The “fake relationship†trope is so popular in the romantic-comedy genre for many reasons. There’s a certain thrill to witnessing that gradual pivot from role-play to genuine feeling: play-acting being in love then actually falling in love. It’s like jumping from friends (or complete strangers) to spouses fast-tracks the love story: Suddenly these people are together all the time, actually getting to know each other while pretending to be in love, and it’s all too easy for the fiction to become reality.
It’s hard to tell how much time actually passes between any two episodes of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, but you get the sense that months are flying by in this universe. Still, even with that timetable, John and Jane Smith are moving fast, faster than most real-life non-spy couples would. Living in the same house and surviving the same dangerous, upsettingly violent ordeals brought them together almost immediately, so it doesn’t feel all that ridiculous to have a discussion about children this early. That’s part of the beauty of this show: The premise allows for a lot of freedom in jumping around to play with different relationship tropes. Normally, this journey might require years of story time to cover, but these characters are already used to moving fast.
It takes a while for “Do You Want Kids?†to directly address the possibility of John and Jane having kids, but the idea is there from the beginning. Jane is generally the colder, more professional of the two, but she’s surprisingly maternal with Toby Hellinger (Ron Perlman!), the high-value target they’re tasked with transporting. Toby is almost immediately positioned symbolically as a child, a sort of test run for the Smiths having a baby one day. There’s something stereotypically fatherly about the way John treats Toby: ignoring him while he whines incessantly from the backseat and pointing out that the child locks are on. Jane, like a good-hearted and sympathetic mom, is the one to show Toby some mercy by taking his hood off on the way to the designated safe house.
We’re in Lake Como, Italy, for this episode, which means some pretty stunning scenery, especially during the extended action sequence that begins when John and Jane are ambushed at the safe house. It starts as an exciting car chase over precarious mountain roads before turning into a race to sea level through congested streets, like something from a Fast & Furious or Mission: Impossible movie. In the process, John and Jane ruin a wedding, but they eventually convince a family to take them across the lake in their small boat.
The new safe house John takes them to is one Jane doesn’t even know about: a beautiful cottage on the lake that he impulsively bought for the two of them while at the market. As you’d expect, Jane is at first very turned off by this unexpected gesture. As if reading her mind, Hihi contacts her for the first time without John, asking if she’s happy “with everything.†Apparently, he sees her advancing, but he doesn’t say the same about John. Later, she gets further instructions for the next steps, with Hihi poking further and asking about John’s ability to handle the missions.
“Do You Want Kids?†really dials up the kid parallels during that night in the safe house when Toby refuses to take medicine for his stomach pain. Perlman lands all the comedic beats, his big, tough exterior at odds with Toby’s childish demeanor, especially when he later interrupts John and Jane in the middle of the night to somberly report, “I think I threw up.†The episode features plenty of familiar parenting tropes while adding an amusing new context, like when John bribes Toby with a cigarette after Jane’s more traditional efforts fail.
It’s an effective story for getting John and Jane to discuss the possibility of kids, although it doesn’t feel entirely consistent with their characters up to this point. You’d expect John to be the warm parental presence, but he’s unusually unkind to Toby, which Jane herself points out. I’m not sure I ever totally understood that role reversal, considering Jane isn’t actually pregnant, despite the multiple pieces of false foreshadowing. Maybe it’s just meant to shake up the usual dynamic.
The second half of the episode includes two important conversations between the Smiths. The first, where they exchange realistic arranged spy marriage vows outside the cottage, suggests John and Jane really do belong together; Jane promises not to judge him for how often he talks to his mom, and John says some sweet stuff about not judging her for pretending her cat will live forever. (I agree, Jane. Max will live forever.) The biggest vow, though, comes last: “I vow never to kill you.†For a normal marriage, that vow would pretty much go without saying, but the Smiths aren’t like other couples. It’s not necessarily an implied agreement. Unfortunately, then John goes and says, “I want to put a baby in you,†ruining the moment. That conversation gets tabled for another day.
John and Jane do, in the end, manage to deliver Toby to the specified coordinates the next day, where he gets scooped up by a seaplane in the middle of Lake Como. No harm done — except, of course, to John’s cottage, which Jane makes the executive decision to blow up by sticking some dynamite in the lit stove. I guess some people do die, but it’s just the anonymous armed men who somehow keep tracking them down. We never actually find out their origin, which feels like one of several missing plot details this episode could’ve included.
The second big relationship conversation happens back at home, where John asks Jane if she’s pregnant. She’s not, and she’s understandably very grateful that she’s not, but John kind of wanted her to be. I have to say; I’m completely on Jane’s side when it comes to the subject of kids. It would be very irresponsible to bring kids into this world with their current lifestyle, and she still has loftier career goals she hasn’t pursued yet.
Even if Jane is right, it’s hard to watch her lash out at John, categorically rejecting the possibility of low-risk work and calling him “simple-minded†for wanting a family. The tension between them is exacerbated by the arrival of a gift from Hihi, who only praises Jane in the note. John snaps at her, assuming she took all the credit for this mission like she apparently has in the past. But we saw those mission report texts from Jane, and … I don’t think she did? Maybe there are longer debriefs we don’t get to see, but there’s little about Jane’s texts that imply anything specific about John’s abilities.
Again, the show could use more clarity on how this all works and how important the company actually is to the story. I assume we’re heading for some confrontation with the company refusing to allow them to leave as we saw in the opening scene of the show. But there hasn’t been any movement on learning about what exactly the company is for, or why they have such lax standards for their employees. Are John and Jane doing the bidding of some truly evil enterprise? “Do You Want Kids?†is another episode that feels like it’s building to some twist — there’s something menacing about Hihi’s order to keep Toby alive “until morning†— but it doesn’t really pull the trigger.
Those concerns aside, the episode still mostly succeeds with its main relationship story, getting us to a point where Jane’s indecision about Hihi’s offer to replace her partner is believable. These two people clearly love each other, but that might not be enough. Some people just want different things.
Flaps and Seals
• You’d think John would know how to speak Italian by now, but his best attempt at a translation for “move†is “mové.â€
• Shout-out to the white short-shorts Glover rocks during that final argument.