Line #64 Series/Scoundrels2010


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/scoundrels_2010.jpg]]
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3	''Scoundrels'' is an American {{Dramedy}} series by Creator/LynGreene and Creator/RichardLevine, airing on the Creator/{{ABC}} network in 2010. It is a ForeignRemake of the New Zealand series ''Series/OutrageousFortune''.
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5	Cheryl West (Creator/VirginiaMadsen) is a middle-aged woman married to career criminal Wolfgang "Wolf" West (Creator/DavidJamesElliott). The couple has four children: Twin brothers Logan and Cal (both played by Creator/PatrickFlueger) 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 (Creator/LevenRambin) who wants to be a supermodel; And the youngest daughter Hope (Creator/VanessaMarano) who's still in high school, but aspires to one day be a filmmaker.
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7	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 (Creator/CarlosBernard) 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.
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9	The series was a ShortRunner that was canceled after its first season which lasted for 8 episodes.
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13	!Tropes
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15	* AdaptationDyeJob: In ''Scoundrels'' the West twins are blondes, while in ''Series/OutrageousFortune'' they were brunettes.
16	* AdaptationNameChange: In the West family, only Wolf and Cheryl maintain their original names from their ''Series/OutrageousFortune'' counterparts. Van is changed to Cal, Jethro is changed to Logan, Pascalle is changed to Heather, and Loretta is changed to Hope.
17	* AdaptationTitleChange: The title ''Scoundrels'' has little to do with the title of the original series ''Series/OutrageousFortune''.
18	* AllAsiansKnowMartialArts: 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.
19	* AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther: Hope and Heather [[TheGloriousWarOfSisterlyRivalry might hate each other most of the time]], but when Hope sees Heather getting tricked by a FalseFriend who's a BitchInSheepsClothing, she rushes to her sister defense and prevents her from being tricked.
20	* TheBabyTrap: Cal doesn't think much when Nina Hong, the TrophyWife of his boss, decides to [[MrsRobinson seduce him]] and [[SleepingWithTheBosssWife have non-stop sex with him]] for a while (mostly because it's [[SexGoddess the best sex he's ever had]]). Later, he finds out [[spoiler: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 [[GoldDigger 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.]]
21	* BadGuysPlayPool:
22	** Charlie, one of Wolf's criminal partners, is often seen playing pool at a BadGuyBar whenever Cheryl meets him there.
23	** Cal and his criminal buddies also frequently play pool in the same bar.
24	* BedTrick: A unintentional example is when Logan is doing a TwinSwitch for Cal and accidentally gets Patty interested on him, because she's more attracted to Logan's wit, and she ends up having a TwoPersonPoolParty 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 [[SexGoddess amazing in bed]].
25	* BigScrewedUpFamily: The West has been a family of thieves and con artists for generations, with Wolf claiming it's InTheBlood, 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.
26	* BlackComedy: Cal's idiot thug BestFriend gets killed when he [[GarbageHideout hides in the trash]] from the police, only to be [[TheWallsAreClosingIn crushed when the trash truck picks him up and throws him inside]], with the whole thing being morbidly PlayedForLaughs. His funeral even gets hijacked by Wolf coming out of jail for a day.
27	* {{Blackmail}}: Hope has taken pictures of Logan's relationship with [[TeacherStudentRomance 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.
28	* BlackmailIsSuchAnUglyWord: Hope is mock offended when Logan calls her deal with Valerie as {{Blackmail}}.
29	-->'''Hope:''' That's not blackmail ok? It's quid-pro-quo. I get whatever I want and she gets to keep her job.
30	* BurgerFool: 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 GirlPosse is quick to mock her for it too.
31	* CheatingWithTheMilkman: Mr. Hong's TrophyWife 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 SexGoddess that Cal becomes constantly exhausted at work, yet somehow Mr. Hong never notices anything. [[spoiler: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 [[TheBabyTrap cement her marriage to Hong]].]]
32	* CodeOfHonour: 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. [[spoiler:The longer Wolf stays in jail, the looser with his code he becomes.]]
33	* ConMenHateGuns: Wolf might be a criminal, but he's a criminal with a CodeOfHonour: "No violence and no drugs". He also made sure this applied to the entire West family, who mostly stick to petty cons and thievery.
34	* CouldSayItBut: 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."
35	* CrackOhMyBack: While Cal is having AutoErotica sex with MrsRobinson 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.
