Mrs. Davis Episode 102 Recap: What does the Show Have to Say About Magic, Religion, and Science?
Or why you should never trust a magician (or anyone for that matter)
Mrs. Davis Episode 102 recap "Zwei Sie Piel mit Seitung Sie Wirtschaftung" As Sister Simone contemplates participating in the outrageous quest in search of the Holy Grail given to her by Mrs. Davis, she discovers that her ex-boyfriend, Wiley, is now part of an underground resistance movement devoted to destroying the all-powerful A.I.
Or Our Hero’s Origin Story (It Involves Magicians):
How did Lizzie become Sister Simone? We get a few clues in the second episode, which starts by taking us back to her childhood, where we find out that her parents are… wait for it.. magicians! in Reno! For some reason (no disrespect to Reno) the idea of being a stage magician in Reno and not Vegas makes the whole thing look a little lame and second-rate. The father (David Arquette), is the magician while the mother (Elisabeth Marvel) performs the role of the assistant on stage although, as we soon find out, she is the one who designs and creates all of the illusions, while the father only performs them without not really knowing how they work. The mom even keeps her workshop locked from her husband to keep the nature of the illusions secret. The parents also use Lizzie every night as a “volunteer” for one of their card tricks.
She is night after night accompanied to the show by a couple of fake parents (Tina and Larry) who pretend to be just another group of tourists in town. The back story really takes a turn when Lizzie is shot by an arrow set as a bobby trap by her mother to stop anyone from entering her workshop (although it was meant mostly to keep away Lizzie’s father). The arrow lands her in the hospital where she will meet another kid waiting for a transplant: Wiley.
Of Magic, Religion, and Science (Technology)
What I find interesting about this first scene is that it sets up an important tension in the show between magic, religion, and science (or in the case of the show, technology). The three can be understood as different, but they also have overlapped historically as means to understand and manipulate the natural world. The famous 19th-century anthropologist Edward B. Tylor defined magic as "an elaborate and systematic pseudo-science," by which humans in many cultures have attempted "to discover, foretell, and to cause certain events." One of Tylor’s main disciples, James Frazer, in his classic work The Golden Bough (first published in 1890) followed that line of thought by asserting the similarities between (what he called) primitive magical thought and scientific thought. For Frazer, magic’s "fundamental conception is identical with that of modern science, underlying the whole system is a faith, implicit but real and firm, in the uniformity of nature." Magicians, or priests who performed magic, believed that there were a series of rules that guided nature and by performing certain rituals they were able to control and manipulate reality. Frazer, though, a man grounded on scientific thought also wanted to make a clear distinction between the two: while “magic may look like science, it is a false science.”
For Tylor and Frazer, religion represented a different stage in humanity’s understanding of reality. Frazer, in particular, argued that magic may share some surface similarities with science in their understanding of how the world works, but religion created a radically different understanding of reality, one in which the real powers behind the natural world are not hidden mechanical principles but supernatural beings, spirits, and gods. Accordingly, when a religious person or a community wants to influence or control nature, they do not use magical spells but rather prayers addressed to a particular god or goddess.
Finally, science can be understood as the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained (the scientific method.) Science is also replicable and transmittable. For the results of an experiment to be valid, they have to be able to be repeated (replicated) and obtain the same results again, again, and again (under the same conditions obviously). Finally, while science is concerned with the natural world, religion is preoccupied with the supernatural and its relationship to the natural.
Not to take this discussion on magic, religion, and science too far (this is after all a post about Mrs. Davis), but the famous (also infamous… look it up) Bronislaw Malinowski wrote a great book about this topic titled… wait for it… Magic, Science, and Religion (1954). Anyway, I think I made my point.
Back to Mrs. Davis. The show (at least in the first two episodes), seems to set the stage for these three human ways of understanding and manipulating reality and pitting them against each other. It does it in a pretty funny way too, magic is literally represented by magicians, as in stage illusionists doing card tricks, religion is represented by a nun who looks like Miss Clavel in the Madeline books, and science (technology) is represented by an all-powerful all-knowing A.I., Mrs. Davis.
