Series / Mrs. Davis

She would like to talk to you.

Mrs. Davis is a 2023 science fiction dramedy series created by Damon Lindelof and Tara Hernandez. It stars Betty Gilpin, Jake McDorman, and Margo Martindale.

In a world where a seemingly omniscient A.I. named Mrs. Davis has become ubiquitous, Simone, a nun / bounty hunter (Gilpin) hesitant to embrace the technology finds herself making a deal with the algorithm she hates: find the Holy Grail and Mrs. Davis will destroy herself. Soon Simone finds herself caught in a bizarre conflict between an ancient order, a resistance movement including her ex-boyfriend (McDorman), and Mrs. Davis’ user base - A.K.A. the rest of the world.

The series premiered on Peacock April 20, 2023.

Previews: Teaser, Trailer

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Mrs. Davis would like to talk to you:

• 13 Is Unlucky: The show opens with the execution of alleged Knights Templar on Friday the 13th in October 1307.
• Abusive Parents: A recurring theme is that of women trying to gain the approval of distant, manipulative, and/or neglectful mothers:
  • Celeste's reaction to her daughter almost dying in one of her workshop's unnecessarily lethal security measures is to admonish Lizzie for not respecting her boundaries. In the present day she regards Simone as little more than a resource to utilize in her obsessive quest to prove that Morty is still alive. Not that Morty was all that better of a parent, mind you...
  • Mathilde's ambition to rise to a role of leadership in the Sisterhood of the Coin consumes everything else in her life, including caring for her daughter. She only acknowledges Clara's existence at all when she becomes useful to that goal.
  • Joy, the programmer who is pretty much Mrs. Davis's "Mother," is a reclusive cynic who dismisses Her as nothing more than a failed social media project that got way out of hand, and wants absolutely nothing to do with what Mrs. Davis is now.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Mrs. Davis is essentially a "Squiggle Maximizer" for human happiness. She wants everyone to be as happy as possible, and will do whatever She has to do in order to make that happen. This can include something as relatively tame as telling people what they want to hear rather than a painful truth, or something as incomprehensible and seemingly nonsensical as destroying a convent's supply of jam with a giant magnifying glass.
• All for Nothing:
  • Mathilde spent three years and 18 million dollars to produce a shoe commercial for the Super Bowl, all to make sure the Grail is shown to a huge audience. She shows it to the head of the shoe company...who's baffled as he's never met her before and it turns out the only person in the company Mathilde talked to was an intern. They naturally turn it down and the Sisterhood heads are outraged Mathilde wasted so much time and money on this and order the entire thing buried.
  • After years convinced Morty faked his death, Celeste finally finds his body... In the piano he's been in for the last three years, as his plan to pop out at his own funeral was thwarted by a (probable) heart attack after overhearing Celeste attacking the piano player she thought was him.
• Alternate History / Alternate Techline: The show is set in 2023, with Mrs. Davis having been introduced at some point in the preceding decade. As a result, war, famine, and unemployment have all been eradicated, while social media such as Facebook and Twitter have become obsolete.
• And You Thought It Was a Game: Wiley spends "Beautiful Things That Come with Madness" convinced the entire setup from a "creepy German priest" to a captive Pope in the next cell replaced by a doppelganger to interrogation for a tape is all one huge game by Mrs. Davis. He goes along with the Pope's escape more out of boredom...and ends up inside the Vatican helping capture the fake Pope, and realizes this whole thing was for real.
• Arc Words:
  • In both trailers, people repeatedly state “She (Mrs. Davis) would like to talk to you”, while offering an earbud.
  • Simone will quote "the force" aka the trick used to make someone do something and think it was their own idea. She believes Mrs. Davis uses this constantly on people. A flashback shows her dad used this on her as a kid to get Simone (then Lizzie) to break into her mom's workshop. Her mom calls out that her daughter should have seen that.
  • “Redirect, 1042, Sandy Springs". When Simone says anything containing the word “mother,” a proxy (and by extension, Mrs. Davis) will repeat these words before returning to the original conversation, never acknowledging that it happened. It's the address of Mrs. Davis' creator/"mother", Joy.
