open/close all folders
Maddie Jonson
Maddie Jonson/Ava/Alice/CeCe/Saffron/Molly
Played by: Inbar Lavi
- And This Is for...: In the finale, Maddie ditches Max when she learns that he got rid of Sally. When Max opens the briefcase he thinks has the FBI's money in it, Maddie has left a note invoking this trope.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Maddie with everybody post-divorce, but Ezra in particular. It's not even resolved when they have sex in season 2; they're back at each other's throats almost immediately.
- Big Ol' Eyebrows: Maddie has long, dark eyebrows which are prominent and make her look distinctive.
- Broken Pedestal: When she realizes Max didn't hesitate to sell Sally out to her death just to save his own skin.
- Calling Card: When Maddie has gotten what she came for, she leaves her mark with a website containing a video explaining herself, telling her mark not to find her, and threatening them if they try.
- Character Catchphrase: "Always forward, never back." A phrase Maddie likes to say a lot, that Ezra, Richie and Jules each remember her saying to them. The three of them later appropriate it for themselves.
- Depraved Bisexual: Maddie at first seduces both men and a woman, marrying them before taking their money before vanishing. Over time however, she's remorseful at how she treated her victims and she strives to change.
- Dude Magnet: Maddie is beautiful and charming, easily attracting men (or women). She uses this to good affect with her scams.
- Enemy Mine: In the eighth episode, Maddie decides to recruit Ezra, Jules and Richard in order for her and Max to have a chance at conning Patrick despite learning that he's in the FBI.
- Everything Sounds Sexier in French: How Ezra fell for Maddie.
- Fake Nationality: In-Universe, Maddie pretended to be Belgian when she seduced Ezra.
- Give Me Back My Wallet: Meeting Max's old con artist mentor, Maddie lets him pick her wallet to prove he's faking being mentally ill.
- Honey Trap: Maddie's marriage cons have her seduce, marry and then rob people repeatedly.
- I Have Many Names: Maddie goes by a different name with every mark, being also known as Ava, Alice, CeCe and Saffron.
- I Just Want to Be Normal:
- One of the things that attracts Maddie towards Patrick is the fact that he is not a mark and she could lead a perfectly normal life with him. It turns out Patrick is an FBI agent going after The Doctor and using her to track him down, and she has her moment of heartbreak when she learns this.
- Maddie attempts this in season 2, moving into a small town and deciding to live a quiet life free of her past. It doesn't last long.
- Imagine Spot: Maddie fantasizes about one of her marks choking on his sushi and dropping dead at the table.
- In Love with the Mark: Played with. Maddie seems to subvert this as she insists each "marriage" is nothing but a job. However, she admits she did need to feel some love for her marks to make the con work, and a therapist states Maddie just can't turn that off.Maddie: You want to know how I got you to fall in love with me? It's not a con. You have to show that person a part of your true self. Then you need to find something in that person that you can really, truly fall in love with. That's how you do what I do.
- Little Miss Con Artist: A season 2 flashback shows how Maddie was working a dead-end waitress job in her town when Max and Sally first met her. They saw how she was easily bantering with the customers, putting on fake smiles and even voices to win them over with the occasional story (convincing a patron their steak was just as good as the $50 one across the street). Max openly notes "she's a natural" as they recruited her to help with a local con, leading to their partnership.
- Modesty Bedsheet: After having sex with Patrick on the second time, Maddie has the bedsheet wrapped around her chest while she lies on the floor beside him.
- Ms. Fanservice: She's an attractive woman who gets plenty of sex and fanservice scenes, is often clad in her underwear, and the camera never misses a chance to focus on her body. The fact that she only dresses in outfits that show it off undoubtedly helps.
- Obfuscating Disability: Maddie tracks down the Doctor's former partner, who seems to be a mentally-addled man in a retirement home. Naturally, the act doesn't fool Maddie for a second and he drops it fast.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Maddie looks like she is about to completely lose her shit when Ezra, Richard and Jules confront her in a diner in episode 5.
- Also when they convince her that Patrick works for the FBI and Maddie realizes she's been the one played this time.
