(SPOILERS AHEAD)
The overarching plot for GP is fairly simple; you have a band of good-hearted international con artists who only target those who they feel deserve to be taken down a peg. Our MC, a small time Japanese con artist, is recruited and wacky hi jinks ensue. The season is cleanly split into four major arcs, each covering a separate 'con' with a new location and target.
An important thing to note is that each con essentially functions as a backdrop for exploring different characters. Arc one is the introduction and dive into our MC Makoto Edamura, Arc two focuses on Abigail, three for Cynthia, and four splits between Laurent and Makoto again. With the exception of arc four (which I'll get into in a second), I thought these were pretty successful in providing a bit of character development while also getting a nice look into their backstories and motives. The cons themselves delve into the absurdly convoluted, but with some suspension of disbelief are still enjoyable to watch.
Here's the part where I start venting on what went wrong.
The first thing that really hit me the wrong way was the relationship between Laurent and Makoto, which only worsened as the show progressed. Laurent is shown to have an unsettling level of control over Makoto's life over a period of several years, which he uses to manipulate Makoto into participating in a number of highly dangerous cons against his will. On multiple occasions, Makoto is forced into the roll of being a plant in an organization that would gladly kill him at the first hint of betrayal. Despite Laurent's utter disregard for Makoto's safety or volition, he's never really framed as anything less than an enigmatic guardian, nor does he lose the trust of any of his crew. Even Makoto himself, despite expressing frustration with Laurent's constant interference, often goes along with him and plays friendly.
The last arc is really where the story falls apart, and existing problems are exacerbated. Through a combination of an unreliable narrator and constant side-switching, following the thought process of Makoto or his newly found father is a confusing mess as they flop between Laurent's group and literal human traffickers. There's a point where our morally righteous MC, thinking two of his friends and his dad are dead (despite seeing them previously fake deaths in a similar manner earlier), genuinely joins up with the traffickers and actively participates in their actions for a significant length of time. After his not-actually-dead dad and friends explain the situation, he suddenly swaps back to the 'good-guys' to carry out the plan. This utterly destroys Makoto's character and development, as it's shown he can quite easily discard his guiding morals given the right circumstances. I honestly would have welcomed this development if it was played as a defining moment for a character we thought was incorruptible, but his brief spree of abusing and selling children is never actually questioned after the fact. It was all part of the 'plan' to keep Makoto in the dark and become a full fledged villain in order to gain the bad-guy's trust, which makes it okay I guess...
To cap off a confusing and upsetting arc, the climax is unspeakably dumb. There's a point where the heads of two rival trafficking orgs are headed to a meeting to hand off a large some of money, during which Laurent & Makoto drug everyone en route and fly them to a secluded island. At this point the logical thing to do would be to simply take the money while they were out and leave them on the island, which would lead us to the exact same ending. Instead, they pointlessly construct a duplicate building to serve as the meeting place and go through a whole charade of double-crosses and even more fake death, and then escaping in the confusion. As if it couldn't get worse, Makoto made his own contribution to the pointless plan by contracting all the past villains as muscle in his fake double/triple-cross, despite being extremely evil individuals that go against everything Makoto stands for. It really is a sight to behold.
Despite my grievances with Great Pretender, there really is a lot this show does well, and for the most part I did enjoy it. For anyone who's willing to look past the train-wreck of the last several episodes, I still recommend a watch.
