The Reluctant Prophet - Mister Smith
Title: The Reluctant Prophet
Author: neko_chelle
Fandom: Jeremiah (TV series)
Spoilers: Basically the entire series run
Email: fivefootnothing [at] gmail.com
Notes: I lost the original, beta-ed version of this during a hard drive crisis, so this is completely cobbled together from my notes and previous drafts. I hope it suffices!
Rachel: Mister Smith?
Kurdy: It's a long story.
Smith: No it's not. It's a proper name. First name "Mister". Last name "Smith". Not a title. See? Max, seven seconds.
Jeremiah: Now, Rachel...
Rachel: Miss Rachel.
Kurdy: You see what you started?
Smith: Can I help it if I'm a trendsetter? -- Voices in the Dark
J. Michael Straczynski, recalling the inspiration for Jeremiah, is quoted in an interview as saying:
I sat down and said, what might make this interesting is to do what hasn't been done before, which is a post-apocalyptic show about hope. And that kind of show is like designing a submersible cat. The concepts don't really work that well together. But I thought, as with the Black Death, which hit in the medieval period, that they thought it was the end of the world. People were dying left, right and center. This was going to be it, but what followed the Black Death was the Renaissance. In fact, some historians said if you hadn't had the Black Death, which kind of cleared the field a bit, you wouldn't have had the Renaissance. So, I wanted to do a show where that event became a catalyst for a new beginning rather than an end.
The world that JMS ultimately created is bleak. Fifteen years before, a mysterious virus (dubbed the Big Death) wiped out the adult population, leaving only the children behind. Society is left in ruins, and people are now used to the idea that "might makes right." There's very little to hope for, and although there are people who wish to rebuild society, they are vastly outnumbered by those wishing to keep the status quo.
Jeremiah's first season spotlights the environment created from the destruction of society. The two main characters, Jeremiah and Kurdy, are basically on a road trip, and they encounter different bands of humanity on the way. Some, like the denizens of Thunder Mountain, work towards the day when they can re-establish America. Others only seek more power at the detriment of those weaker than them. Jeremiah himself is on a personal quest to discover the fate of his father, who may or may not have died along with the rest of the adults. When that quest ends at the end of the first season, the story opens up further.
With its setting fully established, the series explores much larger questions in season two. As Thunder Mountain gathers allies to form the Western Alliance, a formidable rival pushes in from the east to challenge for control of the fledgling country. With this new conflict comes a more desperate need for hope, and this hope comes from a very unlikely source: an unwilling prophet who claims to speak for God. Though he's labeled crazy from the start, Mister Smith has an inexplicable talent for being right.
"God says, 'You're late.'"
In the summer of 2004, the Lord of the Rings movies had reawakened my inner Sean Astin fangirl, and I'd seen on IMDB that he had a regular role on a show called Jeremiah. I didn't know much about that show, apart from the vaguest facts. It was a sci-fi series on Showtime, and didn't it star Dylan McKay and Theo Huxtable as leads? Not having pay cable, I was unable to watch the show during its initial run.
Coming into a television show after it's over can be problematic. Official sources might wipe off all existence of the work from websites and press releases. I rented the first season from Netflix and scoured the Internet for the second. Luckily, it wasn't that difficult to track down these episodes. It was mid-2004, and Jeremiah season 2 hadn't even completed airing on Showtime. I suspect fans started to share them online because the network (at the time) didn't have plans to air the remaining eight episodes. As of March 2007, there are still no concrete plans for releasing the elusive second season of Jeremiah on DVD.
You might assume that a property so poorly treated by its own network and studio might not be worth the time. You'd assume wrongly, though. Jeremiah is a solid post-apocalyptic series with fascinating characters and storylines. And the added touch of JMS doesn't hurt either. It's not Babylon 5, but his ideas are still all over it. The situation is comparable with Joss Whedon's TV works; Firefly is vastly different from the Buffyverse, but you can tell they've both sprung from Joss' head.
"Trust me. I'm very good at these things."