36	* DateRapeAverted: Heather's SmoothTalkingTalentAgent who pulled a ModelScam on her also attempts to rape her via SlippingAMickey, but Heather sees it coming, and [[PoisonedChaliceSwitcheroo switches the drinks]]. Then she leaves him ChainedToABed while she robs him.
37	-->'''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.
38	* DumbBlonde: Cal and Heather are stereotypical ditzy blondes who [[EveryoneLovesBlondes constantly get attention from the opposite sex]]. Averted with Cheryl and Logan, who are blondes but fairly intelligent.
39	* FavorsForTheSexy: Heather is good at using her feminine wiles to manipulate men.
40	** 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 ImAManICantHelpIt.
41	** 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 [[DistractedByTheSexy distracted]] so he doesn't notice as the hours go by.
42	* FeetFirstIntroduction: The first time we meet Patty Hong is when we see her walking into the West's store in her [[HighHeelPower high-heels]].
43	* FiveFingerDiscount: ''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".
44	* FlexibilityEqualsSexAbility: Cal gets DistractedByTheSexy when he sees Nina Hong (whom he's [[SleepingWithTheBosssWife an affair with]] doing yoga in tight clothing at the Hong household, and she flirts with him when she catches him EatingTheEyeCandy. And he's intimately [[SexGoddess familiar with her sexual prowess]].
45	* FrameUp: PlayedWith. TheReveal of the SeasonFinale is that [[spoiler: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.]]
46	* FreudianThreat:
47	** Heather gets her SmoothTalkingTalentAgent to reveal the location of her photos by threatening to give him a GroinAttack while he's ChainedToABed.
48	** While working for Mr. Hong, Cal gets a lot of reminders about the rumors that the Hongs deal with people who wrong them via CripplingCastration. Even Nina and Patty threaten him with this once or twice.
49	* ForeignRemake: The show is a {{remake}} of the New Zealand series ''Series/OutrageousFortune''.
50	* TheGloriousWarOfSisterlyRivalry: Heather and Hope have the stereotypical SiblingRivalry, with Heather being the beautiful [[TheDitz ditz]] who Hope doesn't respect, while Hope is the [[BrattyHalfPint rebellious smug brat]] who Heather is annoyed by.
51	* HappilyMarried: 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.
52	* HighSchoolSweethearts: Wolf and Cheryl have been an OutlawCouple since their high-school days, and in the present day they're HappilyMarried with adult children.
53	* HopelessSuitor:
54	** Hope's BestFriend Tad has a huge crush on Heather, who's barely aware he exists and when she does she calls him "[[AccidentalMisnaming Ted]]".
55	** 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.
56	* InterruptedIntimacy: 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.
57	* LawOfInverseFertility: 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.
58	* LecherousLicking: When [[MrsRobinson Nina Hong]] is seducing Cal, she pretends to have dropped wine on his chin, then "helps" by licking it clean.
59	* LeftHanging: The SeriesFinale 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.
60	* LoveTriangle: While Wolf and Cheryl used to be HappilyMarried, 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 UnresolvedSexualTension with him.
61	* MamasBabyPapasMaybe: 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.
62	* MeanBoss: 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 [[FrameUp frames her for stealing money]].
63	* ModelScam: Heather's SmoothTalkingTalentAgent is not only scamming her for money but when she confronts him, attempts to rape her by SlippingAMickey on her drink. But she sees it coming and [[PoisonedChaliceSwitcheroo switches the drinks]] without him noticing. Then she [[UndressingTheUnconscious undresses him]], leaves him ChainedToABed and robs him.
64	* ModestyBedsheet:
65	** Logan and Valerie have a bedsheet up to their waist in a post-coital scene. He's {{shirtless\|scene}} while she's still wearing a bra.
66	** Cheryl and Wolf also make use of a bedsheet for modesty in a few post-sex scenes of them TalkingInBed.
67	* MrFanservice: Cal gets a fair share of {{Shirtless Scene}}s throughout the show.
68	* MsFanservice:
69	** Heather gets quite a few scenes in swimwear or lingerie when she's posing for modeling shoots or working at the strip club.
70	** Nina Hong (played by Creator/DinaMeyer), Mr. Hong's sexpot TrophyWife that's played up for {{fanservice}} everytime she's on screen, from [[FlexibilityEqualsSexAbility doing yoga in tight clothing]], wearing a bikini or acting like a {{Dominatrix}}.
