Donald Glover and Francesca Sloane are behind the new "Mr. & Mrs. Smith," which is loosely based on the 2005 action film about a pair of married spies. Aside from the premise, they don't have much in common. Glover and Maya Erskine play "John Smith" and "Jane Smith," who are recruited and paired up together by a mysterious "Company," given a gorgeous apartment in New York to cohabitate in, and sent on high risk missions that often involve killing people. But because this is written by the people behind "Atlanta," the relationship between John and Jane is a much more nuanced and difficult thing than we usually see in these kinds of genre stories.
Through eight episodes, we watch John and Jane meet, get comfortable with each other, fall in love, and then run into some typical relationship issues. There's equal narrative weight placed on what's going on in their private and work lives, and the two definitely influence each other. A big reason John and Jane's relationship is so intense is because they can't really get away from each other. If you've seen the film "Mr. & Mrs. Smith," you'll know that the pair eventually see a couples therapist (Sarah Paulson), and end up at each other's throats. Unlike the film, however, reconciliation is not guaranteed. John and Jane's problems aren't something that has an easy fix, and the odds are stacked very high against them by the end of the series.
I think it's fair to characterize the show as a dramedy, but not a comedy. Like "Barry" and "Succession," the show is funny because the characters are funny and their lives are absurd, not because they're delivering jokes. Donald Glover and Maya Erskine are well matched and have good chemistry with each other. They convinced me that John and Jane were people who I could meet in real life, with a connection that felt genuine. The series largely behaves like a big budget action franchise, and a lot of its effectiveness comes from putting the beautifully shot action sequences and exotic locales in stark contrast with these very grounded, sometimes humdrum personal interactions that our leads are carrying on with at the same time. The pacing is slower than you might expect, and I was constantly caught off guard by how willing the show was to pause the action for little everyday annoyances like uncharged cell-phones, or just to let the conversations wander off into odd tangents.
"Mr. and Mrs. Smith" is also a genre parody to a certain extent, with some self-aware skewering of common action tropes. For instance, a thrilling foot chase through a European city - the kind we've seen so often in James Bond and Jason Bourne films - becomes a lot more difficult when the Smiths have to bring along an elderly man that they're trying to keep safe. Or there's the difficulty of trying to seduce a target who clearly isn't in his right mind, leading to a situation that ought to feel sexy just getting more and more awkward. The first episode is mostly the Smiths ambling around New York City, bored out of their minds, and waiting for something exciting to happen, which is what most of being a spy is actually about. Some viewers will find the approach refreshing. Some will not have the patience for it.
I like the show's worldbuilding, where we learn a little more about the Company and how they operate in each episode, slowly turning up the tension and the level of danger. The guest cast is so good that I'm not willing to name most of the actors, since it's so fun to see each new face pop up as the target or victim of the week. At the same time, the show goes where the romances in these kinds of shows never go, but where we know they realistically would. John and Jane talk about the future, about their parents, and about having kids. They find major incompatibilities in their outlooks on life that make a future together tough. Soon competing goals and outside pressures push things to the brink.
"Mr. and Mrs. Smith" is a project I've been hearing about for a while, as Donald Glover was originally supposed to be starring with Phoebe Waller-Bridge. I suspect their sensibilities clashed, and Glover won out and stuck around, while Waller-Bridge exited. I'm a little curious what that version of the show would have looked like, but I'm perfectly happy with the show we got.
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