Why Does Sister Simone Hate Magic So Much?
But let’s get back to the point that I think the show wants to make when telling this origin story of Lizzie/Sister Simone: why does she hate magic so much? Well, her parents looked pretty dysfunctional, and getting shot by an arrow while trying to enter her mother’s workshop might also have something to do with it. But I think there is something else. In the show, the world of magic represents a particular form of performative belief. The show is obviously interested in exploring the idea of belief, and magic is seen as a way to perform illusions that make us believe in things that defy the laws of nature. In a way, magic (if you ‘believe’ in it) offers an alternative view of reality, one in which things can disappear (and reappear) out of thin air, where you can read people’s minds, or transform objects as in a process of modern alchemy (a magician can transform a handkerchief into a rabbit). The appeal of magic is not the trick itself (as incredible as this might be), but what it does to our perception of reality. And that might be one of the reasons that compel Lizzie to become a nun (although I am sure there is more to it in the next episodes). Magic is a compelling but unsophisticated way of dealing with and understanding reality. It is not “profound” in the way religion is. It sees reality as more than the material world, but it does not understand it. Magic can help manipulate reality, but it does not explain it, it does not offer meaning: religion does.
The appeal of magic is not the trick itself (as incredible as this might be), but what it does to our perception of reality.
What is Real? What is True? (And Why is Wiley Lying to Simone?)
Simone goes to visit Wiley in his lair (very funny screwball vibes here) where she meets the rest of the resistance to Mrs. Davis, a group of guys who seemed to have watched Fight Club one too many times and who probably love to say to each other “the first rule of Fight Club is… You don’t talk about Fight Club.”
Wiley tries to convince Simone that the Germans who kidnaped her are actually not Germans, but actors hired by Mrs. Davis to persuade Simone to go on the quest for the Holy Grail. But according to Wiley is all a charade, a lie, an act. Simone is also introduced to JQR (“You can call me JQ” was one of the funniest lines of the episode) who gives us a little more background on Mrs. Davis: “It is code.” he tells Simone, bu “Who wrote it? Nobody fucking knows? What does it do? Nobody fucking knows? What we know is that it lies?” According to JQ, the algorithm distracts people and sends them on quests to get “wings.” Wings give you status in this new virtual world created by the algorithm. But there is a very dark side to this quest for “wings.” One of the most disturbing ones, one that hints at a very dystopian aspect of the world of the show, is that people can earn wings if they give their lives to the algorithm… literally.
Here, the show also evokes in no subtle terms The Matrix, particularly when Morpheus meets Neo and tells him that it is all an illusion and that it will be Neo’s choice to stay in the Matrix knowing it is all a lie (taking the blue pill), or escape the matrix and fight it from the real world (red pill). Morpheus also tells Neo that he is The One, the only person able to save humanity from the enslavement of the Matrix.
In Mrs. Davis, the algorithm, for some mysterious reason, has chosen Simone to be “The One” the only person able to perform the ultimate quest for the Holy Grail. When Simone is skeptical, why her, why a Holy Grail, JQ tells her “because algorithms love cliches, and there is no bigger cliché than the quest for the Holy Grail.” Here, Lindelof and Hernandez are very tongue-in-cheek letting us know that they are all in on the joke. They know that they are using all the tropes and references available in our pop culture unconscious: the monomyth, the sacred quest, the holy grail, the notion of a hero, or The One in this case, as well as obvious film references, from The Matrix to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. And that’s part of the fun of this show. It is asking us to play along by recognizing the references, but also clever as to how they play with them (the expectation and gender reversals, etc.).
JQ also tells Simone that the grail is not really a grail, just a way for the algorithm to choose candidates who can help it to maintain itself. JQ thinks that the grail is actually one of the servers where the algorithm is stored, and the quest is a way to find worthy candidates to maintain it and sustain the algorithm. When Simone asks why her, since she doesn’t know anything about computers, JQ tells her that “it wants cleaning ladies, not architects,”( another reference to the architect on The Matrix) to which Simone funnily responds (“ok, let’s say that were true and not jus super offensive to me and to cleaning ladies). JQ and the rest of the resistance want to help Simone find the grail/server in order to destroy it.
