Sneaky Pete Season 3: Better than Ever

Sneaky Pete rolled out is third season on Amazon Prime earlier this month, and I enjoyed it even more than I did the first two.  Which is saying a lot, since the first two were full of quirk and jive and action.   I can't quite recall if there ever was a television series about a con man like Sneaky Pete - maybe Maverick is a distant cousin - but Sneaky Pete did it better than anything I've ever seen on television.   And the third season did it more, adding subplots, locations, characters, and action.

The basic story, if you haven't seen it (and the rest of this review will have some spoilers), is that a con man, Marius, takes on the identity of his cellmate, Pete, when Marius is released from prison.  Taking on Pete's identity entails Marius showing up at Pete's family home, where his grandparents live.  Marius knows that the family hasn't seen Pete in years.  But, actually, the two don't look all that similar, and it's a tough sell for the viewer to believe that Marius is able to pull this off.  But part of the charm of this series is that you can almost pretty much believe that he does.

The tension of Pete continuing to fool most of his adoptive family is the centerpiece of the story, the tableau on which the various cons that Marius is enacted are played out.  Indeed, the reason he assumed this identity had to do with a major con.  In the third season, new cons are introduced, involving art forgery and wine, and these played out on the East Coast, where the series originated, and in California, where the series takes up residence.  Although a key member of Marius's conned family - Julia - discovers in the second season that Marius isn't Pete, he continues to grow so close to the family that in the third season he risks cons and alliances to save Julia.   He's in fact a mensch, a decent person deep down, and he's grown to love the family he's been lying to through his teeth.  And they love him, too.  One of the most moving moments in Season 3 is when Grandpa (Peter Gerety) sincerely says to "Pete": "you're a good boy".

One of the great things about Sneaky Pete is how even the secondary characters are real characters (you know what I mean) and memorable.   In the third season, these secondary characters increase in number are so compelling as to be raised to a state of art.  There are so many of them that I'm too lazy to list them all right here.  As for the central characters, Giovanni Ribisi as Marius is superb, and Margo Martindale and Peter Gerety as his "grandparents" are off the charts.   Perfect binging after a day at the beach or the lake or wherever during the summer.

See also Sneaky Pete: True Win (review of season 1) ... Sneaky Pete Season 2: Excellent, Beats the First (Slightly)

Sneaky Pete: True Win

Graham Yost, one of the main creative forces shaping Amazon's Sneaky Pete, was and is also executive producer of two other superb series, The Americans and Justify. But Sneaky Pete has the most in common, and is almost a kind of mirror image, of another pathbreaking series created by another GY - Greg Yaitanes - Banshee.

Both tell the story of an ex-con who adopts someone else's identity, needs to fool a lot of people, and must match wits with a vicious, highly intelligent, racketeering villain who holds forth from New York City.  Both must deal with expected and unexpected near revelations of their true identity, and cleverly fend them off.   Sneaky Pete is a little lighter than the unremittingly brutal Banshee, but Sneaky Pete has plenty of dark and violent moments, too.

Unlike "Lucas Hood" in Banshee, however,  Marius Josipovic is not only conning the world about being "Pete," but running cons in everything he does.   These cons start and end the season, and give Sneaky Pete something crucially in common with other great con narratives on the big screen, ranging from the The Sting (mentioned in Sneaky Pete) to Ocean's 11.

And speaking of Ocean's 11 (and Ocean's Eleven), Sneaky Pete has an impressive array of star power, with Giovanni Ribisi in the lead role, Bryan Cranston as the arch villain, and Peter Gerety, Margo Martindale, and even Ben Vereen and Malcolm-Jamal Warner in supporting parts.  All do memorable jobs.  Not as well-known Marin Ireland, Shane McRae, and Libe Barer also put in good performances.

As was the case with Banshee, credibility is strained by the extent to which the imposter can get away with it for so long.  And Sneaky Pete has the problem of needing to fool the real Pete's grandparents and cousins - wouldn't they realize something was different in his eyes, which would be pretty much the same for someone in his thirties, not seen since he was a boy at least 11+ years old?  "Lucas Hood" in Banshee didn't have to confront anyone in the real Hood family, except his son, who realized the deception immediately.

But it's easy enough to suspend your disbelief in Sneaky Pete.  The action is quick, the surprises jolting, and the series clocks in as another true win for streaming television.

The Americans Season 1 Finale: Excellent with One Exception

The Americans' season one finale this past Wednesday night captured the essential excellence of the series, along with the one sore thumb which still doesn't add up.

What's excellent, even superb, about the show is the way we care about the two murderous KGB agents, Elizabeth and Phillip.  This is testament both to the fine acting of Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, and the convincing story lines they're playing out - convincing because we can believe that a married couple with two children, seemingly leading a conventional suburban life in the early 1980s, are in fact infiltrating the highest offices of our government - including the home of Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger - and ready to kill in a heartbeat when necessary to save themselves and sometimes the mission.  Their marital problems similarly ring true, even when juxtaposed with their expertise in the martial arts.

Also superb is their boss Claudia, played by Margo Martindale.  She always gives a powerful performance, but her mixture of toughness and compassion, of loyalty to the KGB but also her own people, is one of the most appealing parts of the show.

The one point that I still can't buy, and which got even worse in the finale, is the idea that Stan, an FBI agent whose very beat is hunting KGB agents in America, just happens to live next door. Early on in the series he was indeed suspicious of Elizabeth and Phillip, but they convinced him otherwise in an impressive series of moves, and he apparently has been a believer ever since that the two are the nice, normal couple living next door that they are pretending to be - in fact, believes it even when Elizabeth and Phillip take a little "pause" as a couple, but continue their joint KGB missions.

In the finale, this is ratcheted up yet one step further:  Stan has sketches of the KGB couple - sketches of Elizabeth and Stan in good disguise - but, still, he doesn't register a flicker of recognition, any sense that something looks familiar, when he sees Elizabeth in flesh, still under disguise.

An editor once told me that readers will allow one thing that doesn't ring true in a story, but that's it.  Whether the Stan story is just one thing, over and over again, or more than one, I can't say.  But I do think it is a drag on another otherwise outstanding new series, which I'm looking forward to seeing more of next year.

See also The Americans: True and Deep ... The Americans 1.4: Preventing World War III ... The Americans 1.11:  Elizabeth's Evolution