Series / Scoundrels (2010)

Scoundrels is an American Dramedy series by Lyn Greene and Richard Levine, airing on the ABC network in 2010. It is a Foreign Remake of the New Zealand series Outrageous Fortune.

Cheryl West (Virginia Madsen) is a middle-aged woman married to career criminal Wolfgang "Wolf" West (David James Elliott). The couple has four children: Twin brothers Logan and Cal (both played by Patrick Flueger) with Cal following in his father's footsteps to be in the "family business" while Logan has stayed on the straight and narrow path and is a lawyer; The spoiled and beautiful Heather (Leven Rambin) who wants to be a supermodel; And the youngest daughter Hope (Vanessa Marano) who's still in high school, but aspires to one day be a filmmaker.

But the lives of the West family are changed forever when one day Wolf is arrested and sentenced to five years in prison. But Sergeant Mack (Carlos Bernard) and the rest of the Palm Springs Police Department are still suspicious about the rest of the West family. Fearing they might all end up in jail, Cheryl shepherds her children away from their criminal and luxurious lifestyles, forcing them all to go straight. However, even from prison, her husband interferes with her attempts to reform their family.

The series was a Short-Runner that was canceled after its first season which lasted for 8 episodes.

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Tropes

• Adaptation Dye-Job: In Scoundrels the West twins are blondes, while in Outrageous Fortune they were brunettes.
• Adaptation Name Change: In the West family, only Wolf and Cheryl maintain their original names from their Outrageous Fortune counterparts. Van is changed to Cal, Jethro is changed to Logan, Pascalle is changed to Heather, and Loretta is changed to Hope.
• Adaptation Title Change: The title Scoundrels has little to do with the title of the original series Outrageous Fortune.
• All Asians Know Martial Arts: Cal's attempt to steal from the Hong family's house is foiled when he ends up bumping into grandma Hong, who beats him up with her martial art skills.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Hope and Heather might hate each other most of the time, but when Hope sees Heather getting tricked by a False Friend who's a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, she rushes to her sister defense and prevents her from being tricked.
• The Baby Trap: Cal doesn't think much when Nina Hong, the Trophy Wife of his boss, decides to seduce him and have non-stop sex with him for a while (mostly because it's the best sex he's ever had). Later, he finds out Mr. Hong is actually infertile and Nina seduced him in order to get pregnant and pass Cal's child as Mr. Hong's, so she could secure her gold ticket as Mr. Hong's wife. Cal is horrified when he finds out, and tries to convince her to get him to be a part of the child's life, but she laughs him off and makes it clear her husband will kill him if Cal ever exposes the truth.
• Bad Guys Play Pool:
  • Charlie, one of Wolf's criminal partners, is often seen playing pool at a Bad Guy Bar whenever Cheryl meets him there.
  • Cal and his criminal buddies also frequently play pool in the same bar.
• Bed Trick: A unintentional example is when Logan is doing a Twin Switch for Cal and accidentally gets Patty interested on him, because she's more attracted to Logan's wit, and she ends up having a Two-Person Pool Party with Logan while thinking he's Cal. She's pissed about it when she finds out, but eventually forgives him and they start dating. Cal also is upset when he finds out, but it's mostly because he's jealous, especially when he finds out she's amazing in bed.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The West has been a family of thieves and con artists for generations, with Wolf claiming it's In the Blood, as such all of them (save for Logan) are always somehow involved in petty crimes and cons. Even Wolf's Grandpa was also a career thief.
• Black Comedy: Cal's idiot thug Best Friend gets killed when he hides in the trash from the police, only to be crushed when the trash truck picks him up and throws him inside, with the whole thing being morbidly Played for Laughs. His funeral even gets hijacked by Wolf coming out of jail for a day.
• Blackmail: Hope has taken pictures of Logan's relationship with his teacher and vice-principal Valerie in order to blackmail both. In particular, she wants Valerie to grant her truancy so she can focus on making her movie instead of going to school.
• "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: Hope is mock offended when Logan calls her deal with Valerie as Blackmail.
  Hope: That's not blackmail ok? It's quid-pro-quo. I get whatever I want and she gets to keep her job.
• Burger Fool: After he mother forbids any of the rest to continue their criminal activities, Heather is forced to work as a waitress for a burger joint, much to her humiliation. Her Girl Posse is quick to mock her for it too.
