Review: _Mrs. Davis_

[jducoeur]

Let's get something straight upfront: I kind of despise Peacock. We picked it up for the Olympics a while back, and their tech and polices were infuriatingly bad. They've improved somewhat, but I still find their UI sub-par, and their lineup mediocre. I can't really recommend subscribing.

That said, if you do happen to have Peacock (possibly in order to watch Poker Face, which is rather fun), it's worth giving Mrs. Davis a look.

tl;dr -- spectacularly weird, yet a coherent, well-told novel.

Let's get into it.

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Our protagonist is Sister Simone, a horseback-riding nun with a passionate (and as we will gradually learn, well-earned) hatred of stage magicians. She is quietly living her life married to Jesus -- and occasionally saving people from magicians -- when she is forced into a conversation with Mrs. Davis.

This story takes place in a slightly-alternate modern day. It looks and feels a lot like our world, except that about ten years ago, the Algorithm -- aka Mrs. Davis -- came into everyone's lives. She knows everything about everybody, has your best interests at heart, and will (somewhat forcefully if need be) steer you in directions that will make you happier and healthier. (Yes, this is a serious, and unusually well-thought-out, examination of the implications of AI.)

Simone doesn't like her.

So when Mrs. Davis offers her a deal -- find and destroy the Holy Grail in return for one wish, up to and including telling Mrs. Davis to shut herself off -- there isn't much choice.

There ensues a show that is gloriously strange, but which manages to stay just on the side of having an entirely coherent -- indeed, fairly tight in retrospect -- plot. It's less like phantasmagorias such as Legion or The Prisoner, more like Watchmen or Lost. None of which is coincidental, since it is another series by Damon Lindelof, who thrives on weird-but-deep.

Along the way, we get to see Simone's history, her deeply fucked-up parents, her relationship with Jesus (including some exploration of polyamory for a bride of Christ), and the ways in which it is so very good and very bad (and sometimes extremely creepy) for society to actually have an omniscient mother figure. The religious parallels there are somewhat left to subtext, but they're very much there, and it's hard to say whether the series is rather blasphemous or deeply respectful of religion. (Possibly both.)

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Overall, it's a better show than I was expecting -- not as all-around brilliant as Watchmen, but far tighter than Lost. Yes, they do nail the ending, and this is 100% a complete story in eight episodes, without cliffhangers or any obvious room for a sequel. (I greatly appreciate that: over time, I've come to love novels far more than serials.)

Betty Gilpin does a great job as Simone: so very, very messed up, but trying her damnedest to save the world even as she is stumbling around in the dark, trying to understand what is going on here.

The story is rich, complex, and wonderfully weird, ranging from the well-meaning (but full of toxic masculinity) resistance, to the secret order that has been protecting the Grail for centuries (Rule Number One: Do Not Sip!), to the annual competition to hold onto Excalibur the longest. There are a bunch of side-tracks, but all of them keep moving the plot along, and the final episode is actually a pretty powerful exploration of the fear of death and the meaning of life for most of our major characters.

So -- yeah. I can't recommend subscribing to Peacock in order to see Mrs. Davis. But it's well worth watching if you have the opportunity, and are willing to have your mind somewhat bent for eight hours....

Comments

[danabren]

What happens if you sip?

[jducoeur]

That's a spoiler (It's a ridiculous but major plot point), but suffice it to say it doesn't go well for you.

[danabren]

Heh. Merci.