Mrs. Ep 105 Recap: A Great Place to Drink to Gain Control of Your Drink
A Love Letter to Stories and Storytelling
Plot: Simone and Wiley's hunt for Clara, the red-haired woman last known to have held the Grail, leads them to an enigmatic new source, and together they learn about the history of the Grail, the group entrusted with its protection (the Sisters of the Coin), and the dangerous truth about their connection to Clara.
If this was not clear already, Mrs. Davis is really a love letter to stories and storytelling. It is about the power of stories, about how we tell and need stories, and how those stories are told, from old fashion myths to modern-day network TV, about stories in all their power and all their silliness. This show is, in fact, stories all the way down.
I Love Everyone!
After the WTF reveal of the last episode (part of the story we’ve been told about the origins of the Grail is… a commercial!), we find Simone looking for Jay/Jesus at the metaphysical café. Someone had stopped by the café moments before and beaten Jesus up. He is (obviously), not much of a fighter (the whole turning the other cheek thing from Mathew 5:39) and doesn’t want to tell Simone who did it. Simone is still jealous of Jay’s relationship with other women (possibly Clara, the last woman who held the grail), and they argue about it. Amusingly, Simone is talking to Jay/Jesus while she is wearing a life jacket, which she is wearing because she is going to see Schrödinger, the castaway scientist we met at the beginning of the first episode.
Mrs. Davis has given Simone the location of Schrödinger, who is still castaway on the island. Although it is a little confusing at first, Simone clarifies for us that Schrödinger was rescued, but then decided to go back to the island, but why? Why go through all the trouble of leaving the island, as we say in the first episode, only to go back to it?
Schrödinger initially refuses to help them find Clara (pretending not to know who Clara is), but when he finds out that Simone is actually Lizzie (Elisabeth Abbot) and also recognizes Wiley, he tells them a story. Before he tells them the story, he also says “I tried to spare you but it brought you back to me.”
Once Upon a Time
Schrödinger agrees to tell them the story of Clara (where she is, and who she is), but he also warns them that learning the story will have consequences… and so the story begins. Once Upon a Time (1982 to be precise), Clara went with her mom Mathilde to the bank where she worked. This is no normal bank, and Clara witnesses some strange things happening, such as a woman coming out of a room pregnant when she was originally not! Clara cannot resist the temptation and she goes into that room, which appears to be the inner sanctum of the place. Her mother finds her and scolds her for being in there without permission, but she also decides to tell her another story (as I said, this show is stories all the way down). Mathilde is part of the Sisters of the Coin, a secret organization of women that is in charge of protecting the Holy Grail (the Sisters of the Coin seems to echo the Priori of Sion of the DaVinci Code books).
According to Mathilde, the “asset” (the Grail) was entrusted to them millennia ago when two apostles of Christ, each claiming it as their own, dueled for it and died, leaving it to the protection of their widows. These widows became the first Sisters of the Coin. The Grail, apparently, has a temper, and if it is not properly taken care of, “bad things happen.” That is why the grail is always kept close to women's bellies since the grail likes to be in close proximity to the womb as well as in constant motion. In order to protect the Grail, the Sisterhood developed over time the “Articles of Care,” rules to protect the Grail, but also to keep it “happy.”
We also see in a scene of the inner sanctum of the Sisters of the Coin Hans Ziegler, as one of the “apron men,” who seem to be helpers of the sisters in the protection of the Grail (again playing with gender reversal, the women wear business suits and the men wear aprons). We also learn a few other rules. For example, the most important vow the Sisters make is “Thou Shall not Sip” from the Grail (we will find out at the end of the episode why that is), and we also learn that Article 13 states that the Grail shall be watched by 1% of the world’s population every year, which has become increasingly difficult with the explosion in world population. So Mathilde has an idea: film a commercial (a Super Bowl commercial at that) that can be watched by millions of people all at once! Mathilde claims that she has found a brand with “mass appeal, the coolest athletic shoes in the world, one destined to achieve iconic status and only gain in popularity: British Knights sneakers!” I’ll be honest here, until this moment, I did not know that this was actually a real brand of sneakers. That seems to be part of the joke: British Knights became no Nike! So Mathilde wants to write and direct an ad that will allow the Sisterhood to expose the world to the Grail without endangering the Sisterhood or the Grail itself. She also wants to star in it, but the rest of the sisters think she is too old, so her daughter Clara takes on the role.