- Paid-for Family: A variation as Maddie's partners, Max and Sally help her with the cons. They switch turns with one playing her parent or other guardian while the other infiltrates the mark's company.
- Pragmatic Villainy: The reason Maddie and her crew generally go after AssholeVictims has nothing to do with morality. It's just that they usually have a Dark Secret that can be used to blackmail them into not reporting the con.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: After she's attacked by Shelly Cohen and stabs him in self-defense, Maddie has panic attacks later as she gets flashbacks to all this.
- Stress Vomit: When she's finally met by her exes, Maddie asks to go to the bathroom. Once inside, she immediately vomits into the toilet and then comes back acting as if nothing is wrong.
- A Taste of Their Own Medicine:
- After discovering Patrick is an FBI Agent, Maddie is basically kicking herself that she fell for exactly the same sort of tricks (from a fake family to playing hard to get) that she's used countless times on her own marks. Naturally, the Bumblers take some pleasure out of Maddie getting a dose of what she did to them.
- Earlier in the series, when Maddie is with Patrick for her "birthday," she's stunned when Ezra drops by, pretending to be her big brother and Jules his girlfriend. They're obviously getting a kick using the same "fake family" gimmick Maddie used on them as Maddie is fighting not to lose it in front of Patrick. And then Richard is one of the bartenders for the party.
The Bumblers
Collectively
- Blatant Lies: Ezra, Richard and Jules all claim to be over Maddie, but it's transparently clear that all three are still very much in love with her.
- Code of Honour: In addition to their grifter's code, they have a "Maddie code".Jules: We need a Maddie code. [...] We have no idea what seeing her is gonna do to us. [...] This is your ex-wife. Your shape-shifting, money stealing, professional con artist ex-wife. And mine. And his. [...] What if she sees me and declares her love for me and begs me to leave you two schmoes in the dust and take off with her?
- Fire-Forged Friends: Over the course of their many travails, Ezra, Richard and Jules intensely bond, becoming very close friends with each other.
- Freudian Trio: Ezra is the cool-headed Superego — the others even call him the "mastermind" of the group. Jules is the passionate, intense, artistic Id. Richie is the Ego, balancing ambition and pleasure-seeking with the strongest moral compass and sense of decency of the group.
- He Who Fights Monsters: Ezra, Richard and Jules undergo a mild version of this trope, as they are left to resort to becoming con artists themselves to fund their search for Maddie. Brought up majorly when the Bumblers are hiding out in Mexico in season 2. Jules and Richard are rocked to find Ezra has gotten $25,000 in three days by going from selling fake boat tours to actually selling people boats he doesn't really own.
- Richard: I think he's getting off on this.
Ezra: Nobody who gets conned is innocent.
Jules: Now you sound like our ex-wife.
- Running Gag: When someone refers to Maddie as "a bitch," one (or all three) of the Bumblers will automatically snap "don't call her that."
- Scoundrel Code: Ezra and Richie begin grifting in the process of trying to track Maddie down. However, they don't want to be dicks about it, so they create a code. The document is entitled "The Code" and added to as they go.Ezra: You know what? We need some ground rules. We need, like, a code of conduct for how far we're willing to go. Like you said, we can't just steal from... normal people, right?Richie: You know what else? Bushido, the samurai code: the true warrior must hold that loyalty, courage, and honor are important above all else.
- Team Power Walk: Played for Laughs in the first scene of the second season as the Bumblers stride in slo-motion at a bus depot. They start to separate with Ezra calling out as it turns out each had a different idea of what bus to take.
Ezra Bloom
Ezra Bloom
Played by: Rob Heaps
- Affectionate Nickname: Maddie calls Ezra Ez affectionately.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Maddie insists she felt nothing for Ezra more than any of her other marks. Ezra replies by asking "Then why'd you keep the anklet?"
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Maddie with everybody post-divorce, but Ezra in particular. It's not even resolved when they have sex in season 2; they're back at each other's throats almost immediately.
- Broken Pedestal: Ezra feels this to his father as Maddie's "goodbye file" reveals that not only has Ezra's dad been cheating on his mother for 20 years but he also stole the company's groundbreaking patent from his own brother.