The first glimpse the viewer gets of Mister Smith is in the first episode of the second season, "Letters from the Other Side." The camera follows Kurdy, on the run from the enemy, and suddenly the view pulls up to focus on Smith for a brief moment. One of the things I love most about Sean Astin is his boyish face. At certain angles and with certain expressions, he completely looks like he's twelve years old. It's a perfect look for Smith, this young, wide-eyed innocence.
What strikes me after constant rewatching of this introductory scene is how odd the whole thing is, how staged it looks. There's very little randomness to it. An out-of-breath Kurdy collapses to the ground right in front of Smith. Smith's sitting on a log, in front of some strange-looking sticks or roots sprouting out of the ground. At first, I'd figured this was part of Smith's campfire, but this can't be the case. He has no fire. Those tangled pieces of wood are definitely a marker. In a later episode ("The Message"), Smith is specifically shown searching for a marker in the woods.
Smith doesn't react, which somehow feels wrong in this environment. This is the New World, where strangers are enemies until they've proven themselves otherwise. Remember Kurdy's first run-in with Jeremiah in "The Long Road"? Kurdy steals Jeremiah's fish, and he's subsequently beaten down and tied up. Compared to the chaos of that moment, Kurdy's meeting with Smith is positively serene. Smith, despite the fact that some big guy just burst through the trees behind him, doesn't even flinch. In fact, he's expecting Kurdy.
The first words out of his mouth were "God says." Most people don't assume to speak for God, and I was in the same boat as Kurdy when I figured the guy was kind of a loony. He needs to give Kurdy a message from God, and while Kurdy is skeptical at first, the message is too eerily specific to be a coincidence.
Stop running. You're not gonna help your friend by running to him. If you wanna help, you have to allow yourself to be given over to those who are chasing you.
Kurdy is understandably freaked out and attacks Smith, accusing him of working for the enemy. Smith denies it and vehemently sticks to his story. He's just there to deliver a message. When ominous helicopters glide overhead, Kurdy flees, leaving Smith alone in the forest. An intriguing introduction, and I was left with more questions about the character than answers.
His very first appearance suits the mysterious Mister Smith. He pops up right in the middle of a chase scene, interacts with one of the main characters, and just as easily slips out of the episode until later (when he pops up again very unexpectedly). It wasn't like any other character I'd seen Sean Astin play, and yet something about the way he portrayed Smith made the character instantly endearing. He might be a little nuts, but at least he's earnest. He seems to honestly believe in what he needs to share.
"I suppose anybody can look a little crazy in the right circumstances."
Markus: The guy hears voices, Kurdy.
Kurdy: Hey, that's not true. It's just one voice. (chuckling)
Markus: God! the scientific term for that is psychosis. Auditory hallucination. -- The Mysterious Mister Smith
Right from Smith's first appearance, viewers are never shown his true motives. Does he really hear God, or is this just an act? Is he a spy for the other side, or are there other forces at work in the New World besides Daniel?
There are brief scenes in early second season episodes that color the viewer's perception of the character. He totes around a pinhole camera, something that seems to be rare in the New World. When Kurdy asks what he takes pictures of, Smith nonchalantly answers: "Trees. Birds. Y'know, stuff." But later he's shown lurking in the shadows, taking candid photographs of the residents of Thunder Mountain and the preliminary meetings of the Western Alliance. When speaking to Kurdy, he claims to be from the same city as him (Portland, OR), and he knows enough about Portland to put Kurdy at ease. In fact, Smith does this with every person he meets. He also slips into different accents with complete ease, finding a common ground with strangers without rousing their suspicion.
But Kurdy, being Kurdy, grows suspicious, and eventually he (and viewers) learn the truth of why Smith sneaks photos of everyone he meets: he has no memory of his life before the Big Death. As Smith tells it, "Some part of my brain, it just doesn't wanna go there. So I...I learn from other people. I adopt their stories. That's how I get to have a home."
