Whenever I see the phrase “partner in crime” in a romantic context, my first question always is: What kind of crime? Petty or white collar? Shoplifting or bank robbery? Murder?
The truth is the crimes these (usually heterosexual) people advertise aren’t crimes at all but rather things like hiking, eating cheesecake, and the occasional trip to a movie theater. I do suppose someone walking up and down terrain and splitting a sweet dessert with are very valid wants in a partner, and literal crime is both a hefty commitment and something you probably wouldn’t want to advertise on a dating app.
But if your partner isn’t willing to go to jail for you, or at least provide an alibi, can you be sure they are the one?
Prime Video’s delightfully curious Mr. & Mrs. Smith opens with a take on that premise, with a shadowy agency asking two perfect strangers — John (Donald Glover) and Jane (Maya Erskine) — to perform some light espionage together as a married couple. As the missions get more complicated, more crime-heavy, John and Jane’s relationship changes too, resembling something a bit more mundane — a marriage perhaps. This new series, which riffs on the aughts-era movie of the same name, then asks the follow-up that everyone looking for a partner in crime wants to avoid: What does that bond look like when it all falls apart?
Mr. & Mrs. Smith changes the original premise for the better
Mr. & Mrs. Smith isn’t a straight adaptation of the 2005 Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie action thriller. Sleek, sexy, and brimming with machine gun ratatatat, the original establishes John and Jane Smith as two undercover assassins who, unbeknownst to each other, work for rival agencies. They each get the assignment to kill their spouse, and come to the realization by way of bullets, bruises, and bloody gashes that some parts of their relationship were real.
In this spy vs. spy fantasy, suburbia is an acute hell that demolishes a sex life; Mars-and-Venus dynamics mean that men move through the world with brute force while women are surgically precise; and “perfect” marriages are the worst thing for two........