After watching the entire season, I still don't know if I like "Mrs. Davis" or not. It's a wild swing of a show that mixes multiple genres and tackles some interesting topics. I respect that it leans into being very weird, in a way that not a lot of shows are. Co-created by Damon Lindelof and Tara Hernandez, it stars Betty Gilpin as a renegade nun named Sister Simone. She lives in a future where a superintelligent A.I. named Mrs. Davis has more or less taken over the world by taking charge of people's happiness and telling them what to do. Simone hates her, but is happy to keep her distance, living in a remote convent, until one day Mrs. Davis contacts her with a quest and an offer.
The storytelling is done in a roundabout way, showing us wacky things up front, and then filling in the backstory to explain how we got there, and what those events actually mean in content. This is one of those heightened comic book universes where the first episode involves a wild chase sequence with Nazis and a lot of physical gags, and Simone occasionally meets with her husband Jay (Andy McQueen) in a metaphysical diner. Because of all the figures from Christian theology that keep popping up, and the wonderfully bizarre concepts, "Mrs. Davis" reminds me a lot of "Preacher," except much lighter and more earnest in its aims. It's also like "The Good Place," except more anarchic and pulpy. While on her quest, Simone gets a chance to work out her baggage with her genial ex Wiley (Jake McDornan) and her troublesome parents (Elizabeth Marvel, David Arquette). Often, the supernatural shenanigans just feel like a distraction.
Maybe that's why I didn't connect to "Mrs. Davis" the way I was hoping that I would. I love Betty Gilpin as a badass nun, and I love that the show takes its Christian theology fairly seriously, even though it's very irreverent. However, in spite of flirting with some pretty heavy subject matter, it never stops feeling like a sitcom. Mrs. Davis, for instance, is a pretty sinister creation, able to track down Simone wherever she goes, and manipulates just about anybody to do her bidding, but any darker implications of this are only threatened and never really carried through. The characters feel emotionally genuine, but it doesn't feel like the show is taking them seriously. Lots of time is spent on goofy situations like Simone getting herself swallowed by a whale, and Wiley taking part in an endurance contest to prove he isn't a chicken, but none of it feels consequential. I kept waiting for Mrs. Davis to reveal that the whole quest had been a trick to get Simone to feel a sense of spiritual fulfillment and make up with her mother. I couldn't bring myself to take most of the show at face value and I didn't find any of it funny.
Still, I got through the whole season without much effort. It's well made and easy to watch, with a fast pace and lots of good comic performances. The show is also riddled with familiar guest stars, including Margo Martindale, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Chris Diamantopolous leading the anti-AI underground. And it never feels like the production is cutting corners at any point, the way it often felt in similar shows like "Preacher" and "Legion." Clearly a lot of effort was expended on making "Mrs. Davis" the best that it could be. However, I don't think I get what it's trying to be, and I'm not alone. Every reaction to the show I've seen calls it very weird, which is fine, but it's not a very deep or impactful kind of weird, the way David Lynch films are. It's more of a random, unfocused kind of weird, like the purposefully AI generated episode titles. What put me off the most was when the show would touch on something interesting, like Simone and Jay's unbalanced relationship, and then never really engage with it to my satisfaction. It felt like constantly running into narrative dead ends.
Everything does wrap up nicely in the end, and some of the twists are gratifying to see play out, though the mechanics of it are more interesting than any of the substance. I guess I just wasn't on the same wavelength as this one, and I can't figure out if it's the show's fault or mine. I suspect it's a little of both. "Mrs. Davis" is wildly creative, completely unpredictable, and the kind of show I'd like to see more often. This one just didn't do anything for me. Oh well.
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