We wonder how the story of “Mrs. Davis” was put together. Did the writers throw random darts at a storyboard and then scramble to connect the dots, or was this how it was meant to be, to begin with? Now, we are not saying it is not fun. We love the unserious take on the cliches happening around. But it is getting harder and harder to keep up with the multitude of tropes that the series has adopted. Initially, it was “The Matrix” coming together with “Indiana Jones,” and that has now delved into answering mysteries of science about Schrodinger’s cat while making us question the relevance of Super Bowl ads. We might say that there is a Dan Brownesque thread running through the series, with a little bit of everything happening. Once this madness is behind us, we are going to put it all together in a chronological order and figure out whether it makes any sense at all. For now, this is how “Mrs. Davis” Episode 5 goes.
Spoilers Alert
Why Was The Holy Grail In An Advertisement?
“Mrs. Davis” Episode 4 ended with Simone and Wiley finding that Clara was part of a commercial with the grail in her hand. Since they can’t find Clara, they look for the next best thing, the clue to which is on the collar of the cat: Arthur Schrodinger. They make their way to the island where he is living, this time of his own volition. When Arthur comes to know who they are, he tells them the story of Mathilde and Clara.
Since “Mrs. Davis” thrives on making fun of cliches, we will hold ourselves back from being kind where it is not required. That means that we are going to say that Mathilde and Clara’s mother-daughter relationship was based on the tired TV trope of the child trying to be good enough for the approval of the parent. Mathilde belongs to an organization called “Sisters of the Coin,” a group of women who work in finance as a cover to hide the fact that they are tasked with taking care of the holy grail. It started when two apostles fought to the death over it, and their widows decided to be more sensible than them and took care of the grail from then on. This responsibility has been in Mathilde’s family for generations, and it would have passed on to Clara, except that Mathilde never believed her child was up to the responsibility. The answer to why she thought so is that she needed to so that there could be one more cliche for the series to make fun of. Either way, Clara is determined to prove her mother wrong, which is why she starts training hard in the organization.
Years later, they have a new challenge to face. The grail must be seen by 1% of the world every year, at any cost. We think this is because, contrary to what Jay, Jesus, or God might say, he doesn’t love all of his children. Is it possible that the world’s population is exploding because we are trying to gain the love from our children that we did not get from our creator, God himself? Daddy issues are really baked into the human psyche. Either way, since the world’s population is growing, the grail needs to be shown to 75 million people at that point in time, so Mathilde came up with the idea to include it in a Super Bowl ad. She wants to write, direct, and star in it, but of course, her age is pointed out as a hindrance. That is when Clara offers to act, her mother makes her life a living hell because of it. We forgot to add that Father Hans Zeigler was planted by the sisters in the Vatican to swindle the church for their mission. The sneakers are supposed to be some sort of representation of Adidas or Nike, we assume, in terms of their brand value, which would generate interest in the advertisement they are making.
Why Does Clara Swap The Grail For The Decoy?
Hans Zeigler first gives Clara the idea for the decoy, suggesting that by swapping it with the grail and eventually destroying the latter, they would relieve the sisters of their arduous responsibility. In turn, that would enable Mathilde to finally show some affection for Clara and Hans. Clara doesn’t believe that Hans is her father, but she confronts her mother over her treatment of her. Let us just say that Mathilde is a gas-lighter, and her daughter gives the performance of a lifetime when she believes that her mother might be dying. But Clara has had years of this, and her suspicions rise again. She steals the decoy, and during the final scene, where she runs on water, she takes the chance to swap the grail.
When the commercial is all edited and done, Mathilde suffers a massive blow when the brand rejects it. Mathilde had made the advertisement without the brand’s permission after only speaking with an intern, and this had cost the organization dearly. Her boss tells her to shelve the commercial and bury the shoes. Later, when Clara confronts her about her health, Mathilde shows no remorse. In fact, she is petty enough to tear up her daughter’s resignation and fire her in return, as if she is to blame for the mess. According to her mother’s wishes, Clara promises never to see her again.
Who Is Arthur Schrodinger?
Arthur Schrodinger is Clara’s father, whom she tracks down after parting ways with her mother. She seeks out his help in destroying the holy grail, and together, the two of them try every trick known to man to succeed in their endeavor. Though they claim that their relationship is professional, it is evident that the father and daughter form a strong bond together, especially over the course of the 10 years that they spend traveling the world, looking for ways to destroy the artifact. The only thing they know for certain about the object, in the quagmire of superstitions surrounding the grail, is that it must be kept on the move, or it starts smelling bad. After trying everything under the sun, they decide to try one final thing: drinking from it. This would be breaking the most sacred rule of all: to not drink from it.
We are not sure whether it was the first time that the father and daughter were honest about their feelings for each other, but it certainly felt like that when Arthur told Clara that they could just abandon it all and live remotely somewhere. But not destroying the grail was out of the question, and Clara decided to drink from it anyway, despite her father’s offer to do so. When she does take a sip from it, she is transported to another place, and Simone, who is hearing this story, knows that it is when Clara meets Jesus. The moment Simone comes back, her head bursts open.
‘Mrs. Davis’ Episode 5 Ending Explained: What Was Arthur’s Grand Plan?
During one of the many experiments with the grail, Arthur discovered something. A rat had died after sipping from the grail, and the cat Apollo had gone on to eat it. The cat was 35 years old, a long age for an animal, signifying that the grail might harm its primary user but benefits its secondary one. When Clara died, Arthur rushed to get her liver, the detoxifying organ of the body, into someone else. That someone else had been Simone and Wiley, who had received their liver transplants from the same person, Clara.
However, Arthur has a change of heart. He realized that Simone and Wiley were just innocent children, and thus he decided to keep his obsession away from them by trying to get rid of the grail by himself. With the help of a marine biologist’s crew, Arthur tried feeding the holy grail to a whale in order to lose it forever. Contrary to what happened to others, the whale didn’t die but went a little crazy, destroying their ship, which is how Arthur was stranded on the island. When he was eventually rescued and introduced to the algorithm, he found his obsession rearing its head again. Simone and Wiley were probably the only people who could destroy the grail, but Arthur wasn’t sure whether he should risk their lives for his mission, and that is why he had returned to the island—to keep himself away from them. But now that they themselves had found their way to him, he let go of his doubts and wanted them to track the grail and destroy it. At the end of “Mrs. Davis” Episode 5, Arthur tells Simone and Wiley that the sperm whale has a tracker on it, so it is possible to find it and destroy the relic. Wiley scoffs at the idea, but Simone is ready for this new quest as she relives the story of Clara once again.
Final Thoughts
“Mrs. Davis” Episode 5 was the most tragicomic of the entire series so far. Clara really lived quite a sad life, but we are happy that she eventually found a parent’s love. Though we don’t understand why she drank from the grail if she knew about the rat that died after taking a sip from the bowl. That would mean that it wasn’t an experiment; she knew what she was doing. To think that she would have been alive if only her mother was not consumed by her job. As for Arthur Schrodinger, full props to the costume department because he is quite a handsome man, as we saw in the flashback. We really hope the grail is destroyed; otherwise, the suffering of these two good people would have been for nothing.