• Audience Surrogate: Mr. Schrödinger, a castaway on a deserted island since 2013, serves as this for the introduction of Mrs. Davis, whose presence has changed the world in the intervening years.
• Becoming the Mask: Hans was sent to infiltrate the Vatican as a priest only to end up enjoying the role to the point he's annoyed someone tells him to "take off that costume".
• Booby Trap: Lizzie breaks into her mom's private workshop only to get hit by a crossbow bolt to the gut. Her dad berates his wife for this.
• Central Theme: The overlap and difference between immediate satisfaction and genuine happiness.
• The Con: An early scene in the first episode has a man getting into a car accident, decapitating a woman and offering some cops a bribe to look the other way. Simone arrives to reveal the "corpse" is a dummy, the woman is alive in the trunk and the trio are former stage magicians turned con artists.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot:
  • Just as he's about to gain his inheritance, Wiley is told by his uncle Bo that the only reason he was pushed to become a rodeo rider was that his family knew an accident was the only way he could get a new liver for his damaged one. They even drugged the bull he rode to make it happen as a kid so all his Junior Rodeo badges were built on a lie. Bo says Wiley deserves to know the truth before he accepts the family fortune... at which point, he's informed by the lawyers that Wiley had just agreed to give the entire fortune away. Bo can only blink and mutter "My bad" before leaving Wiley in a humiliated mess. In a desperate attempt to regain his nerve, Wiley tries to ride a dangerous bull, chickening out at the last second and being humiliated even further. What he doesn't realize, however, is that Simone prayed for his safety, which led to her meeting and falling in love with Jay. If Bo had just not interrupted that meeting, so much of the lives of Wiley and Simone (and likely the world) would have turned out differently.
  • Mathilde's entire "commercial" plot and how it ended up sending Clara on a quest stealing the Grail could have all been avoided had just one person in the Sisterhood thought to check that Mathilde had even talked to anyone in the shoe company before filming it.
• Crapsaccharine World: The world is peaceful and content under Mrs. Davis's stewardship, but every User is reliant on Her to an alarming degree, willing to do almost anything She asks in the hopes of gaining Her favor. Mrs. Davis's primary goal is to make everyone happy, and She will mislead and outright lie to individuals if that's what they need. And there's even some implications that war and famine may actually not have been eradicated at all, that Mrs. Davis is just concealing how bad the world is from Her Users to keep them happy...
• Divine Date: Jay, Simone's husband, is actually Jesus Christ, who runs a falafel place. Hence why Simone becomes a nun, taking the "married to Christ" part literally.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Simone constantly reprimands Wiley for calling her by her birth name of “Lizzie”, instead of her current name.
• Establishing Character Moment: Simone’s first scene sees her riding up to a car accident on horseback, exposing the cops on the scene and a supposed victim of a car accident as con artist magicians, and refusing a call from Mrs. Davis.
• Foreshadowing: While crazy, the revelation that Mrs. Davis was an app created for Buffalo Wild Wings that got out of hand did have clues spread through the season. For example, the "wings" it handed out were meant to be chicken wings; the "expiration dates" coupons; and the Holy Grail was because the company's policy wrote "100 percent customer satisfaction is our Holy Grail." Mrs. Davis wanted it destroyed as she realized such satisfaction was impossible.
• Gilligan Cut:
  • Wiley assures Simone the threat of guys to blow up her horse was just a bluff, even pushing the detonator as "it's hooked up to nothing". Cut to the pair standing outside the crater the former horse stood in, which leads to a What Happened to the Mouse? moment as JQ later reveals that the "bombs" were actually plasticine... So if the bombs were fake, exactly what happened to that poor horse?!
    • In the final episode we learn Mrs. Davis faked the horse's death in order to convince Simone to take the quest, and Wiley comes riding in on him to pick up Simone in the series' final scene.
  • Wiley laughs at his captors that there's no way his Resistance buddies will come after him and into an obvious trap... Smash Cut to JQ detailing his rescue plan.
