Ope Pardon, No. 33: Nobody Said It Was Fair

Happy Valentine’s Day! And happy Anna Curtis birthday, the only true holiday I celebrate on February 14.

I did not expect to write about relationships for Valentine’s Day but my finding both the ability to form semi-coherent thoughts and the time to write them down seems to have coincided as such so here we are.

I was similarly not expecting the Donald Glover-Maya Erskine Mr. and Mrs. Smith remake (if we can call it that, but more on that in a bit) to make me think meaningfully about relationships — I was mostly tuning in for the real estate (more on that later as well) — and again, here we are.

To back up a bit, when it was announced sometime last year that Donald Glover (Community, Atlanta) and Maya Erskine (Pen15, Plus One) would be the stars of a Mr. and Mrs. Smith remake, I was part of the chorus of skeptics. I love, or at minimum, enjoy, the work of both of those actors, but for all their many charms, they are hard to imagine as either half of an on-screen couple generating enough chemistry and charisma to literally ruin at least one, possibly several, marriages.

Then, to be honest, I forgot about the show. Then, two weeks ago I read a review calling it an Architectural Digest home tour turned spy show. (Shout out to my queen Kathryn VanArendonk.) So I gave it a shot. I simply love looking at real estate I can’t afford.

I would describe Amazon’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith best as being the kind of remake that would benefit most from not sharing the name of its source material, such is the difference in tone (and to some degree, story) with the 2005 Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie banger.

Of the many differences, it is a TV show (obviously) and an extremely episodic one at that: Each episode follows a different mission the couple undertake. They are also strangers paired to be a spy-assassin duo, not rival spy-assassins who incidentally meet, fall in love and get married. The movie has a clear plot and story arc — effective, if simple, stakes. The TV show does not really have any of those things.

This is because the show positions itself more so as about the ups and downs of a relationship than any kind of Big Bad conspiracy. In that sense, it has more in common with the HBO Max series Love Life in that the driving question is: Will these (two people) find love and happiness (together)?

To this end, in addition to each episode being a new mission for John and Jane, it’s aligned (explicitly, right there in the episode titles) with a different stage or milestone in a relationship (First Date, First Vacation, Couples Therapy, Infidelity, etc. — would we call infidelity a milestone? A subject for another time).

Now, to call Mr. and Mrs. Smith a spy show that is really about a marriage would/should draw unflattering comparisons to The Americans, the ultimate spy show that is really about a marriage but also a show that operated from a totally different framework of genre, storytelling, writing, etc. Much as Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2024) isn’t trying to be Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005), it also isn’t trying to be The Americans.

So let’s take Mr. and Mrs. Smith for what it is, which is a decidedly good time! I agree with the assessment that it is first and foremost a real estate tour and a strong temptation to sell out in the fastest way possible. (Could I kill for that Como cottage*? Shan’t be answering that on the written record!)

Aesthetics do thus seem to be its strongest appeal. I wish it was funnier, given how funny we’ve seen the cast be in other things. Both Glover and Erskine are masters of line delivery and physical comedy so they set and don’t clear a very high bar for me. The show’s sitcom structure and jumpy timeline — it’s very unclear the amount of time that passes between episodes — also makes it admittedly hard to get emotionally invested in the couple or feel the weight of the aforementioned milestones in their relationship.

I also think it makes it harder for the show to explore the themes it teases an interest in (financial security, power dynamics, race, capitalism, careers, children — plus the intersection of all those with and in a relationship). Ultimately, I can’t say I really cared whether John and Jane ended up together at the end, which again, is the only thing resembling a driving question of the show.

Still I do think the question is, in fact, maybe more interesting that show itself — especially in contrast to the relationship at the molten-hot heart of the film version. And now I have to ask you to excuse me while I read far too deeply into what I just got done saying is a piece of entertainment best enjoyed at face value.