- Dark Secret: Ezra, Richard and Jules all have one that made them targets for Maddie, Max and Sally. Ezra's isn't really about him but rather his family, and loves them enough to not want that exposed.
- Driven to Suicide: Ezra becomes so depressed after Maddie leaves him that he tries to kill himself, but botches it.
- Foreshadowing: Ezra doing the quarter-in-the-ear trick on Jules. In the finale, he does the same thing in revealing that he successfully stole the ring from under the noses of the FBI, Maddie and Max.
- Give Me Back My Wallet: In Mexico, Ezra meets a lovely Colombian lady and they chat over the city as she expertly picks his wallet. She heads to an alley to get out the cash and slips the wallet into a purse packed with several. She frowns and starts rummaging just as Ezra calls from behind her, revealing he has her cell phone. Instead of being upset, Ezra gives her tips on "don't flirt so quickly" the next time she pulls this. He also points out that he'd appreciate having the money in the wallet returned as well.
- How We Got Here: The pilot opens with Ezra in the middle of his trashed living room, looking a complete mess and yelling to someone at the door to go away as he's trying to kill himself. It then flashes back five weeks to him marrying Maddie and then discovering how she conned him.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Ezra uses a Hugh Grant impression he tries on a new friend early in season 2 as the model for an accent he later puts on for a mark. He does sound a lot like Hugh Grant, but Rob Heaps tends to slip on some of his r's and a few vowels.
- Pretty Boy: Downplayed Trope on his own, but he's framed as such in contrast to his Foil, the more overtly-masculine Richie the Hunk.
- Took a Level in Badass: Ezra grows more assertive and confident, as a grifter and just as a person in general, the further along he goes in trying to find Maddie. By the season finale, he manages to fool not only the FBI, but both Maddie and Max, and is the only one among them who gets away with anything valuable in the end.
- Was It All a Lie?: Maddie's video to Ezra (and, it's hinted, to Richard and Jules as well) lampshades how they will all be wondering how much of their relationship was fake or not.
Richard Evans
Richard Evans
Played by: Parker Young
- Affectionate Nickname: Richard is called Richie by his family, friends or girlfriends.
- Chick Magnet: Richard is a handsome, muscular man who gets plently of attention from women, even when they just met him.
- Dark Secret: Ezra, Richard and Jules all have one that made them targets for Maddie, Max and Sally. Richard's is Throwing the Fight.
- Graceful in Their Element: Richard may be self-obsessed and dimwitted, but he is a born salesman.
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: A flashback in the season 2 premiere shows how Richard, thanks to Maddie, went from the slickest car dealership boss in town and hometown hero into bankrupt loser.
- Hunk: Richie prioritizes working out and eating well, and thinks of himself as overtly masculine. Jules calls him "SpongeBob SquareJaw". This is in contrast to his Foil Ezra, who is framed as more of a Pretty Boy.
- Jerk Ass Has A Point: It takes Richard's blunt talk to finally get Ezra to face up to how "Ava" never existed and her life/love with Ezra was all a lie. He also has to realize that rather than be a pawn of others, she was willing to do this.
- The Missus and the Ex: A fun variation. When he meets Jules' sister, Poppy, Richard is struck by how oddly familiar she is. He talks on her history, her habits, what perfume she likes... and it finally hits him that Maddie based her entire act of "Alice" on Poppy. Naturally, it doesn't take long for them to hit it off just as well.
- Running Gag: Richard is terrible at pronouncing "bureau". Before he screws it up a third time, he just avoids the word altogether.
- Sex God: Richard is quite good in bed, to judge by the loud cries from the woman he has sex with.
- Throwing the Fight: This is Richard's dark secret: He threw a key interception in his high school championship game to beat the point spread. He says he used the money to help his mother but knows that won't make much difference and ruin his name in his home town.
- Wham Shot: Richard following Patrick into the Seattle headquarters of the FBI where Patrick and his "family" are all wearing suits and agent badges.
Julia Langmore
Julia "Jules" Langmore
Played by: Marianne Rendón
- Affectionate Nickname: Jules and her sister Poppy call each other "Jujube" and "Poops".
- All Girls Like Ponies: Her sister tells Richard the story about how she was a horse girl in her youth.