It gets a little silly here since they propose that, in order to pay for it, Hans Ziegler becomes a priest at the Vatican in order to steal all the money necessary to fund it (don’t the Sisters own a bank?). I mean, this show has plenty of crazy plots that defy logical explanations, but this one seemed a little forced. It gets the job done narratively, I guess.
The sisters vote by flipping a coin on a round table (Sisters of the Coin = Knights of the Round Table) and Mathilde goes on to film the commercial. We start seeing tension build between Mathilde and Clara. This is a central theme in Lindelof’s work, who seems to use TV to explore some parental issues. Lost had plenty of parental drama (John and his con father, Jack and his alcoholic father, Kate and her abused mother, etc.). Here the exploration continues with Mathilda and her mom (is this Tara Hernandez dealing with her own parental issues?).
The shooting takes a long time and it is filled with drama. Apron Man Hans is now Father Hans Ziegler, a priest who has seen that there is life (and power) outside of the Sisterhood and wants to destroy the Grail. He tries to tempt Clara to help him steal the Grail so they can destroy it. He claims that the destruction of the Grail will allow Clara to finally have the approval of her mother. During the filming, Mathilda is so tough on Clara that she seems to come around.
We keep coming back to Wiley and Simone listening to Schrödinger’s story. They are us, the audience being told the story and reacting to it. Their reactions are pretty funny: “I knew it!” or “That took a dark turn!” The episode (if not the whole show) is about storytelling, about the way you tell a story, from the Once Upon a Time to all the twists and turns that make the reader/listener/audience sit at the edge of their seat wanting more. As usual, Lindelof and Hernandez include as many myths, tropes, stereotypes, and clichés as possible, from the shady priest to the “I’m your father” reveal. It is also very meta in the way the episode is constructed: TV within TV, a hall of mirrors that it is revealing about how the sausage is made while making fun of it, commercials breaks included.
When they show the ad to the British Knights's bosses, they don’t want to air it and the whole project falls apart. Mathilde gets in trouble with the Sisterhood (the project was a big embarrassment), and her relationship with Clara completely falls apart when she fires her from the Sisterhood. We know that Clara swapped the Grail and has it in her possession.
Whatever it Takes
Here is where Schrödinger appears in the story as a scientist who… wait for it… is the actual father of Clara! Mathilde and Schrödinger (religion and science) had a relationship that Mathilde kept secret since it was forbidden. Schrödinger did not know anything about the Sisters of the Coin, the Grail… but, after initially being incredulous, he vows to help Clara destroy the Grail.
Thou Shall Not Sip
At the end of the episode, after Clara and Schrödinger have attempted to destroy the Grail for ten years, Clara decides that there is one thing they have not tried yet: drink from it. Thou Shall Not Sip is the most important command the Sisters have to follow, but Clara hypothesizes that this might be because it can destroy the Grail. She drinks from it and she seems to go somewhere (Simone thinks is the metaphysical café), and then… wait for it… her head explodes! Clara’s final words were “Whatever it takes,” the motto of the Sisterhood. Then we realize that Clara’s liver is the one that was transplanted into Simone and Wiley, Clara is within them.
The show ends with Schrödinger telling them that he thinks that they can destroy the Grail because they have built an immunity to it. He also tells them that he then went on a scientific ship to keep the Grail in motion (one of the Articles of Care) and fed it to a… wait for it… a sperm whale! Very Biblical. The whale went crazy after ingesting it destroying the scientific ship, and Schrödinger became a castaway. My guess is that in the next episode, we are going to have some Biblical Jonah and the Whale mixed with Moby Dick. This TV show is stories all the way down.
My Theory So Far
Ok, here is my theory so far. Clara trying to destroy the Grail is the reverse quest of Simone trying to find the Grail. I think Simone and Clara are the same characters and their reverse quest stands for some sort of attempt at fixing or understanding their complex relationship with their parents. The grail is not an object but a symbol of a quest for wholeness, and completion, and that can only be achieved once Simone and Clara’s issues with their parents are solved. This is why I think that everything we are watching is created by the algorithm. My guess is that Simone died or she is in a coma when her mom shot her with the arrow, then she created the algorithm as a way to make amends for her “sins.” But she cannot ask for forgiveness, she needs to make Simone go through a quest in order to understand what happened and find a resolution. Clara’s story is a story within a story to help Simone see what is happening (or happened) to her (a mirror story, a storytelling device with clues so Simone can realize the truth of what is happening to her). I might be completely wrong, but that’s where my money is right now. Thoughts?
I know, that’s a lot. So I better stop here.