Smith has a deep love of history, of preserving the past for the future. This might stem from his personal lack of knowledge about himself. If he has a foundation to set his feet upon, then he has a place to belong. He collects information wherever he goes and puts them up on the walls of abandoned houses. He creates "memory rooms" for himself, all the easier to see and follow the stories of the vast amount of people he meets and the places he visits.
When Smith introduces Kurdy to the Tellers--a group dedicated to orally preserving the history of the country from the Big Death onwards--what he's really doing is showing how important the past is to those living in the present. He personally collects stories for himself because he believes that someday he'll figure out who he is, and the Tellers are doing the same thing for America. Without a solid foundation, without knowing what has gone on before, there's little chance that the country will find its way.
Smith is a traveler, never more than an arm's reach away from his knapsack. In fact, he's almost never seen without it hanging off his shoulders. He treats it like a security blanket, hugging it in times of great distress, and touching it clearly comforts him. The origins of the pack aren't explained in-series, but it's obviously very important to him. He carries all his worldly possessions in it, and can't quite accept the idea of settling down. Whether this is by choice or an act of God is a complete mystery.
"You're such a strange man. There's so much going on inside you, you know? Like a pool of water. So still on top, but if you dropped in a rock, it'd keep going down forever, never hit bottom." -- Libby, "Crossing Jordan"
There are many things about Smith that aren't quite "right". He can seem astoundingly naive and child-like at times. When wandering in a strip club, his gaze isn't on the dancer's bare chest because "the eyes are the best part." He winds a broken pocket watch because he knows, on absolute faith, that someday the world will change and the watch will start to tick. He prefers keeping secrets to sharing them. 'If I tell the truth, I'll get into trouble and other people will be angry at me.' It's basically a child's mindset.
Even after shooting and killing Libby (completely in self-defense), Smith doesn't say a single word about it to anyone. Not until the guilt grows so great does he confess everything to Kurdy. When the conflict between Daniel's forces and the Western Alliance escalates, Smith somehow comes to the conclusion that attempting to kill Sims would be the easiest way to solve the matter.
This is why Smith can be seen as the heart of the series. All of his emotions simmer so close to the surface, and often they're so intense that he can't bear them. Compare Smith's reaction to being shot with Jeremiah's. Jeremiah attempts the manly thing and tries to ignore his wound, insisting that he's well enough to head out on a mission deep in Daniel's territory. Smith's plaintive and child-like "It hurts..." isn't nearly as tough, but it's heartrending, the reaction of a man dealing not only with the physical ache in his arm, but also the wound in his soul. He killed another human being, and even though the New World is filled with these "eye for an eye" moments, Smith can't help but mourn.
He's overly defensive when people accuse him of being crazy and acts extremely excited when he believes he'll be teamed up with Kurdy. When it becomes obvious that he has prior knowledge of Libby's impending death, he's shown murmuring "It's not right" over and over while huddled in a junked car. The anguish is plain on his face and his body movements; knowing this information hurts him physically. He's so frustrated and angry that he ends up ranting to the skies about his fate as the Chosen.
Which brings up the God thing.
The biggest mystery about this character is whether or not he really hears the voice of God, and it never gets completely solved. He claims to be an atheist, up until the moment God began to speak with him. His predictions always come true, he tends to appear whenever he's needed (often with no visible signs of transport), and he himself certainly believes these messages are from God. His broken watch begins working as the strange attractors of the New World (Markus and Daniel, in this case) are pulling on the future and attempting to change it. And yet, there is no concrete proof one way or the other. The predictions and the watch could be sheer coincidence, or perhaps Smith is somehow psychic and is externally manifesting his innate power by blaming it all on God. The viewer has to rely on faith, which is kind of amusing because religious belief is all about faith.
If the Voice tells him to do something, Smith will do it regardless of his own personal safety. He walks right through the middle of a battleground to save Kurdy during the climactic battle at Valhalla Sector. He offers himself up as a hostage to the raiders in "Deus Ex Machina." And even when faced with Sims pointing a gun directly at his head, Smith--his face bloodied and bruised--still says, "You cannot hurt me." God's punishment for disobeying Him must be, in Smith's mind, much worse than imminent death.