71	** Patty Hong (played by Creator/JessalynWanlim) is TheFashionista who's often wearing luxurious and revealing clothing, as well as walking around in fancy swimwear around her home.
72	** Valerie (played by Creator/JessicaCollins) is a HotTeacher and has some steamy scenes with her LoveInterest Logan where she's in her underwear.
73	* NewJobEpisode: Cheryl swaps jobs almost by episode, usually ending up getting fired at the end by preserving her morals.
74	* OutlawCouple: Wolf and Cheryl are a HappilyMarried 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.
75	* ParentalSexualitySquick: Logan gets traumatized when he walks in on his parents having a quickie in the bathroom.
76	* PolarOppositeTwins: 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.
77	* PostCoitalCollapse: An episode has a scene that begins with Logan and Valerie collapsing side-by-side in bed after a bout of VictorySex due to the Hope's {{Blackmail}} photos getting burned.
78	* ReformedButRejected: 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 InTheBlood, but once he sees that Cheryl really means it, he realizes how awful this attitude id and apologizes.
79	* ReformedCriminal: The premise of the show has Cheryl try to reform her children, who were raised to adopt a StickyFingers mentality, into dropping all their criminal activities and going straight so they don't end up in jail like their father.
80	* RiseOfZitboy: 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.
81	* {{Safecracking}}: Grandpa West, Wolf's father, was a renowned safecracking thief.
82	* SelfDeprecation: 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.
83	* SexForSolace:
84	** Tanya rather desperately offers this to Cal after Billy's death, but he's not interested.
85	-->'''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!
86	** Hope uses this as an excuse when she kissed Tad for the first time.
87	-->'''Hope:''' Don't people do this sort of thing at funerals to, you know, affirm life?
88	* SexGoddess:
89	** According to Cal, Nina Hong is insatiable in bed and quickly has him exhausted having the best sex of his life, despite the [[MrsRobinson big age gap between them]] and how badly she treats him
90	-->'''Cal:''' She may be mean, but she's got some skills.
91	** 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 TwinSwitch. Cal pressures Logan into asking if it's true or not and gets jealous when Logan confirms she's indeed amazing at sex.
92	* SexyDiscretionShot: 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 ModestyBedsheet and TalkingInBed.
93	* SexySurfacingShot: 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 DistractedByTheSexy.
94	* SiblingTriangle: PlayedWith. Hope gets increasingly jealous of how much attention her BestFriend 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 TheirFirstTime together... but her jealousy only gets worse when he [[WrongNameOutburst calls her "Heather" while they're making out]] and she promptly tells him to GetOut. They later patch up and decide they're BetterAsFriends.
95	* SleepingWithTheBosssWife: Cal ends up becoming Mr. Hong's lackey to WorkOffTheDebt he owned to him. But soon after he starts working there, Mr. Hong's TrophyWife Nina starts throwing herself at him and they soon [[CheatingWithTheMilkman start having an affair]]. While Cal is worried about his boss finding out, he never attempts to dissuade her out of it.
96	* SpoiledBrat: 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.
97	* StickyFingers: The West family has crime be InTheBlood 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".
98	* TeacherStudentRomance: While Logan is the WhiteSheep 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}}.
99	* TheirFirstTime: Hope and Tad impulsively decide to have their first time together, but it ends badly when he [[WrongNameOutburst calls her "Heather" while they're making out]].
100	* TheTriadsAndTheTongs: 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 [[WorkOffTheDebt work for the Hongs until the debt is fully paid]].
101	* TwinSwitch: 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... [[BedTrick while she still thinks he's Cal]]. Cal is only somehwat jealous (mostly because Patty brags she's a SexGoddess) but Patty gets ''pissed'' when she finds out, and it takes some groveling from Logan to get her to forgive him.
102	* VanityLicensePlate: Mr. Hong's car plate reads "The Hongs".
103	* WallBangHer: Wolf and Cheryl have a quickie against a wall during Billy's funeral party.
104	* WhamEpisode: Episode 4, which ends with Cheryl asking Logan [[spoiler:not to appeal for Wolf because it's better for their family that he stays locked up.]]
105	* WorkOffTheDebt: 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.
106	* WrongNameOutburst: Hope and Tad's disastrous attempt at TheirFirstTime 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.

Context Series / Scoundrels2010