• Cheating with the Milkman: Mr. Hong's Trophy Wife Nina Hong seduces and sleeps with her husband's lackey Cal when she finds him working at his house, and she's such an insatiable Sex Goddess that Cal becomes constantly exhausted at work, yet somehow Mr. Hong never notices anything. It's later revealed she was not only using him for sex but to get pregnant, since Mr. Hong is infertile and she needs a child to cement her marriage to Hong.
• Code of Honour: The West might be criminals, but they have lines they don't cross. "No violence and no drugs" is the major one, but they're also not supposed to snitch or scam family or friends. The longer Wolf stays in jail, the looser with his code he becomes.
• Con Men Hate Guns: Wolf might be a criminal, but he's a criminal with a Code of Honour: "No violence and no drugs". He also made sure this applied to the entire West family, who mostly stick to petty cons and thievery.
• Could Say It, But...: Cheryl asks Hope what her sister is up to. Hope indignantly protests that Wests don't rat each other out... then, when Cheryl gives in, adds, "Which is why I can't tell you to check her underwear drawer."
• *Crack!* "Oh, My Back!": While Cal is having Auto Erotica sex with Mrs. Robinson Nina Hong, she ends up hurting her back, due to her age. And he makes things much worse when his attempt to help her leads to him accidentally leaving the car with the brakes off, making the car slide down into a lake while she still has her back stuck.
• Date Rape Averted: Heather's Smooth-Talking Talent Agent who pulled a Model Scam on her also attempts to rape her via Slipping a Mickey, but Heather sees it coming, and switches the drinks. Then she leaves him Chained to a Bed while she robs him.
  Heather: Did you really think my daddy was gonna let his little girl start dating without a couple of tips? Like always watch really closely when a sleaze makes you a drink.
• Dumb Blonde: Cal and Heather are stereotypical ditzy blondes who constantly get attention from the opposite sex. Averted with Cheryl and Logan, who are blondes but fairly intelligent.
• Favors for the Sexy: Heather is good at using her feminine wiles to manipulate men.
  • After Hope refuses to help Heather to do modeling photos, Heather seduces Hope's friend Tan into helping her. Hope later chews out Tan for doing it, telling him how obvious a relationship with the much older Heather would be, but his reaction boils down to I'm a Man; I Can't Help It.
  • Heather flirts with the pushover cop who's accompanying Wolf to Billy's funeral and quickly convinces him to let her dad go back home for an hour. Then keeps flirting with him to keep him distracted so he doesn't notice as the hours go by.
• Feet-First Introduction: The first time we meet Patty Hong is when we see her walking into the West's store in her high-heels.
• Five-Finger Discount: All of the West family is good at stealing petty stuff from stores and people, with Cheryl having to constantly hound them not to do it after they go "straight".
• Flexibility Equals Sex Ability: Cal gets Distracted by the Sexy when he sees Nina Hong (whom he's an affair with doing yoga in tight clothing at the Hong household, and she flirts with him when she catches him Eating the Eye Candy. And he's intimately familiar with her sexual prowess.
• Frame-Up: Played With. The Reveal of the Season Finale is that Sergent Mack planted the evidence that was used to get Wolf arrested. That said, Wolf was guilty of the crime, he was just too good to be caught without fake evidence.
• Freudian Threat:
  • Heather gets her Smooth-Talking Talent Agent to reveal the location of her photos by threatening to give him a Groin Attack while he's Chained to a Bed.
  • While working for Mr. Hong, Cal gets a lot of reminders about the rumors that the Hongs deal with people who wrong them via Crippling Castration. Even Nina and Patty threaten him with this once or twice.
• Foreign Remake: The show is a remake of the New Zealand series Outrageous Fortune.
• The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Heather and Hope have the stereotypical Sibling Rivalry, with Heather being the beautiful ditz who Hope doesn't respect, while Hope is the rebellious smug brat who Heather is annoyed by.
• Happily Married: Wolf and Cheryl had a stable and loving marriage, although her attempts at reforming their family after his arrest put them at odds, to the point she starts thinking he might be better off staying in jail.
• High-School Sweethearts: Wolf and Cheryl have been an Outlaw Couple since their high-school days, and in the present day they're Happily Married with adult children.
• Hopeless Suitor:
  • Hope's Best Friend Tad has a huge crush on Heather, who's barely aware he exists and when she does she calls him "Ted".