Perhaps viewers should just keep this quote from Sherlock Holmes in mind: "It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." It might just be easier to think that Smith hears God than to think up of all the other explanations for the strangeness that often surrounds him.
"I'm gonna be there to make sure that history gets preserved for future generations. I'm like your scribe, dude."
Jeremiah: If you try to hug me, I will get a gun and shoot you where you stand.
Smith: Roger that. -- Interregnum (pt. 2)
Despite his overt attempts at kinship with everyone he meets, Smith is ultimately alone. There's just too much in his past that he's chosen to keep hidden from the other characters. It's unclear if this is a personal choice or if his "mission from God" prevents such relationships from happening. But something said (or written) by Frank, the editor and lone reporter for Milhaven's newspaper, might be able to shed some light on this. In "Interregnum", Frank is given a rare chance to observe the planning before the final confrontation with Daniel's forces. He watches Jeremiah, Kurdy, and Smith as they discuss tactics. For Smith, Frank writes:
The third, Smith, seems almost not to fit in with them, though he tries desperately to keep this from becoming obvious. As if there is something that stands between him and them. Between him and the world.
It's rare when a character is known more for his effect on others rather than for how his own story arc develops. Nevertheless, all the major characters in Jeremiah react to Smith in different ways. He's the touchstone for how all these people view faith. In "The Question," when Smith informs Jeremiah, Kurdy, and Markus that God is willing to perform a miracle for each of them as proof of His existence, it's fascinating to see how each character reacts. Jeremiah, his faith in God still shaken by the Big Death, refuses the offer outright. Markus and Kurdy humor Smith and follow him out into the woods, but Markus assumes that Smith only wanted him to confront Meaghan's death and move on with his life. Markus returns to the Mountain, assured that he has created his own type of "miracle." Even Kurdy leaves, his own faith not as strong as Smith's. Naturally, Smith stays and apparently sees his miracle performed since his once-paralyzed arm is now cured.
Even at the end of 15 episodes, one full season, Mister Smith remains a mysterious character. The glimpses of his real life are intriguing. For example, the audience isn't even told that he has a daughter until the final episode. He has a personal reason to hope for the future, apart from God forcing him to become his sockpuppet. Unfortunately, studio politics prevented JMS from continuing the series, so viewers will never know any more about Mister Smith. What has already been revealed to us, however, is an endearing and fascinating character, someone who instills a sense of optimism and purpose for the future of humanity. God is, after all, a pretty useful ally.
Author: neko_chelle
Fandom: Jeremiah (TV series)
Spoilers: Basically the entire series run
Email: fivefootnothing [at] gmail.com
Notes: I lost the original, beta-ed version of this during a hard drive crisis, so this is completely cobbled together from my notes and previous drafts. I hope it suffices!
Rachel: Mister Smith?
Kurdy: It's a long story.
Smith: No it's not. It's a proper name. First name "Mister". Last name "Smith". Not a title. See? Max, seven seconds.
Jeremiah: Now, Rachel...
Rachel: Miss Rachel.
Kurdy: You see what you started?
Smith: Can I help it if I'm a trendsetter? -- Voices in the Dark
J. Michael Straczynski, recalling the inspiration for Jeremiah, is quoted in an interview as saying:
I sat down and said, what might make this interesting is to do what hasn't been done before, which is a post-apocalyptic show about hope. And that kind of show is like designing a submersible cat. The concepts don't really work that well together. But I thought, as with the Black Death, which hit in the medieval period, that they thought it was the end of the world. People were dying left, right and center. This was going to be it, but what followed the Black Death was the Renaissance. In fact, some historians said if you hadn't had the Black Death, which kind of cleared the field a bit, you wouldn't have had the Renaissance. So, I wanted to do a show where that event became a catalyst for a new beginning rather than an end.
The world that JMS ultimately created is bleak. Fifteen years before, a mysterious virus (dubbed the Big Death) wiped out the adult population, leaving only the children behind. Society is left in ruins, and people are now used to the idea that "might makes right." There's very little to hope for, and although there are people who wish to rebuild society, they are vastly outnumbered by those wishing to keep the status quo.
