‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’: Comically Bad (at Their Jobs)
The espionage rom-com series is an interesting re-imagining of the concept, especially in the choice to make its spy characters absolutely terrible at their jobs.
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I’m not a huge fan of the original Mr. and Mrs. Smith, starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Oh, it’s fine and all, a kind-of fun movie that manages to be slightly amusing for a while and then takes a sharp turn into the ludicrous1. The general idea is fun: Two high-level spies get married. In the original film, neither are aware of their spouse’s profession, setting up some comedy before the inevitable confrontation between two trained killers. Both Pitt and Jolie mug a bit too much for my tastes; they were both hired to look good and they do a great job of that2. So I was a little surprised to learn that a reboot was planned—not that surprised, of course, because these days everything gets rebooted, right? They don’t even wait very long—the movie’s barely warm in the ground and some executive on Cocaine Mountain looks around and suggests rebooting that IP as soon as possible3.
Still, I wound up liking where Donald Glover and company took the premise, ejecting the cooler-than-you, cold-hearted vibe of the original for what amounts to the Rom-Com approach: John and Jane Smith are still spies, yes, but the focus on the show is on their relationship. The storyline follows the shape of that relationship, from the awkward first meeting (in a spectacular brownstone in New York City that would cost roughly $50 million, including the spectacular wine cellar4) through the slow thaw into flirtation, then couplehood, and then the slow dissolution of their love. It’s fair to say it’s not really a story about spies; it’s just a story of a relationship in which the two people involved happen to be spies.
I enjoyed it. Glover, of course, has so much charisma he practically glows5, and his Jane (Maya Erskine) is just as fun to watch. Their chemistry and dynamic is very believable in terms of couplehood—the fights they get into can be hilarious, but also capture that feeling of out-of-control violence that real-life couple fights usually descend into6—and I love the show’s bland attitude toward death and violence. When John and Jane kill people, they aren’t particularly bothered by it, and often make dark jokes about it, which I kind of love—I could go the rest of my life without suffering antiheroes crying over people they’ve killed. It also makes the cold, dark ending work better because these folks are sociopaths, really, so going out in an orgy of murder makes sense7.
There’s just one thing about the show that feels off: John and Jane are truly, spectacularly terrible spies8.
HiHi!
The show kind of lampshades this: Both John and and Jane admit that they’re working for the mysterious HiHi because they’ve been rejected by more traditional fascist instruments (he washed out of the Marines due to asthma, she failed her CIA psychological evaluation)9. But a mysterious global espionage organization not called ISIS should still be expected to hire folks who are at least competent at spycraft, even if they’re loose cannons. In one episode we get a glimpse of the job’s benefits when John and Jane get $375,000 for a single job—admittedly, a violent job involving a lot of travel, but also a job that’s over in about twelve hours10. That’s a lot of money, implying that John and Jane bring world-class skills and experience to their roles.
They do not.
Their very first assignment begins with surveilling a woman in a restaurant. They immediately become distracted by conversation11, and their pursuit of the target is pretty haphazard, though they pull it off in the end (the fact that this mission makes zero sense is the subject of a whole other essay). In their next mission, they have to infiltrate a black-tie affair and administer some truth serum to a high-roller. They bungle it very, very badly, killing the target. Thus begins a pattern: The Smiths reliably call attention to themselves, and rarely evince any kind of situational awareness. At one point they are approached by a couple that claim to also be Smiths, another pair of spies. They accept this without hesitation. They perform no due diligence, make no attempt to establish bona fides. They instead invite the couple to their house and proceed to talk freely about all of their plans.
When they are guarding a high-value asset in Italy, they take him to the home John has recently personally purchased.
When they attempt to kill a rival agent after a lengthy infiltration into her life by John, they are comically terrible, and the target gets away.
I mean, HiHi explicitly gives them three “fails” before they are done, which is kind of incredible12, but okay—it kind of implies that HiHi knows they’re hiring idiots and makes allowances. On the other hand, these are not serious people13.
