Last year FX added a show about grifters trying to maintain their confidence lifestyle in a suburban McMansion to their lineup of crooked cops, alcoholic firemen, and oversexed plastic surgeons. The Riches had its ups and downs, but when it worked, it was because of the thrill of watching high-stakes improvisation, as performed by the magnetic Eddie Izzard and the harrowing Minnie Driver. (There's also the thrill of wondering when their accents will crack, which is something I find it hard to get beyond when the actors' real voices are so familiar to me.)
When last we left our fake lawyer, his heroin-chic wife, her invalid mother, and their three children, they had fled the Riches' house after being discovered by the best friend of the man who's supposed to be living there. But a jealous fellow Traveler who'd been watching them for some time, trying to figure out their angle, interrogates the drugged best friend and now knows all about the man Wayne is pretending to be.
It's a cavalcade of bloodstains, hammers, kitchen knives, bodies in trunks, and serious injury as Wayne sends his family off toward Mexico while he stays to clean up the mess with Pete, Doug Rich's best friend. Meanwhile Dahlia and the family pick up an unexpected passenger: neighbor Nina, who has learned their secret and craves their freedom.
Beyond the edgy plotlines and charismatic performances, the appeal of The Riches is the proliferation of metaphors for a life of lies. As Season Two begins, the lesson is that it's the little things that trip you up. There's a dead Pete hidden in the trunk and a drunk man with a gun in the house, but the security guard that comes by in the early hours of the morning is drawn by Hugh's SUV, which he foolishly left parked with two wheels up on the lawn. "We can't have this," tsks the rent-a-cop, with his back to a dead body a few feet away.