Mrs. Davis Episode 1 Mother Of Mercy: The Call Of The Horse Review And Recap- Explosions, Shave Ice, AI’s, And Dry Humping

Peacock’s latest sci-fi action thriller is quite possibly the most inventive, bonkers thing you will see for years. Mrs. Davis Episode 1 laid the groundwork for what could be the single most fresh and unexpected mashup of ideas ever assembled. It is wild, fast-paced, hilarious, and will become your new addiction. With hits like Poker Face, The Resort, and now Mrs. Davis, Peacock has assured its place on the streaming landscape.

Peacock’s reimagining of the Knights Templar meets Skynet story burns with a righteous fire. It compels your attention from the first moment and never let’s go, leaving you anxious for another episode. That’s the way a good serialized story should be. Each bite should satisfy you and leave you wanting more simultaneously. Mrs. Davis delivers the goods.

The pilot episode opens with a group of nuns acting as the titular knights protecting the Holy Grail. The important artifact in Christianity is purported to be the cup Jesus drank from during the Last Supper. Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon searched for it in The Davinci Code and found not a chalice but a bloodline. We aren’t sure what exactly they are guarding this go around, but it is important enough to die for.

In Paris long ago, a witch hunt is brewing against the Knights Templar. They are systematically rounded up and burned at the stake. The following day a group of soldiers arrives looking for the Holy Grail. The nuns supposedly were consorting with the knights and were hiding the relic. In a burst of activity, the nuns declare themselves the real knights and beat the men in a flurry of robes and massive swinging swords. These women are committed and tough. They are “fly through the air with a sword sticking out of your chest to impale your attacker in the head” with it tough. Only one nun remains when all is said and done, and she is told to take the Grail and run for help.

In modern Reno, a couple drives through the desert towards a dalliance when a cow intrudes, leaving the driver headless and the man shaken. He tries to bribe the police officers who show up to keep his wife from finding out when a woman on a horse rides up and begins CPR on the headless body. Before anyone can question the absurdity of this, she reveals everything is a trick. The woman is not dead and is in the trunk. Everything was planned, from the cow to the accident, and the police officers were involved. This trio of magicians lure unsuspecting men into a fling and then wait for them to do what naughty men do. They try to buy their way out. Lucky for this man, Sister Simone was here to save him.

Before you can digest that weirdness, the woman named Simone starts to ride off when the man gets a phone call from someone needing to talk to her. Simone rejects the call and rides off. This entity of the other line that Simone refers to as an “IT” killed her Dad, and her coworker Jay tells her to be scared of squaring off against her. What these seemingly disparate stories have to do with one another, we don’t know yet, but both are intriguing enough that we want to find out.

The woman sheds her cowboy hat for a habit and rejoins her farming convent. The sisters live a simple but fulfilling life cultivating strawberries and making massive amounts of jam that they sell to keep everything going. However, on the day they are to make a delivery of jam, the force, fate, or the AI, whichever you want to call it, intervenes and redirects them to a shave ice stand and a destiny with exploded jam jars and, later, her beloved horse. When they return to the convent, they find it has been sold, and they are all being relocated. It’s just the beginning of the many manipulations of the AI to reach Simone, who hates the AI because it killed her Dad.

While at an all-you-can-eat buffet, she is tranquilized by a group of Nazis and questioned about the location of something. This is why her horse died. They attached a bomb to her horse. These are bumbling fools of Natzis in the vein of Hogans Heroes, keeping the thematic spirit of absurdity going. She escapes with the bomb detonator, and a man on a motorcycle arrives to rescue her. The man she calls Wiley(Jake McDorman, Watchmen) comes with backup in the way of a ginger driving a giant roach van. Another more bonkers chase ensues involving sidecars and big butterfly nets. Mrs. Davis Episode 1 has no shortage of action scenes; each one is punctuated with humor and gorgeous visuals.

They escape to a hole under a boulder in the desert, and Sister Simone, who was Lizzy once, is told Wiley has been watching her for a while, and they want her back at headquarters for some mission. He is part of the resistance resisting the AI algorithm. Wiley is the reason for her horse’s demise when he pushes the button, trying to prove that the AI wouldn’t be so stupid as to kill her horse. This dark humor runs throughout. It hits fast and rarely gives you a break to recover from one madcap event before it hits you in the face with more jam.

A goofy sensibility to Mrs. Davis Episode 1 established the tone of the entire series. A grizzled older man living in a shack on the beach talks to a scruffy cat who gives every appearance of understanding and talking back. Nazis who run into coffee cups, Real Genuis-style Acme magnifying glasses cause jam to blow up, and nuns who talk about dry humping while a horse laughs are all hallmarks of a great episode. Behind all the comedy lies danger and a cautionary reminder to be weary of who or what we allow to control our lives.

This AI knows everything. It knows your secrets, past, and the lies we tell ourselves. Like The Matrix’s Mr. Smith, it can be anywhere, anytime, and do almost anything. It’s omnipotent and omniscient, and it appears that our society has willingly handed the keys to our lives over to Siri, who rules with an iron but saccharine sweet fist.

After the death of her horse, Simone goes looking for someone to punish and finds out that her partner Jay lied to her about the next target. The AI was next on the hit list, but he was worried about her and told her the ticket was left blank. Now she knows the truth and goes to the elementary school to meet with the AI. This manipulative foe cloaks herself in whatever is most effective to get inside someone’s mind. She makes a deal with Simone that if she finds the Grail and destroys it, the Ai will shut itself down. She further tells Simone she is the only one who can do it. The deal is struck, establishing a battle for technology over spirituality. What is a God, after all? Mrs. Davis Episode 1 lays the framework for this war and these questions to be answered.

Mrs. Davis Episode 1 asks heady questions but in such a surprising and funny way. You look at everything differently. Betty Gilpin(The Tomorrow War and Glow) is a quirky, wise-cracking revelation as Simone and will surely be a hero for the ages. The first four episodes aired today, with new episodes premiering each Thursday after that. Find all our Mrs. Davis coverage here.