shallowness (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shallowness) wrote2024-04-25 07:58 am
shallowness) wrote2024-04-25 07:58 am
Entry tags:
Chatty Smiths
Mr & Mrs Smith - 1.6 Couples Therapy (Naked & Afraid)
I was mainly taken by the fact that the show was now turning to the film’s ‘The Smiths go to a therapist’ device. The dynamic was, of course, different. For one thing the therapist, being played by Sarah Paulson, was more of a character, and a kooky one at the margins of the sessions, although she seemed to be offering the couple decent therapy. But mainly, of course, they had to lie about their job and the suggestion that they took a break from working together because there wasn’t a gun to their head was…heavy on the irony there. But fair dos to Paulson, she played it so that I wondered all along if she would turn out to be working for the agency.
The Smiths seemed to need the therapy, as Jane had divulged HiHi’s offer to replace John to him. She’d refused the offer, obviously. We followed them for three sessions (each starting with even worse body language from the Smiths), with us getting flashbacks of missions as they only told their therapist half-truths about what they’d done, but what looked like full truths about how they felt about it. She’s controlling! He’s got anxiety about his intellectual abilities and wants to be the mentor figure! So maybe he’s controlling, but less good at it!?
I did think John was expecting a lot of Jane to just sit, wait and listen to the sexist and racist garbage he was spouting with his new buddies. All the already established fault-lines came out: kids/no kids, hot neighbour/jealousy, (now following jealousy of Maya), his mother complex/her cutting her father out and seeming cold. The therapist got them to reframe their outbursts, but it didn’t change the fact that their jobs were so dangerous and it wasn’t a normal marriage.
And then we got the twists at the end of the episode – first the couple learning that this had all been recorded, then the therapist’s kid (she was guilty of work/home life blurring too, no?) yelling that there was a fire, and the different version of the Smiths leaving the session, as they’d clearly started the fire and it had been a job. It had, right? Thus undermining the line about them proving they still wanted to work at their relationship by returning, but then, although they clearly brought real issues with them to the therapy session, the whole reason they were going there – as a partnership – was changed for us viewers.
Which is very clever but distancing.
And what does it mean for the real issues raised by them in the sessions?
It’s not clear what happened with the hunter job. Were they lost? Did they fail again? After John had fired those shots, I spent the whole night by the campfire sequence thinking, ‘Your target is going to turn up with a gun and kill you in your sleep/beat you because the fire is messing with your night vision.’ But the fight scenes involving Jane in the lift and on the roof were straight-up good. I was very much in sympathy with her then, and with the reveal about the emergency contact number. Though I agree that she is controlling.
I was mainly taken by the fact that the show was now turning to the film’s ‘The Smiths go to a therapist’ device. The dynamic was, of course, different. For one thing the therapist, being played by Sarah Paulson, was more of a character, and a kooky one at the margins of the sessions, although she seemed to be offering the couple decent therapy. But mainly, of course, they had to lie about their job and the suggestion that they took a break from working together because there wasn’t a gun to their head was…heavy on the irony there. But fair dos to Paulson, she played it so that I wondered all along if she would turn out to be working for the agency.
The Smiths seemed to need the therapy, as Jane had divulged HiHi’s offer to replace John to him. She’d refused the offer, obviously. We followed them for three sessions (each starting with even worse body language from the Smiths), with us getting flashbacks of missions as they only told their therapist half-truths about what they’d done, but what looked like full truths about how they felt about it. She’s controlling! He’s got anxiety about his intellectual abilities and wants to be the mentor figure! So maybe he’s controlling, but less good at it!?
I did think John was expecting a lot of Jane to just sit, wait and listen to the sexist and racist garbage he was spouting with his new buddies. All the already established fault-lines came out: kids/no kids, hot neighbour/jealousy, (now following jealousy of Maya), his mother complex/her cutting her father out and seeming cold. The therapist got them to reframe their outbursts, but it didn’t change the fact that their jobs were so dangerous and it wasn’t a normal marriage.
And then we got the twists at the end of the episode – first the couple learning that this had all been recorded, then the therapist’s kid (she was guilty of work/home life blurring too, no?) yelling that there was a fire, and the different version of the Smiths leaving the session, as they’d clearly started the fire and it had been a job. It had, right? Thus undermining the line about them proving they still wanted to work at their relationship by returning, but then, although they clearly brought real issues with them to the therapy session, the whole reason they were going there – as a partnership – was changed for us viewers.
Which is very clever but distancing.
And what does it mean for the real issues raised by them in the sessions?
It’s not clear what happened with the hunter job. Were they lost? Did they fail again? After John had fired those shots, I spent the whole night by the campfire sequence thinking, ‘Your target is going to turn up with a gun and kill you in your sleep/beat you because the fire is messing with your night vision.’ But the fight scenes involving Jane in the lift and on the roof were straight-up good. I was very much in sympathy with her then, and with the reveal about the emergency contact number. Though I agree that she is controlling.