Bye, then, Smiths
May. 29th, 2024 08:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessMr & Mrs Smith - 1.8 A breakup
It had decent callbacks to earlier in the series, and the fight in their house was reminiscent of the fight in the film. The ending might be described as open, because we only saw the flashes of gunfire, and shouldn’t necessarily take it as read like ‘Hot Neighbour’, except in the moment I kind of did assume the other Jane had taken down our Jane too and so our John would bleed out. The problem is that I don’t care – I’m glad that Jane knows that John didn’t kill Max and that John knows Jane didn’t try to kill his mother and him, and they exchanged honest I love yous, but I’m fine with them not returning and about as fine with them returning.
The first day of her new life and Jane got orders to kill her John, but procrastinated until someone shot at her in the kitchen and killed Max. (Should there have been a specific trigger warning for established animal harm?) John was living with his mom, who was trying to prod him to make sure his failed marriage had really failed and getting counselling, not knowing that they had gone to therapy or what the stakes were for this particular marriage. And then he found their place was wired to blow. His mother seemed very accepting of her son ordering her to stay away from the house until he called her – it’s not clear what she thinks he does, because she must have known about the Marines attempt. Granted, she didn’t listen to him to go to the salon…(given the surname, was that Donald Glover’s mother playing John/Michael’s mother?)
And so John and Jane arranged to meet in public, him dressed in white, her in what I took to be black, but might have been navy. Snippy, tense verbal exchanges. After she trapped him in a revolving door with a bomb, it all kicked off. There was a fight in the street where most of the public didn’t know what to do – heh, no, yelling that it was okay because you were married was not such a great idea, John. The two men who got involved to try to stop the pounding seemed like they were quite capable fighters, so I wondered if they were agents of some kind, but the Smiths dealt with them, until the police appeared and then it was about getting away with John chasing Jane. Pause as John got hit by a car, Jane stopped, worried, and then he got up and was after her.
And she got home to find her mother in law there, giving a different picture of her son – Michael, and asking Jane to be sure before she ended things. Meanwhile, John had to get through Hot Neighbour, of whom he was jealous and I was suspicious (c’mon, he was played by Paul Dano!) Hot Neighbour was weirded out by the state of John and his demands, but then John snooped and found evidence that his neighbour was a stalker.
When he said he worked for Sotheby’s, I thought of the auction house. Though it seemed like he was on the level about working for an estate agent, I didn’t get why he was so into the house next door – was it really all that flashier than his house (how did he pay for his coming off a divorce?) I thought John had given the game away by all his questions about whether Stalky Hot Neighbour was an agent, but I guess not, and thought Hot Neighbour should lock the door after letting John into the garden. (I kept thinking he must hear the gunfire that ensued.)
And so, yes, the fighting continued at home (where Max had been killed, where John/Michael’s mother had just left), and it felt fairly equal as they took lumps out of each other, and started wrecking the house. They put their own twist on the ensuing truth telling, bringing back the truth serum, as John decided that they needed to talk. Well, yeah. Jane confirmed she hadn’t cheated on him, he hadn’t cheated on her, she’s got sociopathic tendencies, he had reasons (that I didn’t fully parse) for wanting kids and they did, actually, love each other, and hadn’t been the ones who’d started this off.
Enter the other Smiths, and of course super high risk meant coming after other Smiths. They made the most of our Smiths only being able to tell the truth. I had forgotten what made the Other Smith sneeze, but our Smiths took the advantage, only of course Our John had got shot in the abdomen. Jane asking for his advice about what they should do felt more like her believing he was going to die than a relationship breakthrough to me, frankly, and then we had that ending you could read into.
And it was all fine, but I was never as invested as I had hoped to be?
It had decent callbacks to earlier in the series, and the fight in their house was reminiscent of the fight in the film. The ending might be described as open, because we only saw the flashes of gunfire, and shouldn’t necessarily take it as read like ‘Hot Neighbour’, except in the moment I kind of did assume the other Jane had taken down our Jane too and so our John would bleed out. The problem is that I don’t care – I’m glad that Jane knows that John didn’t kill Max and that John knows Jane didn’t try to kill his mother and him, and they exchanged honest I love yous, but I’m fine with them not returning and about as fine with them returning.
The first day of her new life and Jane got orders to kill her John, but procrastinated until someone shot at her in the kitchen and killed Max. (Should there have been a specific trigger warning for established animal harm?) John was living with his mom, who was trying to prod him to make sure his failed marriage had really failed and getting counselling, not knowing that they had gone to therapy or what the stakes were for this particular marriage. And then he found their place was wired to blow. His mother seemed very accepting of her son ordering her to stay away from the house until he called her – it’s not clear what she thinks he does, because she must have known about the Marines attempt. Granted, she didn’t listen to him to go to the salon…(given the surname, was that Donald Glover’s mother playing John/Michael’s mother?)
And so John and Jane arranged to meet in public, him dressed in white, her in what I took to be black, but might have been navy. Snippy, tense verbal exchanges. After she trapped him in a revolving door with a bomb, it all kicked off. There was a fight in the street where most of the public didn’t know what to do – heh, no, yelling that it was okay because you were married was not such a great idea, John. The two men who got involved to try to stop the pounding seemed like they were quite capable fighters, so I wondered if they were agents of some kind, but the Smiths dealt with them, until the police appeared and then it was about getting away with John chasing Jane. Pause as John got hit by a car, Jane stopped, worried, and then he got up and was after her.
And she got home to find her mother in law there, giving a different picture of her son – Michael, and asking Jane to be sure before she ended things. Meanwhile, John had to get through Hot Neighbour, of whom he was jealous and I was suspicious (c’mon, he was played by Paul Dano!) Hot Neighbour was weirded out by the state of John and his demands, but then John snooped and found evidence that his neighbour was a stalker.
When he said he worked for Sotheby’s, I thought of the auction house. Though it seemed like he was on the level about working for an estate agent, I didn’t get why he was so into the house next door – was it really all that flashier than his house (how did he pay for his coming off a divorce?) I thought John had given the game away by all his questions about whether Stalky Hot Neighbour was an agent, but I guess not, and thought Hot Neighbour should lock the door after letting John into the garden. (I kept thinking he must hear the gunfire that ensued.)
And so, yes, the fighting continued at home (where Max had been killed, where John/Michael’s mother had just left), and it felt fairly equal as they took lumps out of each other, and started wrecking the house. They put their own twist on the ensuing truth telling, bringing back the truth serum, as John decided that they needed to talk. Well, yeah. Jane confirmed she hadn’t cheated on him, he hadn’t cheated on her, she’s got sociopathic tendencies, he had reasons (that I didn’t fully parse) for wanting kids and they did, actually, love each other, and hadn’t been the ones who’d started this off.
Enter the other Smiths, and of course super high risk meant coming after other Smiths. They made the most of our Smiths only being able to tell the truth. I had forgotten what made the Other Smith sneeze, but our Smiths took the advantage, only of course Our John had got shot in the abdomen. Jane asking for his advice about what they should do felt more like her believing he was going to die than a relationship breakthrough to me, frankly, and then we had that ending you could read into.
And it was all fine, but I was never as invested as I had hoped to be?
