Mrs. Davis: Season 1

Created by: Tara Hernandez and Damon Lindelof

Written by: 

Tara Hernandez, Damon Lindelof, Jason Lew, Alberto Roldán, Noelle Viñas, Jonny Sun, Nadra Widatalla, Jason Ning, Chikira Bennett

Starring: Betty Gilpin (Sister Simone), Jake McDorman (Wiley), Andy McQueen (Jay)

Mrs. Davis Season 1 trailer:

Well that was a ride. 

Several reviews I've skimmed online have summed up its chaos succinctly in the first sentence with a simple synopsis, so I'll attempt to do the same: A nun uses her faith to battle a worldwide AI algorithm by finding and destroying the Holy Grail. Yes, that Holy Grail. 

To flesh things out a bit more, this AI--the titular Mrs. Davis--is something of a "Siri"- or "Alexa"- type assistant, except she's very smart, and her whole function is giving people advice. Mrs. Davis has been adopted ubiquitously by people across the globe, with few to no exceptions, other than this nun--Sister Simone. People basically go about their lives with an AirPod-type device in their ear, listening to Mrs. Davis advise them on where to go for lunch or on as big a thing as what career field to enter. She ("it?" Simone wonders the same) quite literally runs the world. 

We're not actually given a great reason as to why Simone decided to reject Mrs. Davis, though the show does do a great job of exploring her past. Early on in the first episode, Simone has a conversation with Mrs. Davis (via a "proxy," or a person listening to Mrs. Davis and repeating her words to Simone) in which Mrs. Davis agrees to destroy herself if Simone destroys the Holy Grail. Simone doesn't see any holes in that plan, so she agrees--and thus we have the first season. 

It gets so much crazier. For one thing, Simone's husband is apparently Jesus (yes, that Jesus), who she can only visit if she focuses and then teleports to the purgatory-like dimension where he runs a restaurant. At one point, she intentionally gets swallowed by a huge fish. At another point, she teams up with a monastic convent to create an expensive commercial for running shoes. 

Simone talks to Jesus in his restaurant 

Simone and Wiley sit in a corporate office waiting to see the former's mother

Overall, it's kind of hard to pin down my thoughts on this show. The surface premise is seriously interesting: a modern-day world where an AI system advises the population? You could go so many places with that idea. In fact, at one point, Simone needs to quickly raise $1,000,000, so she concedes to ask Mrs. Davis for help. Mrs. Davis proceeds to ask everyone within a square mile to give Simone all the cash they possibly can. Within the hour, Simone is telling a van full of the $1,000,000 in cash where to go. Additionally, when at one point Simone's own convent is dissolved, Mrs. Davis steps in to find each sister a place to go--actual jobs--so none of them are left stranded. Both of these moments suggest that Mrs. Davis is neither apathetic nor malevolent. Yet, can an entity which functionally controls the world truly be fully genuine? The possibilities in this were one thing that kept me going. Who was Mrs. Davis? What does she want? Where did she come from? Why does she need the Holy Grail--or rather, why does she need it destroyed, and why is accomplishing this worth her own life? Some of these questions are answered, but others could be answered by further seasons, and I think such questions are still worth exploring. 

Simone pauses to consider things in the Vatican while on her way to deliver a cake to the Pope

One area where the show succeeded (beyond its compelling chaotic plot) was in the characters. The show devotes substantial screentime to showing us who Simone is, with many flashbacks to her time as a young girl, growing up with dangerously eccentric parents, and how they affected who she is now. These flashbacks stories are equally distressing and help us read further into her interactions with her mom. We also see plenty of her friend and ally-in-rebellion Wiley, an on-again-off-again boyfriend (despite her concurrent marriage to Jesus) who's helping her in this mission to destroy the Grail. Wiley has his own complicated relationship with Mrs. Davis, too, which comes to quite a head in the season finale. 

Wiley discusses matters with a member of the anti-Mrs. Davis rebel force

I think the only criticism I have is that the show didn't ground itself enough. It gets a bit too swept up in its own chaos, and beyond becoming hard to follow, it makes conclusions unsatisfying. Sure, mission accomplished, but where does that leave the world? Where does that leave the characters? I don't know.