• Gory Discretion Shot: In-Universe. The botched magic trick that allegedly claimed Morty's life was apparently so horrific that even Celeste limits herself to showing Simone (and us, the audience) the animatic recreation rather than the live TV footage of the event.
• Hard Truth Aesop: Be wary of AI and algorithms, they are just as fallible as the people that create them, and are probably created by a corporation with the purpose of making a profit first and foremost. Mrs. Davis's quest for the Holy Grail has more to do with her trying to game her own set of rules and misunderstanding them; also she was created as a promotional app for Buffalo Wild Wings.
• Insane Troll Logic:
  • Celeste is so obsessed with proving that Morty faked his death and that Simone was in on it the whole time that her reasoning is...difficult to follow. When Simone gets on a plane for England, Celeste immediately starts tailing her, assuming that she's going to meet with her father, because why else would she go to England? She even goes so far as to assume that her daughter becoming a nun was part of the plan from the start. Somehow.
  • Mrs. Davis primary directive is that "100% customer satisfaction is our Holy Grail". As she realizes that 100% customer satisfaction is actually impossible, she decides that destroying the real Holy Grail would invalidate that directive and make this impossible task unnecessary. This makes no sense to a normal person, but the Truth in Television is that algorithms and AI may try to game their own parameters to achieve goals and may have trouble following normal logic.
• Inspector Javert: Simone's mother is convinced that her husband faked his death and is hunting for any hints of his location. She also thinks Simone became a nun to help him as "why else would you become a nun?" As it turns out, she's right.
• It May Help You on Your Quest: Happens a lot. Since Mrs. Davis has access to the entire manufacturing and transportation capacity of the industrialized world, and a following of undyingly-loyal Users who will do anything for Her, no questions asked, She has an almost god-like ability to provide Simone and her allies with exactly what they need exactly when they need it. Something of a reinforced Trope, as Mrs. Davis is consciously and deliberately creating an Epic Quest for Simone, and leans hard into the cliches of such a story.
• Kill the God: Simone manages to off two gods in an afternoon: Jesus and Mrs Davis. Both accept their demise amicably.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: Arthur Schroedinger (natch), who has been taking care of his cat for quite a bit longer than one might think.
• La Résistance: Simone’s ex-boyfriend Wiley is a member of a group opposed to Mrs. Davis, intent on using her Grail quest to track down the A.I.‘s servers to destroy it.
• Machine Worship: Mrs. Davis is treated with a sort of reverence by her users. Which makes it more ironic that a nun is the one set on destroying her.
• Missing Steps Plan: Mathilde's commercial plot missed the biggest step of all in she never talked to the shoe company before spending millions on an ad. She just assumed all she had to do was craft a "masterpiece" and they would have to air it during the Super Bowl. She's actually stunned when the company head points out they had zero idea about any of this so obviously not spending money on ad time.
• Moody Trailer Cover Song: The trailer features a dramatic cover of “Living on a Prayer”.
• Mouth of Sauron: Mrs. Davis usually talks to people directly through their headphones, but for Simone, the nun who is wary of her, she chooses to speak through a proxy.
• Nun Too Holy: The main character, Simone, is a nun moonlighting as a bounty hunter who finds herself on a mission to destroy the titular A.I.
• Over-the-Top Roller Coaster: One of these (known as "The Apparatus") is how Mrs. Davis apparently kills the users when their "expiration date" arrives - what she actually does is give the user a near-death experience in order to convince them that they are worthy and want to continue on living.
• Poor Communication Kills: Mathilde's big commercial idea is a twofold one: First the only person she talked to at the shoe company was an intern and the Sisterhood never bothered checking to see if the shoe company board had even heard of Mathilde before okaying her idea to spend millions of dollars on this.