- Dark Secret: Ezra, Richard and Jules all have one that made them targets for Maddie, Max and Sally. Jules's is Stealing the Credit.
- Starving Artist: What she's going for, although she has a rich family as a backup net.
- Stealing the Credit: Jules' dark secret. When her college roommate killed herself, Jules was a mess afterward and fell behind in her studies, so she took her roommate's project to use for her senior thesis and was caught. Her family hushed it up but any chance Jules has of getting into the art world will be ruined if it was exposed.
Associated with Maddie
Patrick Campbell
Patrick Campbell/Patrick Simons
Played by: Stephen Bishop
- Conspicuous Consumption: Patrick is told by his FBI boss that spending wildly on everything from a huge house to gifts to private plane rides for his romance with Maddie is a major strain on the FBI budget. Naturally, the fact all that money was for nothing when Maddie and the Bumblers get away at the end of the season lands Patrick in hot water.
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: Patrick has gone from a slick FBI agent running up huge expenses to being banished to an extremely small office and now a literal joke among his co-workers.
- Persona Non Grata: What Patrick turns into in the second season. Having cost the FBI a small fortune in his "wooing" of Maddie, the fake wedding and losing both a half million dollars and an expensive ring, Patrick is removed from the investigation, banished to an office barely the size of a cubicle and it's clear he's become the joke of his colleagues.
- Walking Spoiler
Max and Sally
Max and Sally
Played by: Brian Benben and Katherine LaNasa
- Knight of Cerebus: If Max has to intervene, there's probably something beyond Maddie's control at play in the con.
- Master of Disguise: Max is shown to be the best at disguises. He becomes unrecognizable in makeup during the pilot episode, while impersonating the Doctor quite well later too.
- Took a Level in Badass: In season 2, it's revealed that rather than be killed by the Doctor, Sally has now become one of his enforcers and a cold and brutal woman.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension: They've been co-workers for a decade and had a bit of a thing for each other for most of that time.Max: It's always been you, Sal. You know that, don't you?
Jeffrey Hull
Jeffrey Hull/The Doctor
Played by: Ray Proscia
- Bad Boss: If any of his employees so much as thinks about leaving “the life” The Doctor will send goons to beat the crap out of their loved ones.
- Bald of Evil: The Doctor is a ruthless crime boss who's also bald.
- Big Bad: A mysterious figure who plans the cons Maddie and her team carry out and keeps 70% of the take.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The only person we see whom the Doctor genuinely appears to care for is his disabled, elderly father, who he cares for and lives in his house. From what his father says, he didn't do it for any gain, which is the only time that's ever shown from him.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Doctor actually is a medical doctor. He is seen performing surgery and looking at X-rays while talking to Max.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: He's a Soft-Spoken Sadist and crime boss with glasses.
- Knight of Cerebus: The Doctor, however, only gets involved if any of them even thinks of leaving the life.
- Soft-Spoken Sadist: The Doctor is a cruel man who enjoys tormenting anybody who crosses him. He almost never raises his voice, speaking mostly in mild, even tones.
Recurring
Lenny Cohen
Lenny Cohen
Played by: Uma Thurman
- Cleanup Crew: In addition to being a deadly enforcer, Lenny is also very handy when it comes to disposing a body and making it look like the corpse disappeared on his own initiative.
- Dark Action Girl: Lenny Cohen (Uma Thurman), the Doctor’s main enforcer, is a brutal hand-to-hand fighter who will break your arm if you annoy her at a bar.
- Knight of Cerebus: If Lenny shows up, it means one of the con artists screwed up.
- Tomboyish Name: She's a woman with shaggy, fairly short hair, a masculine wardrobe sense and she's the brutal enforcer of a crime boss.
Poppy Langmore
Poppy Langmore
Played by: Rachel Skarsten
- Affectionate Nickname: Jules and her sister Poppy call each other "Jujube" and "Poops".
- The Missus and the Ex: A fun variation. When he meets Jules' sister, Poppy, Richard is struck by how oddly familiar she is. He talks on her history, her habits, what perfume she likes... and it finally hits him that Maddie based her entire act of "Alice" on Poppy. Naturally, it doesn't take long for them to hit it off just as well.