  • Mack's detective partner also has a hopeless crush on Heather, which only gets worse after he sees her doing a striptease at the strip club she works at.
• Interrupted Intimacy: The series begins with Cheryl and Wolf being intimate in bed, when their morning is ruined by the police raid that came to arrest him.
• Law of Inverse Fertility: Mr. Hong and his wife have been trying to have a child for a while, but she only becomes pregnant when she starts cheating on him with Cal. It's heavily implied Mr. Hong might be infertile and Nina deliberadly slept with Cal in order to get pregnant and pass the baby as Mr. Hong's.
• Lecherous Licking: When Nina Hong is seducing Cal, she pretends to have dropped wine on his chin, then "helps" by licking it clean.
• Left Hanging: The Series Finale ends on a cliffhanger (Wolf walking in on Mack professing his love to Cheryl) and since the series was canceled after the first season, the story ends on that.
• Love Triangle: While Wolf and Cheryl used to be Happily Married, they start to drift apart after he gets arrested and disapproves of how she leads the family to reform, meanwhile she gets closer and closer to Sergent Mack, developing a Unresolved Sexual Tension with him.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: When Miss Hong gets pregnant, both Cal and Patty quickly conclude Cal must be the father, as Mr. Hong has been unsuccessfully trying to get her pregnant for years to no avail.
• Mean Boss: Cheryl gets a job as a cashier at a supermarket, but unfortunately her boss is a major creep who constantly hits on her and the other female employers. When Cheryl starts giving him lip about it, he frames her for stealing money.
• Model Scam: Heather's Smooth-Talking Talent Agent is not only scamming her for money but when she confronts him, attempts to rape her by Slipping a Mickey on her drink. But she sees it coming and switches the drinks without him noticing. Then she undresses him, leaves him Chained to a Bed and robs him.
• Modesty Bedsheet:
  • Logan and Valerie have a bedsheet up to their waist in a post-coital scene. He's shirtless while she's still wearing a bra.
  • Cheryl and Wolf also make use of a bedsheet for modesty in a few post-sex scenes of them Talking in Bed.
• Mr. Fanservice: Cal gets a fair share of Shirtless Scenes throughout the show.
• Ms. Fanservice:
  • Heather gets quite a few scenes in swimwear or lingerie when she's posing for modeling shoots or working at the strip club.
  • Nina Hong (played by Dina Meyer), Mr. Hong's sexpot Trophy Wife that's played up for fanservice everytime she's on screen, from doing yoga in tight clothing, wearing a bikini or acting like a Dominatrix.
  • Patty Hong (played by Jessalyn Wanlim) is The Fashionista who's often wearing luxurious and revealing clothing, as well as walking around in fancy swimwear around her home.
  • Valerie (played by Jessica Collins) is a Hot Teacher and has some steamy scenes with her Love Interest Logan where she's in her underwear.
• New Job Episode: Cheryl swaps jobs almost by episode, usually ending up getting fired at the end by preserving her morals.
• Outlaw Couple: Wolf and Cheryl are a Happily Married couple that have been partners-in-crime since high school. But his arrest causes Cheryl to have a wake-up call that the life they lead will inevitably end up with them behind bars, and she attempts to reform her children.
• Parental Sexuality Squick: Logan gets traumatized when he walks in on his parents having a quickie in the bathroom.
• Polar Opposite Twins: Cal and Logan are identical twins with contrasting personalities: Cal is a thuggish deadbeat who wants to become a career thief and conman like his father, while Logal is a professional and driven lawyer who doesn't want to get involved in crime.
• Post-Coital Collapse: An episode has a scene that begins with Logan and Valerie collapsing side-by-side in bed after a bout of Victory Sex due to the Hope's Blackmail photos getting burned.
• Reformed, but Rejected: The West (and especially Cheryl) face a lot of skepticism from both their old friends and the police, and when they are being sincere at leaving their criminal past behind. In particular, Sergent Mack believes they can't change because thievery is In the Blood, but once he sees that Cheryl really means it, he realizes how awful this attitude id and apologizes.
• Reformed Criminal: The premise of the show has Cheryl try to reform her children, who were raised to adopt a Sticky Fingers mentality, into dropping all their criminal activities and going straight so they don't end up in jail like their father.
• Rise of Zitboy: An early episode has Heather getting a zit, much to her distress as she can no longer afford cream or steal it since her mother forbids it.
• Safecracking: Grandpa West, Wolf's father, was a renowned safecracking thief.
