Sneaky Pete

Think of how few movies have been made about con artists and their cons. Everyone will almost automatically think of The Sting, with old blue eyes Paul Newman and square-jawed Robert Redford and how intricate the con was and how much we viewers enjoyed being stung right along with those being stung in the movie. All right, now multiply the intricacy and the enjoyment by ten with a dessert multiple of five and you get . . . Wait for it! . . . Amazon’s Sneaky Pete, two seasons of ten episodes each with another season and ten episodes next year. I just finished bingeing on seasons one and two and fell in love with the entire cast. They became my family, sort of like the family Pete became part of—the Bernhardts of Bridgeport, Connecticut.

          The Bernhardts aren’t your average family. Each member has secrets, each gets into trouble with one bad guy or another, and each uses a personal con game to get out of trouble. But when you add all the family members to Pete and his family of con artists, the whole thing gets so complicated it’s hard to keep everything straight.

The Bernhardts are in the bail bond business, competing with a much larger and more successful bail bond business and only hanging on by a thread. Gramma Audrey (Margo Martindale) is the matriarch to whom all the others must answer. Grampa Otto (Peter Gerety) has recently had a heart attack but he still puts in his hours at the business. The others: granddaughter Julia (Marin Ireland) does most of the bail bond leg work; grandson Taylor (Shane McRae) is a cop; granddaughter Carly (Libe Barer), Taylor’s sister and Julia’s cousin, is maybe the wisest 16-year-old in all of

Connecticut; daughter Maggie Murphy (Jane Adams) hasn’t been back to Bridgeport for twenty years; and Pete (Ethan Embry), Maggie’s son, has spent the last three years in prison. Then there’s Marius Josipovic (Giovanni Ribisi), Pete’s cellmate who is paroled as the series begins. But there’s a really bad guy named Vince (Bruce Cranston) who wants to get even with Pete for ripping him off for $150,000. So Marius has to find somewhere to hide until he can sort things out. He goes to Bridgeport and pretends to be Pete. The family hasn’t seen Pete for twenty years so they don’t see the pose, and Marius has heard so much from the real Pete over the last three years that he, Sneaky Pete the con man, can sell himself to the family as Pete Murphy.

Now, take all these characters plus about a hundred more, mix them all together, and you get this oh so very complex and delightful series called Sneaky Pete. I can hardly wait for Season Three. Breaking Bad fans will recognize Giovanni Ribisi as Bruce Cranston’s buddy, here together again. If you have Amazon Prime, check it out. If you don’t have Amazon Prime, you should subscribe, for this series and any number of other series made exclusively for Amazon.