SPOILERS FOR SEASON ONE OF MR. & MRS. SMITH!
Mr. & Mrs. Smith on Amazon Prime has a lot going for it–Donald Glover and Maya Erskine, for starters. Those two are each phenomenal, and together? Well, actually together they seem kind of odd. But whatever! It’s a terrific premise–assassins and spies who are married? Based on the movie that famously got Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie together even though he was married to Jennifer Aniston at the time? HOT, right?
Again, though…Glover and Erskine? They’re both hot, but it’s more like intellectual hotness. They’re both good-looking people, don’t get me wrong. They are objectively hot, but their sizzle factor is more due to their talent than their looks, that’s what I’m saying. Pitt and Jolie are also talented, or so people have been insisting to me for decades, but I don’t think that’s what anyone was reacting to in the movie version of Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
I guess what I’m trying to say here is that the series Mr. & Mrs. Smith was an unusual project. It didn’t quite stick to the premise of the film–our spies know right from the start that they’re both spies, for instance. And it never seemed to decide whether it wanted to be a drama or a comedy, or even one of those in-betweeners like The Bear. The tone was wildly uneven from episode to episode, and ultimately the show was more like the Before… series of films with some terrific guest stars and a few action set pieces. There was a lot of talking about the relationship and not much international intrigue.
But one thing was absolutely perfect, a simple casting coup that did all the work for an entire season-long plotline. John and Jane Smith are given a stunning house in New York City, complete with a pool and a garage and a rooftop garden. It’s ridiculous. It would cost so many millions of dollars that my brain can’t come up with enough millions to assign to it. And early on, Jane bumps into their neighbor, who complains that the Smiths’ cat is digging up his plants and pooping in his backyard.
We hate this guy right away, because first of all, he has a backyard in New York City. And secondly, he’s played by Paul Dano. Even though Jane calls him “Hot Neighbor” for the rest of the season, every time she bumps into him he’s staring at her, or John, or their house, in a creepy manner. Why does Jane think he’s hot? He’s not hot, he’s creepy, and that’s because he’s Paul Dano.
Paul Dano is creepy. I’m sure he’s a perfectly lovely man, but he has a creepy presence and that’s just the way it is.
John knows there’s something off about Hot Neighbor. Jane kinda knows it too, that’s why she lied about not having a cat when she first met him. He’s always watching them, just the way another spy would. Or another assassin. But John and Jane are bad at their jobs, and they don’t protect themselves from obvious dangers. So we as viewers are forever yelling at our screens when they seem oblivious. Things like “Just attack John Turturro, don’t sniff each other’s butts like dogs!” and “What the fuck, don’t EVER show Parker Posey your panic room, you moron!”
So every time Paul Dano as Hot Neighbor shows up for a second or two, we are on high alert. How can they not realize that this man is a bad dude? Just look at him, he’s Paul Dano! Finally in the last episode, John wises up to the danger living right next door. He gets into Hot Neighbor’s house, gets violent, and demands some goddamn answers from the man we’ve been trying to tell him was the enemy all season long. But the answer is not what we’ve come to expect from the inherently evil/creepy Paul Dano:
BEST TWIST EVER.
