Mrs. Davis by Tara Hernandez and Damon Lindelof (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Mrs. Davis by Tara Hernandez and Damon Lindelof
• Susan Aronstein and Laurie Finke

tara hernandez and damon lindelof, creators, Mrs. Davis, an eight-part Warner Brothers television mini-series, 20 April–18 May 2023, steaming on Peacock.

Tara Hernandez and Damon Lindelof's 2023 series Mrs. Davis reimagines the Grail, 'that most clichéd and overused McGuffin,' in an adventure as loony as anything the Pythons might have concocted. In this generic mashup, users worldwide have [End Page 68] become addicted to Mrs. Davis, an algorithm that promises them peace, prosperity, and purpose. But not all are convinced of the algorithm's benevolence; the series follows the exploits of Sister Simone (Betty Gilpin), an indomitable skort-wearing nun intent on destroying Mrs. Davis and all her works. Aided by a former boyfriend (Wiley, played by Jake McDorman) and his 'band of brothers,' a group of muscular Kens, Simone takes on the task of extirpating the sinister software, which has promised her that, if she finds and destroys the Holy Grail, the algorithm will self-destruct. The series updates the Holy Grail for the age of ChatGPT.

Sister Simone's quest, played out over eight episodes, delivers a zany mashup of film clichés, both generic and formulaic, wrapped in parodies of cinematic medievalism, westerns, horror films, sci-fi, and commercials, as well as heist, espionage, Nazi, and magician movies. Its many film references include Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Star Wars, Fight Club, The DaVinci Code, and The Sound of Music. The series offers up a dizzying and entertaining array of tropes and characters, including a failed stage magician, bronco busting, a Middle-Ages-themed endurance competition (think 'Hands on a Hardbody'), a fake Pope, British Knights sneakers, a Lady of the Lake, a hermit guide named Schrödinger (Ben Chaplin) and his cat, a high-tech heist, an exploding head, a Hercules laser, a Lazarus Shroud (the former a real device, the latter made up), a mysterious pyramid, and a belligerent whale of Biblical proportions. And it all works. It's funny, it's intriguing, and it arrives at a satisfying conclusion in which Sister Simone and Wiley ride off into the sunset on a white horse, with Simone clearly in charge, Wiley the sidekick, and no heteronormative ending in sight (she's a nun).

And it's particularly satisfying for a medievalist. Indeed, what holds this absurd cinematic romp together is its surprisingly complex medievalism and the suggestion that, in the end, medieval romance provides its own narrative algorithm, a formula for generating the series' multiple generic twists. Mrs. Davis opens with a piece of medievalism dramatizing the 1307 massacre of the Knights Templar and Grail Maidens, whose last survivor is charged with taking the Grail to 'our sisters across the sea.' The lighting, mise-en-scène, and choreography are all consistent with recent medieval action films: dark shots obscured by fog, sepia tones, and extreme violence and bloodshed. This sequence sets up the series' first medievalism, the Grail Quest. At the end of the episode, the algorithm passes the Quest on to Sister Simone, setting in motion a standard set of Grail clichés—interlaced adventures, a Chosen One, mystical visions, tests, promises of plentitude, hermit guides, and a final apotheosis.

In this version of the Grail narrative, Mrs. Davis replaces the Divine as the initiator of the quest; in fact, Mrs. Davis functions primarily in this world as a provider of quests, setting tasks to provide her users with purpose. Simone, however, will have no truck with the algorithm, which stifles creativity, making impossible careers that require lying, such as magic (represented by Simone's father, played by David Arquette) and gambling (represented by JQR, hilariously played by Chris Diamantopoules). There is a reason Simone's home is Reno. Since Mrs. Davis cannot directly communicate a quest to her, she speaks to the recalcitrant nun through individuals who are jacked into the algorithm, which is accessed through an earpiece. They 'proxy' her. The series' second medievalism further explains Simone's resistance to the algorithm. While most users find meaning and purpose in Mrs. Davis, Simone has found both in her marriage to...