The Wildest Reveal In Mr. & Mrs. Smith Makes Perfect Creepy Use Of Paul Dano
This article contains spoilers for "Mr. & Mrs. Smith."
They say the first sign of the end of childhood is when a kid realizes Santa doesn't exist, or perhaps when they find out about the birds and the bees. The real indicator, however, is when the kid starts to look at the home lives of their favorite characters on TV and finally wonder: "How they can afford this?" From "Friends" to "How I Met Your Mother" to "Community," sitcom characters in particular always tend to be living way above their means, with the shows themselves being in no rush to explain how or why.
For kids who grew up watching "iCarly" on Nickelodeon, it's Carly's three-story apartment that probably sparked their first real-estate-related inquiry. How could the Shay family enjoy this massive three-story apartment in downtown Seattle, one that's not only incredibly spacious but has an in-unit elevator that the rest of the apartment building isn't allowed to use? Carly's largely unseen father is successful, we know, but is he really that successful? It's especially weird considering that Carly's life is otherwise portrayed as very middle class.
It's Carly's apartment that comes to mind when watching the Prime Video TV show, "Mr. & Mrs. Smith." While the 2005 movie it's based on has its main characters living in a more believable suburban home, John (Donald Glover) and Jane (Maya Erskine) instead live in a three-story NYC home with a garden on the roof and a built-in garage. We the audience understand exactly how the two could afford this home — they're spies working for an agency with a seemingly limitless budget — but their neighbors have no idea, and it's driving at least one of them up the wall.
Meet Hot Neighbor
Referred to simply as "Hot Neighbor" throughout the series, Paul Dano's character is introduced early into the second episode as the Smiths' somewhat nosy, somewhat flirty next-door neighbor. Although he starts off by grilling Jane for (presumably) letting her cat defecate in his yard, he then starts asking her about their apartment. He inquires how they got the complex built so fast, who they hired to build it, and what sort of jobs Jane and John have. Jane tells him they're both software engineers (a running joke that will pay off in spades during the sixth episode's extended therapy sessions), but Hot Neighbor doesn't buy it.
Nevertheless, he lets the issue slide, and Jane remarks to John shortly after that the neighbor was kind of hot. Hot Neighbor doesn't get a whole lot to do throughout the series, but he's a lingering presence all throughout. In the little bits and pieces we get of him, he seems to be watching the Smiths, studying their moves, withholding some sort of judgment we've not yet been made privy to.
Even when Hot Neighbor's not in the scene itself, he still causes trouble for the Smiths. One of their biggest marital fights happens because John admits he lied about reading a book that Hot Neighbor mentioned to Jane, purely because he was jealous that Jane found Hot Neighbor attractive and he wanted to look good in comparison. It was an interesting reveal; sure, it served the immediate purpose of giving the Smiths something to argue over, but the repeated mention of Hot Neighbor also instilled a promise that his character was going somewhere. He was not just some minor background guy; the writers were keeping him in mind throughout the season, with some sort of plan in store.
So, what's his deal?
The obvious assumption is that Hot Neighbor is another secret agent, someone working on behalf of Hihi to help them manipulate the Smiths to their advantage. In fact, he might even be Hihi himself; such a reveal would've been a total jaw-dropper, and it would've perfectly fit the sort of characters we're used to Dano playing. From "The Batman" to "Prisoners" we know Dano's great at portraying creepy, unsettling, mysterious characters. A final-act villain reveal would've perfectly suited him.
Instead, we get something much funnier. When John enters Hot Neighbor's house and comes across a collage of photographs of him and Jane, John immediately puts a gun to his head and demands he explain what's going on. Hot Neighbor, who reveals himself as a guy named Harris, gives John an intense, breathy, fast-talking monologue — one that answers every question we've ever had about him all at once:
"Sotheby's is a real-estate agency; I'm a real-estate analyst. They want your house bad. No one understands how you were permitted to built it. There were no records for the permits being filed, you combined two historical brownstones into one residence — which is unheard of. You added a garage and a pool, which alone would cost anyone over $25 million if the city would even allow for it. All this on the salary of two software engineers, it doesn't make sense! The only people capable of anything like this are Russian oligarchs and Saudi royals..."
A relatable obsession
He delivers the monologue with the gravitas of someone genuinely doing a big serious reveal, which makes sense because, to Harris, this is big and serious. Not only did he likely spend weeks dealing with all that loud construction outside his home, but the sheer implausibility of the Smiths' lives seems to have been tormenting him. He's been feeling what every viewer feels in the back of their mind as they watch the "iCarly" kids just hanging out in their third-floor film studio, a part of the apartment that was apparently just sitting there before Carly ever thought to make a web show. The math isn't adding up; the rules of the universe don't seem to apply to these people.
While we viewers can comfort ourselves with the knowledge that sitcoms naturally tend to gloss over money issues, poor Harris has no such reasoning to fall back on. This massive hole in his understanding of the world sits right next to his home every single day. Even if his bosses didn't want him to look into the situation, he'd probably still be driven to take pictures of them throughout their daily lives.
The reveal of Harris's true intentions is possibly the best joke in an already very funny show, a punchline with seven episodes of build-up behind it, and it works partly because of how much the cost of living weighs so heavily on modern viewers. When housing's barely affordable for half the country now, Harris's concerns feel a lot more relatable. The show knows that we know how expensive the Smiths' lifestyle would realistically be, and it organically weaves that question into the series.
The last character we see
The season ends on an agonizing cliffhanger, one where both Mr. and Mrs. Smith's lives are hanging in the balance. But for the mid-credits scene, who does the show choose to focus on? Harris, of course. He nervously drops a book off in their bullet-torn home and then calls his boss as he leaves. "I think they're ready to sell," he says giddily, as a nice bit of ironic humor in an otherwise grim conclusion to the season. Our main characters are probably dead, but things are finally looking up for Hot Neighbor Harris.
It's a bit that harkens back to "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead," that tragicomic '60s play that focuses on two minor characters in Shakespeare's "Hamlet." Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two very minor characters in the original play, not really meant to be thought of as having their own complex lives, but the play chooses to focus exclusively on them. Suddenly, all the high-stakes drama Hamlet's dealing with seems a little silly, which makes Ros and Guild's random canon deaths feel far more painful (and funny) in comparison.
Likewise, ending the season with Harris serves as a fun perspective switch — one that makes all the insane melodrama of the finale feel trivial in comparison. John and Jane may have just gone through a once-in-a-lifetime spiritual journey together, but to Harris and his real-estate firm, all that matters is that it seems like they might sell the home soon. That might seem like a trivial win for them — Hihi's probably not gonna sell the place to them anyway — but considering that Jane and John might very well be dead now, it's nice to see that at least one person is ending the season on a high note.
"Mr. & Mrs. Smith" is now streaming on Prime Video.