Mr. & Mrs. Smith

I had an absolute blast watching Mr. & Mrs. Smith. I just binged all 8 episodes over the weekend and it was such a fun show it flew by. This is both a good spy thriller and a good rom-com. Donald Glover and Maya Erksine are both terrific as the leads and every episode has guest stars from other well known actors. It had Alexander Skarsgard, Eiza Gonzalez, Paul Dano, John Turturro, Ron Perlman, Ursula Corbero, Sarah Paulson, Wagner Moura, Parker Posey, among others. Each episode was a different adventure and they were all fun to watch. Glover and Erksine star as John and Jane Smith. Two loners who are put together to work as spies for a mysterious organization.

I fell victim to the marketing ploys of this show and was excited for this show to be released, watching most of the series the day it was released.

It is well made and had a good production value. Well shot and for the most part well acted. But I find the subject matter to be dull and the writing to be a bit lazy.

This is a spy show that is missing all of the quintessential "spy things" found in the genre. First off, the characters are basically Craigslist Kirkland-brand spies. They are not very good at their jobs and they are following the orders of a chat-GTP style entity. Also, the series is episodic, so they are in a new location doing a new task every episode. This is okay, but 90% of the episode is spent examining their relationship, while 10% is spent doing a few spy things.

All of the realism in this show is spent on relationship building. It's like a committee sat down and wrote a standard rom com using fights, quirks, and highlights from all of their previous relationships and packages them into a show. Needing a hook, they threw in a few lazily-written spy scenes to match it watchable.

I'm being a bit harsh here. The series is somewhat enjoyable and the relationship scenes are pretty well executed and well thought out. But if you are looking for an espionage/spy show with any sort of realism, this isn't it. This is a show about the fake marriage between two people that just happen to be spies.

The series is a character drama with the facade of an action series. We are deeply invested in these characters and the pacing gives us room to explore their love, and flaws in an intimate way. In a word I would describe the series as warmth. It has deeply human scenes with actors that make you care. The pacing and dialogue are not action drama standard. If you are looking for a series to distract with guns a shoot em ups, this probably isn't for you. It you're interested to see how love, compassion, friendship, and intimacy play out in a world of spies and humor... this is the series for you.

This series has nothing but the premise in common with 2005s mr and mrs smith. First of all the main lead while charming in his own right is no brad pitt, similarly the female lead no angelina jolie. The premise of the first movie was shallow, it was just 2 overly attractive film stars who were never seen together in a movie fawning over each other and displaying their sexiness, with some bad plot in the background. This movie actually explores the plot, two pretend married agents going on missions and step by step getting intimate. It is a blurry line they are traversing between the professional strictly lethal business and the attraction. It is complex,a very messy unconventional hands on movie i would very much like to compare to beef. You never know where the plot is going or how the relationship will develop. Its messiness does contribute to it losing focus, it is set up as a spy thriller but the dialogue is very much atlanta like, way more casual intertwined than any spy movie ive ever watched. This is however to its detriment sometimes because whilst the story, the progression are enjoyable due to the complexity it creates, you have a hard time buying either of the characters as stone cold killers they are supposed to be.

Still the dialogue is simply superb, the chemistry is there, the story is a thrill. You just need to remove the bradjelina glasses and enjoy the ride.

I watched all 8 episodes and found them to have the same sentiment as the original movie but with a ton more depth. And also what I thought was better acting, Donald and Maya took every episode and put their full acting strength behind it to give each episode a familiar piece of life with some crazy action involved too. Some of the mid episodes definitely just felt like fillers and since we had the general plot going we didn't feel as we had to watch every second to get the gist. Now to the ending, DIDN'T LIKE, why with 8 full episodes would the series runners leave it on a cliffhanger... not appreciated and made me have mixed feelings toward the entire series. Boo.