The Dark Delights of a Millennial “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”

In the opening minutes of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”—Donald Glover and Francesca Sloane’s minor-key remix of the 2005 film starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as married, duelling assassins—the series symbolically obliterates its source material. An absurdly good-looking couple on the run decide to take a final stand, exchanging a passionate kiss as they prepare to face down their assailants. Both are immediately, unceremoniously gunned down. It’s there that the real show begins: one with dark humor and a distinctly millennial sensibility reflective of its co-creator and star. Where Brangelina’s characters were suburbanite yuppies with his-and-hers sinks, the new John (Glover) and Jane Smith (Maya Erskine) embody their generation’s emotional and economic malaise. Their mysterious firm recruits C.I.A. rejects, but the unsettling, tech-assisted impersonality of its approach leaves the pair closer to gig workers than government agents. Their job interviews are conducted by a machine; their duties are relayed through a chat box; and they never meet their handler, whom they nickname Hihi, after its preferred text greeting. In the wake of their first mission, Jane speculates about their employer, whose agenda remains unknown but whose indifference to collateral damage they’ve already witnessed. “Who cares? We get a plunge pool,” John says. “The way things are in the world right now, I’m happy we have a job.” In a different world, they might have been management consultants. In this one, their incuriosity makes them ideal minions—and, later, easy throwaways. John and Jane meet for the first time after they have been “wed” by the company, inverting the premise of the original movie: the Smiths aren’t lovers who discover they’re both killers but killers who discover they’re in love. (In what might be a nod to FX’s “ The Americans ,” which centered on husband-and-wife Soviet agents, Jane notes that pairing up spies was a K.G.B. custom: “You draw less attention as a couple, and you’re less likely to defect if you’re reliant on a partner.”) Their aliases consign them to far too many hours alone together, and the show acknowledges that the kinds of people who sign up to […]

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