• Self-Deprecation: Hope's line of "I want to be a filmmaker. You don’t need an education for that" seems to be the showrunners mocking their own profession.
• Sex for Solace:
  • Tanya rather desperately offers this to Cal after Billy's death, but he's not interested.
  Tanya: I know you have a lot on your mind, but I did want to mention that I'm currently single, and I wanted you to know that I'm here for you, to comfort you in any way you need comforting morning, noon, night, the morning after!
  • Hope uses this as an excuse when she kissed Tad for the first time.
  Hope: Don't people do this sort of thing at funerals to, you know, affirm life?
• Sex Goddess:
  • According to Cal, Nina Hong is insatiable in bed and quickly has him exhausted having the best sex of his life, despite the big age gap between them and how badly she treats him
  Cal: She may be mean, but she's got some skills.
  • Patty brags to Cal that she's even better than her stepmother, which is also how Cal finds out Logan slept with her while doing the Twin Switch. Cal pressures Logan into asking if it's true or not and gets jealous when Logan confirms she's indeed amazing at sex.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: When Cheryl and Wolf have sex at the end of Billy's funeral party, we just see them rolling away in bed kissing before the camera cuts off. When we see them next they're cuddling under a Modesty Bedsheet and Talking in Bed.
• Sexy Surfacing Shot: Cal's introduction to Mr. Hong's wife Nina is seeing her walking out of the pool in a tiny black bikini, and he clearly gets Distracted by the Sexy.
• Sibling Triangle: Played With. Hope gets increasingly jealous of how much attention her Best Friend Tad gives to her sister Heather (who doesn't care about him at all). It eventually leads her to kiss him and convince him to have Their First Time together... but her jealousy only gets worse when he calls her "Heather" while they're making out and she promptly tells him to Get Out!. They later patch up and decide they're Better as Friends.
• Sleeping with the Boss's Wife: Cal ends up becoming Mr. Hong's lackey to Work Off the Debt he owned to him. But soon after he starts working there, Mr. Hong's Trophy Wife Nina starts throwing herself at him and they soon start having an affair. While Cal is worried about his boss finding out, he never attempts to dissuade her out of it.
• Spoiled Brat: While Heather is the most spoiled of the West children, Cal and Hope also show spoiled traits, and all three are quite unhappy about their mother's decision to go straight since it means they all have to work harder.
• Sticky Fingers: The West family has crime be In the Blood and they were all trained by family patriarch Wolf to be good at petty crimes, be it stealing from stores, conning motels or doing scams and blackmail. The plot of the series has his wife trying to reform the family after he gets arrested, and they all struggle with being "clean".
• Teacher/Student Romance: While Logan is the White Sheep of the family, he has one dirt secret: having an affair with his teacher Valerie Bottoms in high school, something his sister Hope has used for Blackmail.
• Their First Time: Hope and Tad impulsively decide to have their first time together, but it ends badly when he calls her "Heather" while they're making out.
• The Triads and the Tongs: The "Hongs" are the local Asian crime syndicate, who are much more dangerous than the West, who always stuck to petty crimes. Cal gets into trouble when he burglarizes their home and steals a family heirloom. To keep Call off jail, Cheryl orders Cal to work for the Hongs until the debt is fully paid.
• Twin Switch: When Cal gets stuck with having to do two jobs at the same time, he asks Logan to take his place and pretends to be Cal to do Mr. Hong's job. Logan reluctantly agrees and wears a wig to pass as Cal. Things get complicated when he meets Patty Hong at the end of the job and they end up hitting off and sleeping together... while she still thinks he's Cal. Cal is only somehwat jealous (mostly because Patty brags she's a Sex Goddess) but Patty gets pissed when she finds out, and it takes some groveling from Logan to get her to forgive him.
• Vanity License Plate: Mr. Hong's car plate reads "The Hongs".
• Wall Bang Her: Wolf and Cheryl have a quickie against a wall during Billy's funeral party.
• Wham Episode: Episode 4, which ends with Cheryl asking Logan not to appeal for Wolf because it's better for their family that he stays locked up.
• Work Off the Debt: Cal is forced to work for Mr. Hong as a lackey to pay back for ruining a precious family relic while he was stealing his mansion.
• Wrong-Name Outburst: Hope and Tad's disastrous attempt at Their First Time ends awkwardly when he calls her "Heather" when they start making out. While she later forgives him, she still thinks he has awful taste in women for liking her sister.

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