No More Mr Nice Guy Glover Review

[Tisham Candella]

DonaldGlover, creator of FX's "Atlanta" and Amazon's "Swarm," doesn't make standard TV shows. He goes for the weird, the experimental, the philosophical and sometimes horrific. So when the actor/writer/producer was tapped to create a "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" TV series for Amazon, I shouldn't have expected anything like the 2005 Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie movie, the 1996 Scott Bakula and Maria Bello TV series, or the 1941 Alfred Hitchcock film. And yet somehow I was still surprised by how odd Glover's take on the married-spies tale ended up.

Created by Glover and his "Atlanta" co-producer Francesca Sloane, and with the headline couple played by Glover and Maya Erskine ("PEN15"), "Smith" is a spy show that doesn't often feel like it's in that usually high-octane genre.

The series has far more bland conversations than tense action sequences, more awkward banter than witty repartee and more staid dinner parties than dastardly criminal deeds. It is exactly what, say, "Atlanta" might be like if there were a few secret agents thrown into the mix. Glover is nothing but himself, and he has a distinctive, naturalistic, understated style. If you're looking for the glamorous high jinks of a James Bond caper, this is not the show for you. Nor would Brad and Angelina fit into this world.

John (Glover) and Jane Smith (Erskine) are meandering millennials who trade their old lives and identities for high salaries and high-risk missions, working for a secretive corporation that gives them unexplained tasks and communicates only through instant messaging. Paired as a fake married couple, the strangers at first actively eschew any romantic or sexual tension. But after the adrenaline rush of a mission or two, they fall into bed together, and into some more normal married-couple tics (it doesn't take long for the bickering to start, for instance).

Each episode finds the pair on a different mission for their anonymous benefactor, as the threat of unknown punishment for failure looms large. There is a shockingly good guest cast for each case of the week, including Alexander Skarsgrd, Sarah Paulson, Sharon Horgan, Ron Perlman, Paul Dano, Michaela Coel, John Turturro and Parker Posey. They're all nice to see but seem equally confused to be there. Occasionally, John and Jane run into other John and Jane Smiths, who help unravel the mystery of their employer. But the cases are the afterthoughts of each episode: The meat of the story is the relationship between them, and all their mundanities and eccentricities.

Erskine and Glover are a delight anywhere, but they have to work too hard to create chemistry. When part of the premise of the series is that the main couple can't keep their hands off each other, it shouldn't be so difficult for the viewers to see the spark between them. Yet Erskine and Glover always seem more like great pals than great lovers, even during sex scenes.

As for the overall tone and mood of the series, it isn't to my taste and will likely be a hard sell for many. I can see what Glover was trying to do: Subvert expectations and make a series about marriage that also happens to have spies. It could have been profound, but it just doesn't gel into something cohesive. "Smith" was originally meant to be a collaboration between Glover and Phoebe Waller-Bridge ("Fleabag" and "Indiana Jones 5"). Bridge departed due to creative differences, and this is one of the only times I believe that the phrase isn't a euphemism for some deeper conflict. Maybe they would have had more chemistry, but Bridge's style and humor are brash and obvious, and Glover clearly wanted a more intimate, stranger vibe.

But how this process came about is I was in my second marriage and I thought I was treating my wife well, trying to be a good guy trying to treat her better than her ex, raising her kids and she was never happy and she was actually kind of upset most of the time and she never want to have sex anymore, it was critical of me.

We met every other Wednesday and on Wednesdays I started just writing chapters to give to these guys. Nowadays would probably call them blogs but I started writing what was I learning, what was I understanding, what were my thoughts and theories about how we became nice guys, what was essential for us to work on to become more authentic, more integrated, more happy to get what we want and well I kept doing these groups and then added another group and kept writing.

Dr. Robert Glover: Very definitely. And lots of women have written me say they appreciated my book both in terms of understanding a man in their life but also that they are nice girls. And I actually think probably the nice girl syndrome preceded the nice guy syndrome. My mother was a nice girl. She tried to serve other people, be nice, get validation and I was trained to be a nice guy by my mother.

Tom: Dropping bombs of wisdom. I think the nice guys have a very complicated relationship with nice guys, nice girls have very complicated relationship with sexuality and I think you touched on this in your book, I saw you mention it. And you mentioned that they have typically experience some kind of confusion I think with their sexuality. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

I tell people who are listening to this sit down and do that assignment, get out three big pieces of paper get your markers out and go to work on it. I promise you it will change your life. It will make your life completely different just doing this assignment.

Dr. Robert Glover: Sometimes I call it co-operative reciprocal system, sometimes I thought reciprocal cooperative systems, sometimes I add another adjective in there as well. It just keeps getting better.

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