Mrs. Davis isn’t great at taking the hint that Simone just isn’t into her, but this is no ordinary rom-com rebuff. Afterall Simone is a nun who spends her time debunking fraudulent magicians, and Mrs. Davis is an AI that has seemingly taken over the world and provided order (for better or worse) to the world. Simone doesn’t want to engage with Mrs. Davis, no matter how much Mrs. Davis insists, and Simone especially does not want to listen to her directly through an earpiece as everyone seems to do. That’s what finally leads Mrs. Davis to raise the stakes by selling the convent out from under her, and what leads Simone to confront Mrs. Davis once and for all, thus setting Simone off on a quest to find and destroys the holy grail and perhaps end Mrs. Davis once and for all.
If you read that intro and thought this show is a lot, well buckle up because truly it’s a lot. Mrs. Davis is a show that presents absurdities so quickly you stop blinking and just start accepting them as they appear. What helps guide the wary viewer is Simone, played incredibly by Betty Gilpin, who anchors the show to a tentative sense of reality. Simone in a typical TV series would often be shown as overly cynical in most other shows; however, Mrs. Davis is an atypical series for sure and here she is presented as having a more stubborn, steadfastness through it all.
This is a refreshing contrast to her Hulk Hogan-esque-mustachioed ex-boyfriend Wiley (Jake McDorman), back in the picture after many years apart, who seems to be the one to most often overreact, even if we the audience are likewise thinking what we are seeing is crazy. Wiley is classic TV masculinity incarnate, somewhat toxic even if well-meaning, so of course he has to go above and beyond to prove himself, show his worth, and just be crazy. In any other show, or certainly action film, Wiley would have been the protagonist, and while his charms do grow on the viewer, it’s still nice that the creators Tara Hernandez and Damon Lindelof avoid that trapping.
Speaking of Hernandez and Lindelof’s team-up, it’s fascinating to try to pull apart where one writer’s influence begins and the other ends. Lindelof is famously known as a key writer of Lost, The Leftovers, and the Watchmen TV series, all of which love to steep viewers in mysteries and often avoid the answers, while Hernandez was a writer for The Big Bang Theory, a show steeped in jokes. I’m therefore inclined to attribute the throughline of faith, a major focus of Mrs. Davis, to Lindelof; however, then there are moments of hilarity involving religious orders, shoes, and the Super Bowl. So perhaps it’s a toss-up to say how it all came to be? Having not yet watched Lost though, but appreciating Lindelof’s work with Watchmen best out of the work I have seen, I do feel however it parses out that this partnership served the series well as this has immediately become my favorite project of Lindelof’s and Hernandez’s too.
Much like Lindelof’s Watchmen, which served up what seemed to be the perfect amount of story in one season, I think it’s fair to say that Mrs. Davis will also end its run with one season. While it’s a fascinating world I could see explored in prequels, side stories, or other mediums entirely like graphic novels, I’m for one hoping this is a contained story that ends with this run. If so it will already be one of my favorite series of the year thus far, and as it sits with me even now I can see my appreciation for this strange marvel of a show only grow.
