PREMISE
Two strangers land jobs with a spy agency that offers them a life of espionage, wealth, and travel. The catch: new identities in an arranged marriage.
SEASON MVP
MAYA ERSKINE– And it’s not even close. She’s awkward and adorable, feisty and Kick-Ass, broken and embittered, and absolutely hilarious throughout. The later parts of the season have episodes that take place over the course of a matter of months, and it is there where you can really see the changes that Erskine brings to this character that are quite impressive to witness.
At some point, Phoebe Waller-Bridge was attached to play Mrs Smith. And though I REALLY like Phoebe Waller-Bridge, I absolutely cannot imagine her having the kind of chemistry that Erskine does with Donald Glover all the while giving this much gravitas to this performance. Erskine is even more revelatory than she was in PEN15, and that saying something.
SEASON HIGHLIGHTS
EPISODE 6: COUPLES THERAPY– The show was going along swimmingly by this point. Seemed to be kind of a procedural case of the week kind of vibe, which is fine….and then s*** got real. All of the small arguments that are sprinkled throughout each and every episode up until this episode come to a boiling head after a failed mission, and boy does this particular episode start touching on a lot of stuff that tends to break up most couples.
Their relationship up until this point in the story (outside of all of the spy stuff) is a prototypical example of that one couple you know that rushed into things WAAAAY too fast without knowing each other as much as they think that they do. This all leads to a derailment in a scene that should be considered one of the best TV scenes of the entire year. This is the episode that Glover and Erskine should submit to the Television Academy for Emmy consideration.
DONALD GLOVER– At this point in Glover’s career, he is proven to be a man who really makes others look good. As previously mentioned, he and Erskine really have STRONG chemistry in the show, and yet Glover really doesn’t have a lot of dynamic scene chewing kind of stuff to do. I do believe that’s by design as it was in Glover’s previous show ATLANTA, a show in which the three other co-leads (Brian Tyree Henry, Zazie Beetz, and Lakeith Stanfield) had the lion’s share of memorable quotes, scenes, and stand out episodes. Glover’s genius is behind the camera and what he does with his pen. On-screen, he is the perfect man to put next to somebody in order to have them break out in the best possible way.
Amidst all the stylistic choices in this show, he is impressively unremarkable as Mr. Smith. He’s likable, kicks-ass when it’s time for him to be and is very funny. But it’s not very showy. I say that as a compliment because this show wouldn’t be nearly as good if he were trying to steal scenes from other people.
SCENERY– I want to go as far as to say that this may be the most aesthetically pleasing show that’s on Amazon Prime right now. The early episodes of the season especially are set in exotic locales and the show makes the most of them. This show manages to make gentrified New York look like a wonderful place to live, and makes the most use of the Williams-Sonoma-drenched luxury brownstones as oddly effective action set pieces.
BEST SCENES
1. The fireside conversation (Episode 6)
2. The helicopter conversation (Episode 4)
3. The ski lodge shootout (episode 3)
4. The shootout in the Smith residence (Episode 8)
5. The OFFICAL meet cute at the theater (episode 1)
THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE
THE CAMEOS– One of the things that I came to hate about the show Entourage after about the third season was the absolutely pointless cameos by very famous people who were there just to be there. MR. & MRS. SMITH doesn’t have cameos that are nearly that egregious, but they do have a lot of very notable character actors show up and do mostly nothing.
I don’t necessarily know what the budget of the show was, but if it is a high number I’m pretty sure a good chunk of that budget went to getting these actors to show up and just have one or two scenes of poignancy. Hell, the opening sequence proves to be an absolute waste of a major talent in and of itself.
THE SEASON FINALE– Although the home shootout homage to the original film was a very good scene…the path that we took to get to that point is a bit shoddy.
It’s hard not to rant about this without going into spoilers so I can’t do that right now. All I can say is this: this show on an episode-by-episode basis asks two questions:
Who hired us?
What happens if we fail three missions?
The final episode flat-out ignores these questions to the detriment of the believability of the circumstances presented in the season finale.
NOT ENOUGH TIME– Though it is cleverly executed, there are multiple points during the season where we are jumping months ahead in the lives of Mr and Mrs Smith without any kind of subtitle placed on the screen to tell us how much time has passed. This doesn’t really happen in the first four episodes, but regularly occurs during the last half of the season. Because of this, we learn very little about literally anything involving the world that these characters are involved in.
Eight episodes were not enough to tell this story. The world and the ideas are just too big. I think a 12-episode season of this show would fully encapsulate the story. But I’ll take what I can get.
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MR. AND MRS. SMITH is a very slow burn to start, but once things really get going the show does start knocking it out of the park. Glover and his team of Atlanta writers and directors do know how to make awkwardness charming regardless of genre. The potential for this to be a much bigger and emotionally affecting show than what it is right now is absolutely through the roof. It’s off to a fantastic start.
MR. AND MRS. SMITH is playing on Amazon Prime Video now.
