Review: Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2024 series)
Not to go full “how do you do, fellow kids?”, but Mr. & Mrs. Smith is a vibe. It’s technically accomplished, wondrously acted, pretty hilarious—but even more than that it’s just this mood of being cool. The leads look great but not too flashy. The jokes are solid but never too broad. There’s just a sense of hipness to the thing that’s hard to pin down. And this is made more impressive by the fact that the two mains aren’t monoliths of swagger, unimpeachable types that do everything effortlessly and slickly. Quite the opposite—the titular Smiths are messy and petty and screw up a bunch, but that deeply flawed humanity only adds to the show’s charm.
The series concerns John (Donald Glover) and Jane (Maya Erskine) Smith, two people brought together in fake matrimony by their employer, a shadowy spy organization, to carry out covert missions together. Starting off as complete strangers but thrust into a very intimate setting, a relationship grows between the operatives—with all of the entanglements and arguments and pains that come with such changes over time. Each episode is a new mission that reveals some new element to these characters as well as their partnership.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith was originally helmed by Glover and Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag), the latter eventually left the project and was replaced by Francesca Sloane to be a co-showrunner with Glover. Sloane and Glover bring in some great talent for directors including Hiro Murai, Karena Evans, Amy Seimetz, and Christian Sprenger to helm these episodes, along with injecting the series with a ton of fun guest stars like Paul Dano, Parker Posey, Ron Perlman, Wagner Moura, Sarah Paulson, Michaela Coel, Alexander Skarsgård, Eiza González, and John Turturro. But the main focus remains Glover and Erskine in their roles, navigating the waters of a fledgeling relationship while also carrying out some questionable espionage shit. It’s like a modern version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. but with less gadgets and way more sexual tension.
Much like Atlanta or Swarm, each installment feels like its own thing but also still fits into the larger quilt of the world that’s created. Some are much more comedic than others; some are heavily invested in plot while others mostly have the story as a backdrop for the characters to shine; some find the couple at their most loving and others at their worst bickering. In this, Mr. & Mrs. Smith deftly mirrors a long term romantic relationship between people: sometimes things are going a bit better than others or there’s more intimacy, or there’s some new chaos enveloping a couple. But always at the center of the maelstrom lies the same folks, still figuring each other out.
Luckily the pair with which we are spending so much time are so fun and engaging. Erskine’s Jane is the more competent of the two, and seemingly more mature, but she is still given plenty of moments to shine her own pettiness and immaturity; the character is highly wound up, but it’s never so abrasive as to be entirely off-putting. Jane is often riddled with anxiety, but Erskine makes it a relatable neuroticism instead of some forced quirk or awful personality. John is the cooler of the two, but also the one more likely to fuck up. So audiences root for him to succeed (even when “succeeding” means doing some pretty bad shit), but can’t help but laugh at the ways he manages to bungle it all. Glover plays John as the more “innocent” of the two—again, given some of their actions, that’s a very relative term here—who seems to lack as much of that killer instinct that drives Jane. The smart call here isn’t that they are opposites, where Jane is cutthroat and John some naive dreamer, but they are shades of gray from each other with those roles occasionally reversing when a situation demands it. Again, it’s taking familiar relationship dynamics and applying them to the spy game, but never in some sort of “opposites attract”/Dharma & Greg approach.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith doesn’t feel like you have to binge the streaming series in one go. With the exception of the penultimate into finale, there’s not a lot of plot propulsion that will have viewers wondering what will happen next. Instead, it’s hanging with two fascinating characters portrayed excellently in a kingdom of shadows that just also happens to be pretty damn hilarious. The Smiths get up to some inhuman actions in the course of the show, but it never loses sight of the basic humanity of the two leads, and that’s what draws audiences back. It’s much more of a traditional sitcom set-up in that regard, with “what happens next” isn’t necessarily some serialized dramatic narrative but more how will these two deal with some familiar spy story trope.
Much like Atlanta and Swarm, there are feints to the surreal and the horrific, but it all feels part of the same palette and never jarring. More like a “wait what” stutter step before continuing onward with that episode’s story. Which is an oddly grounded attribute to possess in this fanciful tale of covert operatives. But that goes to the slickness of Mr. & Mrs. Smith. For example, the main characters botch a lot, but they are also both good at thinking on their feet and coming up with some mostly okay solution in the moment. It would be easier just to have them be incompetent at their jobs. Or hyper excel at everything except the relationship stuff. But instead, this middle ground feels true (as much as it can) to how real people would act when thrust into these situations.
Sloane and Glover have crafted a very fun series that’s well worth watching. With two entertaining leads that retain their relatability even amidst the insanity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith dives into the messy world of espionage and the even messier one of relationships. It’s not constant bickering, nor is it constant adoration, but a mixture of them and more that creates fully rounded characters and dynamics that are truly interesting.
