Mrs. Davis: Mother of Mercy: The Call of the Horse
April 21, 2023 6:10 AM - Season 1, Episode 1 - Subscribe

A nun is forced to leave her convent by a powerful artificial intelligence known as Mrs. Davis.
posted by ellieBOA (24 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
This looks bonkers. Betty Gilpin is criminally underrated and Damon Lindelof's post-Lost tv work has been wild and rewarding. Cannot wait.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:32 AM on April 21, 2023 [4 favorites]


I cackled during the first 15 minutes of this episode. It's wild! I'm adding this to my 'must watch' queue.
posted by WedgedPiano at 8:17 AM on April 21, 2023 [1 favorite]


I had never even heard of this before yesterday but I immediately sent the trailer to a bunch of friends. Can’t wait to watch, I love a show with a premise this convoluted and The Leftovers was delightful.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:03 AM on April 21, 2023 [1 favorite]


It’s ridiculous and I love it! Meant to only watch two episodes last night and go to bed at a reasonable hour but watched all four.
posted by ellieBOA at 12:25 PM on April 21, 2023 [1 favorite]


This was fantastic! Bonkers world, ridiculous premise but super witty and funny! Can't wait to see more!
posted by jazon at 8:13 PM on April 21, 2023


In an odd way, this was a very entertaining show. The music was a perfect parody of melodramatic TV music and Betty Gilpin was great. Evidently the writers were having fun.
posted by Agave at 9:32 PM on April 21, 2023


Did anybody get a good look at the no-name horse's name, which looked like it was inscribed on the plate of his bridle?
posted by sardonyx at 9:44 PM on April 21, 2023


OK, the husband's "J," not Jay.
I'm really curious what the algorithm's reasoning is for destroying the grail. I'm also curious how much of this is real, in several senses of the word.
posted by Spike Glee at 10:42 PM on April 22, 2023 [1 favorite]


I’ve known that this was going to be extremely my shit since the second trailer dropped (Lindelof? Nuns on bikes? A nuanced take on artificial intelligence that isn’t purely “it’s going to kill us all”?), but I was not prepared for just how off the wall this was going to be. This show just seems gleeful in throwing cool things on the screen and somehow making it stick, and I am so excited to see what is coming in the next three episodes.
posted by thecaddy at 5:12 AM on April 24, 2023 [3 favorites]


Even benevolent gods are terrifying when you actually run into one. I mean, how do you oppose an entity that's always ten steps ahead of you?
posted by Mogur at 6:14 AM on April 24, 2023 [2 favorites]


Even benevolent gods are terrifying when you actually run into one. I mean, how do you oppose an entity that's always ten steps ahead of you?

This is giving me shades of an earlier era of sci-fi, like in one of the later I, Robot stories where a robot secretly becomes the President of the United States. There used to me more of a “advanced technology could save us all, but at what cost vibe”; nowadays it’s generally “advanced technology is a Big Fucking Problem, mostly because of capitalism” vibe.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:35 AM on April 24, 2023 [1 favorite]


I was pretty in on this from the opening three scenes. And then, "Such matters are far above my pay grade, which is zero."
posted by Etrigan at 1:43 PM on April 24, 2023 [4 favorites]


Not to mention that Sister Simone is now Indiana Jones - chasing the Holy Grail while being pursued by Germans in suspicious helmets.
posted by Mogur at 4:09 PM on April 24, 2023 [4 favorites]


I was bothered by the giant magnifying glass that they used to blow up the strawberry jam, but then I realized that is exactly the sort of crap that an AI would come up with.
posted by Mogur at 4:10 PM on April 24, 2023 [4 favorites]


I was kinda on the fence, but when the jam exploded, i knew this show was my, uh, jam.
posted by Marticus at 5:24 PM on April 25, 2023 [2 favorites]


This is absolutely bonkers!

The most fun I have had in ages, and I haven’t even finished this episode yet!
posted by rozcakj at 7:21 PM on May 2, 2023


Wildly entertaining, but I’m so sad they killed the horse! He was the best.
posted by Mr. Excellent at 9:49 PM on May 2, 2023 [2 favorites]


Betty Gilpin is a treasure.
posted by porpoise at 7:13 PM on May 4, 2023 [2 favorites]


Oh, I also loved the Esteemed Character Actress Margo Martindale.
posted by Marticus at 7:44 PM on May 4, 2023 [5 favorites]


I'm leaning towards DO NOT LIKE because I loathe Damon Lindelof's involvement in anything. This show feels like season 3 of Westworld redone as a bad Thomas Pynchon adaptation. All the wacky stuff just falls flat for me. The jam explosion, for instance, is just so horribly done and awkwardly telegraphed that it took me out of things. I mean, billboards in the middle of nowhere and a little stand on wheels and they all stopped for it? This is not an AI, this is laaaaaaaazy writing. Doubtless there'll be a callback to some of the nuns who have been transferred away helping Simone because of course that's why the show got rid of them in the first place, to use them again.

I do admire the production and actor's efforts to turn lazy writing into something watchable. I will probably stick with this season, see where it goes. I got through the first 2 seasons of The Leftovers to see that the third season pulled a great ending out of it's hat. (By mostly ignoring the dour 2 seasons before it.) But I've stated before that I think Lindelof should go nowhere near the sci-fi genre and nothing in this show leads me to believe this is an exception.
posted by Catblack at 10:07 AM on May 13, 2023


In an interview I link in one of the future episodes, the showrunning is described as 49% Damon Lindelof and 51% Tara Hernandez if that helps!
posted by ellieBOA at 5:08 AM on May 14, 2023


The billboard thing seems to me like an awfully weird example to use as evidence of lazy writing. It’s deliberate Looney Tunes logic. It’s not as if the writers engineered that scenario because they couldn’t think of something else.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:22 AM on May 14, 2023 [3 favorites]


Watching the first episode this looks like the kind of thing Jonathan Nolan would want to write if he had been blessed with a sense of humour. Exactly the sort of thing I need right now. Thank you, BitTorrent!
posted by Grangousier at 3:20 AM on May 18, 2023


Having just watched the finale, it will be submitted to the Emmys as a limited series so it has a proper conclusion after 8 episodes which is great too!
posted by ellieBOA at 7:13 AM on May 18, 2023 [1 favorite]


« Older Perry Mason: Chapter Fifteen...   |  Mrs. Davis: Zwei Sie Piel mit ... Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments