(Average+) Great Pretender

Series in one sentence: 
A Japanese boy follows a foreign tourist all the way to America just to get his wallet back, and the series thinks that's a good way to start a story.

Series in more sentences:
A conman from Japan is tricked by a self-proclaimed Robin Hood into becoming his assistant, but soon grows tired of leading a corrupted life and tries to start anew.
Nevertheless, he can't seem to cut himself loose from him and his team of misfits, and always gets coaxed into joining their current schemes.

The idea is good and I enjoyed myself fine enough, but the execution didn't fool me. It was horrible. The show rushes through its relationships and even the storylines could've benefited from more drama and additional scenes.
I really thought the whole season was going to be about the boy pretending to be a doctor and awkwardly befriending the mob boss he was working for. That's how it should've been. Leave the other two stories for season 2 and 3.

Great Pretender had some weird dialogue and pacing sprinkled in here and there. To dump your main character in a completely different situation with different people whenever the previous conflict has come to its end is not how you make me care about him or those people. Why are they using this old Disney/Warner Brothers cartoon formula of time skipping and putting the characters in a different location with a different job?

I don't understand what the connection between the main cast is, as well. The main character treats his fellow scammers as friends he should put genuine emotion and care in, but why? Except for the Frenchman, of course, who earned his disdain for no reason. Why him, but not the redhead who deceived him equally, or the abusive tan girl?
All in all, he hardly knows these people and his experiences with them aren't stellar. Why are they even scammers, why do they work together? The series shows parts of their past, but it doesn't explain anything.

As the show began, I thought the boy and the Frenchman were going to be this awesome scamming duo, but the Frenchman has relatively little screen time, let alone with the boy, while he's supposed to be the leader here and the boy his "assistant".
He's a strange character, anyway. Everyone around him keeps calling him a perverted womanizer, but you never see him do anything or even throw around comments that couldn't be perceived as sarcastic jokes.

The mistakes Great Pretender makes are unnecessary. In a way, the entirety of the show feels like a pilot.