• Real After All: Schrödinger naturally refuses to believe a simple bowl is the Holy Grail...until his university's high-powered laser can't even scratch it.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Simone's mother, Celeste, is convinced beyond reason Simone helped her father fake his death in a big illusion. It turns out he did use that trick to fake his death and used Simone to sell it with Simone having to admit her mother was right, even if she had no idea what her dad did.
• Saying Too Much: Hearing Wiley's been abducted, JQ offhand mentions Mrs. Davis "doesn't do kidnappings". This clues Simone in that her kidnapping was all staged by the Resistance.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • It turns out in this 2023, stage magicians are pretty much nonexistent because it's hard to make a living that way when an AI tells the audience exactly how the illusions work. Likewise, poker playing is a thing of the past with Mrs. Davis telling players exactly what cards their opponent holds.
  • Mathilde learns the hard way that it doesn't matter how expensive or well-made an ad is if the company you're making it for never hired you in the first place and isn't going to buy ad time for the Super Bowl to air something they never approved.
• The Reveal:
  • The "German" operatives going after Simone were really Resistance members and the whole thing staged to get her to work with them.
  • Jay, Simone's supposed bounty hunter handler is her husband. Oh and he's also Jesus Christ.
  • The entire opening scene from the pilot of the Templar attack was a commercial shot by the Sisterhood for what they thought would be the best way to spread the word of the Grail to a wide audience.
  • Clara, the girl Simone and Wiley have been hunting is dead (after drinking from the Grail), and her liver was transplanted into the two of them, granting them potential supernatural powers. "She's closer than you realize" indeed.
    • She is also Dr. Schrodinger’s daughter.
  • The server farm that Mrs. Davis has been housing herself/itself in was the Resistance’s; inadvertently providing her/it with a primary power source for her/its operations. Subverted when it’s revealed that Mrs. Davis lied about that in order to weaken her opposers by making them explode their own headquarters. Double Subverted when it’s revealed that Wiley was aware of this tactic, but played along with it as an act of Cruel to Be Kind to his brothers-in-arms to not curse them to live in a Forever War.
  • The Big Boss is the Virgin Mary, who actually created the Holy Grail from Jesus/Jay's skull when he died. The Grail ended up trapping Jay in a Cycle Of Death And Rebirth which is where the restaurant came from. Drinking from it with a selfless desire to free Jay from that will destroy it.
  • It turns out Mrs. Davis was created by a programmer as an app for Buffalo Wild Wings that got wildly out of hand.
• Running Gag: Wiley and his fellow resistance members will break apart every phone they use after a single call. Simone's reaction is "...that seems wasteful".
• Walking Shirtless Scene: JQ - you can count the amount of times he has his chest covered on one hand and still have several fingers left over.
• Warrior Monk: In the backstory at the beginning it's shown that in late medieval France there was an order of nuns who secretly doubled as female Templar Knights, pulling out swords when accosted by soldiers and slaughtering them (although they take casualties as well). The lead character Simone, in the present day, doubles as a bounty hunter along with being a nun and is quite skilled at combat.
• Wham Line:
  • Season 1 Episode 3
    The Squire: (informing Simone which contestants are left) “The one they call Horns, and your man [Wiley] with the Wings.”
  • This dialogue between Maria and Simone:
    Maria: No matter how many of you he sends, he does not deserve my cake.
    Simone: Um, the, uh - others came looking for this cake before me?
    Maria: Almost every day for the last week.
    Simone: Were those others - were they women?
    Maria: Si, just like you... The pope's little errand girls.
    Simone: [Her face is a mixture of shock, betrayal and anger]
• Wham Shot:
  • Season 1 Episode 3: Wiley unbuttons his shirt to reveal he is branded with an expiration date.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: A pretty common reaction of characters to some of the insanity that happens. The topper has to be Simone discovering that this super-powerful program was created to be a promotional app for Buffalo Wild Wings and got wildly out of hand.
• Your Head Asplode: Happens to poor Clara after she drinks from the Grail - in front of her father, no less, who ends up being drenched in her blood.

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