A Feature, Not a Bug
So the question comes down to whether the general incompetence of our Smiths is purposeful. Is it part of the point of the show, or is it just lazy writing14?
On the one hand, having the Smiths be a certain level of fuckup means there’s a lot of tension, because their missions always go sideways. Tension is fun, and it’s also a means to putting our characters into spots where they reveal themselves. A pair of cool, coldly competent killers would be kind of boring, right15? They would just chew through their assignments and never reveal a thing. Cool, in writing, is frequently boring as fuck.
On the other hand, the implication is that someone thought these two idiots were worth paying millions of dollars a year to take on dangerous missions. And after a series of failed or fumbled missions, HiHi extends an offer of promotion to Jane, stipulating that she’d have to leave her John behind, implying that they think she’s competent, at least. Which she is not16. To be clear, she invaded a mission John was supposed to be doing on his own because she was jealous. A monument to competence, Jane Smith is not.
On the third hand, it’s possible that their incompetence is meant on a more metaphorical level. Since their missions are mapped onto the general steps of a romantic relationship—first date, first vacation, first fight, etc—if you squint you can see their professional incompetence as intended to reflect how we all pretty much prosecute personal relationships: Like idiots.
Whatever your chosen interpretation, it’s kind of distracting. To be fair, if I were ever hired as a Smith I’d probably get as far as the wine cellar in the basement of my awesome new home and be found there six weeks later, forty pounds heavier and surrounded by empty bottles, empty bags of Doritos, and my own filth. So who am I to judge17?
NEXT WEEK: The Crown’s diminishing returns (and entertainment value)
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There is simply nothing correct about Angelina Jolie. Every angle, curve, and protuberance looks … wrong somehow. It’s like she had limb-lengthening surgery.
Brad Pitt gives off serious asshole-you-can’t-hate vibes. He’s that charming kid in high school who would do mean, horrible things to you, then flash that smile and make you feel like he only tortured his best friends.
We’ve had six Batmen and six Supermen since the 1990s. Which seems like a lot.
I did like that the show lampshaded the ludicrous impossibility of that house, but it does lead to the question: If you want your spy couple to be under the radar, why put them in a house a Russian oligarch would struggle to afford? Were there no 2-bedroom condos available?
The first time I had a fight with The Duchess my hair turned white and I woke up buried in a shallow grave in the back yard.
To be fair, going out in an orgy of murder always makes sense.
They’re pretty much what I think I’d be like as a spy: Frequently out of breath, constantly panicked, and trying desperately to make a cream turtleneck work.
I am often haunted by the possibility that the CIA attempted to recruit me in college and I just … didn’t notice.
This lines up with my wish that I could survive in Major League Baseball just long enough to earn the league minimum for one year and then retire. If I could somehow survive just one HiHi job without blowing off my own foot, I’d be set!
I would have become distracted by whiskey, but we all fail in our own ways. Is WE ALL FAIL IN OUR OWN WAYS the title of my memoir? Maybe.
Tell me you play too many video games without telling me you play too many video games.
I was a serious person when I was 10 and won all the spelling bees in my class. Since then it’s been a toboggan ride of ridiculousness.
This pains me to contemplate, because I think Donald Glover is a terrific writer, and Atlanta was brilliant.
Somewhere, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s ears are burning.
Then again, my glorious career as a production editor in STEM publishing was marked by constant failure, a lack of attention to detail, and a tendency to steal office supplies. And yet I was employed for 18 years. The universe is truly a magical place.
The mystery of how I got those Doritos down there will have to wait until my memoir, WE ALL FAIL IN OUR OWN WAYS.
oh gawd, the dialog... the dead air dragging between lines... watered down Neil Simon romance in a spy context with no knowledge (or care) for any of it. Even IF that's the point, none of it lines up logically. Typically American.