Simone is still not on board with this whole plan, so the resistance captures the Germans in order to make them confess in front of Simone and finally convince her that she needs to help them not only find the Grail/computer server (she has already accepted the quest from Mrs. Davis) but to help them destroy it. After capturing the Germans and accidentally killing one of them, Simone is finally convinced that she has to help them. In reality, though Wiley has “forced” Simone to help them, “force” here in the magic sense of the term, as in a method of controlling a choice made by a volunteer during a magic trick. Simone was “forced” by her father at the beginning of the episode to open her mother’s workshop thinking it was her own idea. Now Wiley is doing the same to her, which becomes clear when we realize that the Germans are not actually working for Mrs. Davis but are in cahoots with the resistance (although we will only find this out at the end of the episode).
When one piano is not enough (or is More Better?)
After the incident with the Resistance and the Germans, Simone goes to Mama Donuts, the place where she would be dropped off every night by her fake parents, Tina and Larry, until her real parents would pick her up and take her home after their daily show. This time, Tina and Larry are with the algorithm and want to take Simone somewhere. Earlier in the episode, when Simone is talking to Mrs. Davis through the kindergarten teacher, we meet an old man who is looking for her late wife’s piano. He just wants to hear that piano one more time. Simone tells her. that she will pray for him in hopes that he finds the piano. In this scene, Tina and Larry take Simone to a field populated with hundreds of pianos and tell her “Sometimes the best way to find the right piano, is to find all of the pianos.” In the field, Simone finds the old man sitting at his late wife’s piano filled with joy. The scene is incredibly beautiful and poetic, but also is making a remarkable point: Mrs. Davis can achieve the impossible through brutal force, she can find the right piano by finding ALL of the pianos. Basically, the answer to everything is EVERYTHING. The algorithm is trying to convince Simone that there is no need for magic or religion when an artificial intelligence like her (it!) can deliver anything and everything in the world … literally.
The scene is incredibly beautiful and poetic, but also is making a remarkable point: Mrs. Davis can achieve the impossible through brutal force, she can find the right piano by finding ALL of the pianos. Basically, the answer to everything is EVERYTHING.
Jay for …. Jesus
While in the middle of the field, we finally get one of the bigger reveals of the show so far. Simone closes her eyes and appears at the café where Jay works and it becomes clear that the café is not a real café. The creators have called it “the metaphysical falafel shop.” Jay is not just Jay since Jay stands for JESUS!!!! So now we know that the boss hiding in the back office is also God, and they are the ones who have been giving Simone targets like the magicians who are using illusions to trick and scam people (altering people’s sense of reality to steal their money), and now, God has also asked Simone to destroy Mrs. Davis, the algorithm that has become the biggest danger to people’s belief in God. It is a moving scene, and it makes it very clear that Simone is not only in love with Jay but also married to him (they kiss!). I mean, technically, nuns are married to Jesus (that’s why they wear a ring), and the scene makes reference and fun to this fact but takes it literally.
And there you go, in the space of one hour, the show has presented a battle between different forms of belief (magic, religion, and science), and pit them against each other, while also making us question what is real and what is true, since we, the viewers, cannot really trust the intentions of many of the characters: we only hear Mrs. Davis through proxies, the Germans are not who they are supposed to be since they are neither Germans neither work for Mrs. Davis (they work with the resistance), and Wiley and the resistance have told a convincing story to Simone (there is no Grail) only for us to discover that they are tricking her to do their bidding. So we don’t know what is real, what is true but I guess we will find out in the upcoming episodes… or will we?
Random Notes:
· I noticed that, in the credits, Damon Lindelof and Tara Hernandez are credited as writers of the episode and creators of the show AFTER the credits for the director (NAME). This is the first time I’ve seen this in a TV show. It is clear that this is very much Lindelof and Hernandez’s creation.
· I think the title “Zwei Sie Piel mit Seitung Sie Wirtschaftung” is absolute nonsense…it translates something like “Two you game with newspaper you management” like the episode itself, in the sense that there are a lot of things in this episode but it is almost impossible to make sense of it.