Bp Barron's Favorite Television Show

Ever since Bp Robert Barron heartily endorsed this past spring's TV series Mrs Davis, calling it "my favorite show", I've been anxious to watch it. Nevertheless, although he's discussed it in at least two podcasts, and on one, his interlocutor warns viewers that there are content issues and "don't show it to your prayer group", I can agree that it isn't a Catholic film. He says at the link,

Now if you’re looking to Mrs. Davis for theological precision, you will be severely disappointed (and please don’t write me letters reminding me of how weird its theology is; I know), but there is indeed a spiritual motif of supreme importance that stands at the very heart of the show, and it is well worth plowing through all of the intense oddness to grasp it. It has to do with idolatry and, more precisely, with our tendency to create idols.

Wikipeida calls it "an American science fiction comedy drama", which puts it in the same genre as one of my all-time favorites, Fringe, but I think there's one important difference. In Fringe, the FBI has established a special unit to investigate paranormal phenomena, in the course of which it is forced to spirit a disgraced Harvard professor who is a hybrid of Timothy Leary and Ted Kaczynski out of a mental institution to solve the scientific issues involved.

While there are tensions between Dr Walter Bishop and Supervisory Special Agent Phillip Broyles, briliantly played by the late Lance Reddick, Broyles is an experienced operator within the FBI bureaucracy, and he is able, despite Bishop's bizarre eccentricities, to work within the system to accomplish the overall goal of protecting society from paranormal threats. As such, the comedy's happy endings always reinforce the benignity of the established order, including the FBI and its corporate and political contollers.

The imaginative universe in Mrs Davis is of a different sort, much harder to characterize or clearly define. For starters, there is no ontological Satan, which is a product of the show's weird theology, which Bp Barron clearly understands. Sister Simone, the main character, consults with Jay, as well as the Virgin Mary, who is Jay's mother, but even for them, the universe is out of joint -- in one episode, Jay is preoccupied with fixing a leak that's flooding heaven, which he isn't quite able to control, but there doesn't seem to have been a war in heaven that might have caused it, nor an overriding plan that subordinates it in the scheme of things.

This is a fundamental difference between Mrs Davis and Fringe. Beyond science fiction comedy, I would call Mrs Davis neo-noir, which Fringe is not. It has more in common with the Jason Bourne trilogy, in which the CIA and other organs of state security have been deeply compromised, and Jason himself must undertake an inchoate hero's quest to defeat them and discover his own identity. As such, this fits the Wikipedia definition of neo-noir, "blurring of the lines between good and bad and right and wrong, and thematic motifs including revenge, paranoia, and alienation."

Why should something like this appeal to a generally middle-of-the-road, almost popularizing, Roman Catholic bishop, theologian, and evangelist, who indeed points out the major heterodox and syncretistic elements in the film? At the link, he explains, Mrs Davis is "a massively powerful internet algorithm, an artificial intelligence that basically knows all that can be known and that can order and manipulate human beings at will."

But Simone has intuited that Mrs. Davis, in point of fact, robs people of their independence, saps them of their energy and creativity, controls them ruthlessly, and finally dispenses with them when they no longer suit her purpose. She has come to see, to state it bluntly and simply, that the algorithm is an idol, a pathetic simulacrum of the true God, something that we have made that has come, like Frankenstein’s monster, to terrorize us.

There are gems throughout the film. Early on, Wiley, Simone's former boyfriend, realizes that Simone has allowed Mrs Davis to send her on a quest for the Holy Grail, which Simone nevertheless expects to use to destroy the algorithm. Wiley says basically, "She's sending you on a hero's quest. That's a cliche. Algorithms love cliches." In another sequence, a professsor, Dr Arthur Schrodinger, is annoyed by colleagues who keep giving him kitschy cat bric-a-brac. This sort of thing makes the film delicious, just as much as Fringe. There are extensive references to both Moby Dick and Jonah and the Whale, which sent me right back to Melville. What Bp Barron thinks redeems the film is this:

When the monks and hermits of late antiquity took to the hills, escaping from the dying civilization of Rome, respectable people thought they had lost their minds. Most of the denizens of the Mrs. Davis universe feel the same way about Sr. Simone and her community: Why would anyone want to operate outside the ambit of a force so benevolent? Could I make a suggestion? Take a look at your phone and find out how much screen time you put in last week, and then ask yourself honestly how much of your thinking and behavior was determined by that little machine.

I note via the Wikipedia link that it's been announced there won't be another season for Mrs Davis, so the story arc and the metaphorical structure are complete. It's now possible to order the full season on DVD via eBay, which is what I did. The film is worthwhile fun.