Spoilers below for certain elements of Peacock’s new sci-fi-action-adventure-comedy Mrs. Davis, so be warned if you haven’t watched at least the first episode.
While series such as Yellowjackets and The Mandalorian keeping TV viewers busy with theories and speculation in past weeks, the new multi-genre streaming series Mrs. Davis arrived seemingly out of nowhere and laid out one of the small screen’s most complex, intriguing and impossible-to-predict narratives in years. (And I, for one, adore it.) Its humanistic approach to genre storytelling alone makes it comparable to such former TV monoliths as Lost, so it’s perhaps no surprise that both shows share a co-creator in Damon Lindelof, who helped Big Bang Theory writer/producer Tara Hernandez bring her idea for Mrs. Davis’ “A.I. run amok” storyline to life. And as viewers no doubt picked up on in the early episodes, the new streaming show features some on-the-nose nods to the flashback-filled hit.
For instance, one of Mrs. Davis’ earliest scenes involves a bearded Ben Chaplin being stranded on an island just before being rescued, as well as Jake McDornan’s Wiley introducing Betty Gilpin’s Simone/Lizzy to his clandestine H.A.T.C.H. hideaway. (To say nothing of the religion-fueled content and other thematic avenues.) When speaking to Damon Lindelof and Tara Hernandez to promote the recent four-episode premiere of Mrs. Davis (available to stream with a Peacock subscription), I asked the former for his thoughts on being at the point where he’s able to make winking Lost callbacks in new projects. He started his answer with:
You know, it is humbling and wonderful, and also silly, to arrive at a point in my career where Lost was now 20 years ago, and I'm the oldest person in the writers room. So it's this sort of idea of, everybody's kind of familiar with it, and it's like, 'How do we talk about lost amongst ourselves in front of Damon?' And I think that very quickly - certainly Tara and I had already had conversations before all the writers came on - but it had to be like, we have to [address it]. It's something that I'm immensely proud of, and will always love, but if I can make fun of myself, I have to be able to make fun of Lost. And I also know that where we're at, we're working on story and talking about scripts, but at some point, they're gonna sell this thing as from the co-creator of Lost. And so the show has to have a bit of a meta awareness of the fact that that's in its DNA.
If I was in that writers room, I might personally have first bugged the bejesus out of Lindelof for insights on how he might have wanted to expand his one-and-done season of HBO’s Watchmen. But then after that, the Lost floodgates would certainly open. In any case, it’s definitely a practical matter that he probably has to have a Lost-related conversation on every new project he takes part in. And that likely goes double or triple for a show like Mrs. Davis that taps into the worlds of both science and science-fiction, and one in which mysteries and twists are built into the narrative.
I have to assume there exists a shortlist of 15-20 topics and elements that Lindelof knows will automatically spark Lost comparisons and conversations. But seeing as how it’s been nearly 20 years since the show first went into production, that’s probably enough time for the co-creator to feel like it’s okay to poke fun in a somewhat reverent manner.
It also helps that Mrs. Davis wasn’t born completely from Damon Lindelof’s brain, as its initial pitch was crafted by Tara Hernandez, who likely didn’t fill that first script up with Lost homages. To that end, Lindelof continued:
But at the same time, make it clear that it's Tara's vision; she's the showrunner. And so while I'm a co-creator, and I was there, and I'm really proud of it, I think the parts of the show that at least I am most delighted by are not just its comedic tone, but also its depth of character. It is really a matriarchal construct. My writing has been obsessed with daddy issues, because I get along pretty well with my mom, but it's sort of like, this is a show about mommy issues, and not just Mother Superior and Simone' mom, Celeste, but who is behind the door at the Employees Only room. And so in all of those ideas, it's sort of like, is there a fun way to acknowledge Lost without turning and winking at the audience, but also that it's a little bit silly. In the context of a hatch joke.
Would it have been too far for Ben Chaplin’s character to look right at the camera while saying, “Boy, I sure am lost out here,” or showing him saying that he needed to go back to the island right after being rescued? Yes, yes it would have been too far. Funny, definitely, but also too much of a stretch.
Speaking of Chaplin’s character Arthur Schroedinger, Lindelof said the whole idea behind his rescue was jumped on by the Lost-embracing writers. In his words:
Or when we were first saying like, 'How do we introduce the audience to Mrs. Davis as a concept if it's been 10 years since everybody's using her?' And it's like, well, it's either someone who's in a coma and they're just waking up, or someone who's been on a desert island for like, a decade. And then everybody was like, 'Oh, we're doing the desert island.' [Laughs.] And I was like, 'Guys, I didn't mean it literally.' They're like, 'Okay, this is happening.'
I assume at the bottom of the pile of rejected ideas was “What if he’s stuck under a polar bear and a donkey wheel?”
With a talented cast that doesn’t have quite as many front-and-center leads as Lost, Mrs. Davis will be dropping a new episode each week on Peacock for the remainder of its season, though there are plenty of other great Peacock shows to keep viewers busy in the meantime.
