the dead guy on the operating table from the opening scene, breaks into the office and tries to steal them. Juan fills up with chupacabras and kills Doug, and when Dr. Burke performs the autopsy on Doug's body, he realizes that he has a third lung and an enlarged heart and OH MY GOD HE'S A MUTANT TOO !
That's when Doug reanimates and we realize his superpower is that he's immortal, and Sarkov was not only helping these teens suppress their side effects, he was also seriously experimenting on other people.
I must say that the first episode of The Imperfects started and ended strong. The book-bound scenes of a dead man on an embalming table created a cool framing device and helped viewers understand who each of the characters are and why they're all together now. Everything in between, though? It was just a little meh.
Abbi is hounded by college advisors and fellow students who find her pheromones intoxicating, and Tilda is kicked out of her band because her super audition makes it hard for her to sing with them. Only the mild-mannered Juan, who transforms at night and goes around killing animals, returning home with blood-soaked clothes, is dealing with the most terrifying repercussions of his actions. And once we know why they're all suddenly becoming mutants... Dr. Burke's explanation for why Sarkov's experiments went wrong isn't all that interesting. The stakes don't feel high enough.
The Imperfects has the ingredients for a good show. The bones are there, but there are so many little details and plot points that, maybe with a few tweaks, could make it a lot more compelling than it is.
I have to say I don't care about the premise here. In short, it revolves around a Dr. Alex Sarkov experimenting on Abbi, Juan, and Tilda, resulting in them becoming, respectively, a succubus, a chupacabra, and a banshee. Good idea! It works as an excuse to flex some of the FX budget and do a little marketing legwork, but it also obviously works as a coming-of-age metaphor for growing up, standing out, fitting in, and coming to terms with who.