Jeremiah's first season spotlights the environment created from the destruction of society. The two main characters, Jeremiah and Kurdy, are basically on a road trip, and they encounter different bands of humanity on the way. Some, like the denizens of Thunder Mountain, work towards the day when they can re-establish America. Others only seek more power at the detriment of those weaker than them. Jeremiah himself is on a personal quest to discover the fate of his father, who may or may not have died along with the rest of the adults. When that quest ends at the end of the first season, the story opens up further.
With its setting fully established, the series explores much larger questions in season two. As Thunder Mountain gathers allies to form the Western Alliance, a formidable rival pushes in from the east to challenge for control of the fledgling country. With this new conflict comes a more desperate need for hope, and this hope comes from a very unlikely source: an unwilling prophet who claims to speak for God. Though he's labeled crazy from the start, Mister Smith has an inexplicable talent for being right.
"God says, 'You're late.'"
In the summer of 2004, the Lord of the Rings movies had reawakened my inner Sean Astin fangirl, and I'd seen on IMDB that he had a regular role on a show called Jeremiah. I didn't know much about that show, apart from the vaguest facts. It was a sci-fi series on Showtime, and didn't it star Dylan McKay and Theo Huxtable as leads? Not having pay cable, I was unable to watch the show during its initial run.
Coming into a television show after it's over can be problematic. Official sources might wipe off all existence of the work from websites and press releases. I rented the first season from Netflix and scoured the Internet for the second. Luckily, it wasn't that difficult to track down these episodes. It was mid-2004, and Jeremiah season 2 hadn't even completed airing on Showtime. I suspect fans started to share them online because the network (at the time) didn't have plans to air the remaining eight episodes. As of March 2007, there are still no concrete plans for releasing the elusive second season of Jeremiah on DVD.
You might assume that a property so poorly treated by its own network and studio might not be worth the time. You'd assume wrongly, though. Jeremiah is a solid post-apocalyptic series with fascinating characters and storylines. And the added touch of JMS doesn't hurt either. It's not Babylon 5, but his ideas are still all over it. The situation is comparable with Joss Whedon's TV works; Firefly is vastly different from the Buffyverse, but you can tell they've both sprung from Joss' head.
"Trust me. I'm very good at these things."
The first glimpse the viewer gets of Mister Smith is in the first episode of the second season, "Letters from the Other Side." The camera follows Kurdy, on the run from the enemy, and suddenly the view pulls up to focus on Smith for a brief moment. One of the things I love most about Sean Astin is his boyish face. At certain angles and with certain expressions, he completely looks like he's twelve years old. It's a perfect look for Smith, this young, wide-eyed innocence.
What strikes me after constant rewatching of this introductory scene is how odd the whole thing is, how staged it looks. There's very little randomness to it. An out-of-breath Kurdy collapses to the ground right in front of Smith. Smith's sitting on a log, in front of some strange-looking sticks or roots sprouting out of the ground. At first, I'd figured this was part of Smith's campfire, but this can't be the case. He has no fire. Those tangled pieces of wood are definitely a marker. In a later episode ("The Message"), Smith is specifically shown searching for a marker in the woods.
Smith doesn't react, which somehow feels wrong in this environment. This is the New World, where strangers are enemies until they've proven themselves otherwise. Remember Kurdy's first run-in with Jeremiah in "The Long Road"? Kurdy steals Jeremiah's fish, and he's subsequently beaten down and tied up. Compared to the chaos of that moment, Kurdy's meeting with Smith is positively serene. Smith, despite the fact that some big guy just burst through the trees behind him, doesn't even flinch. In fact, he's expecting Kurdy.
The first words out of his mouth were "God says." Most people don't assume to speak for God, and I was in the same boat as Kurdy when I figured the guy was kind of a loony. He needs to give Kurdy a message from God, and while Kurdy is skeptical at first, the message is too eerily specific to be a coincidence.
Stop running. You're not gonna help your friend by running to him. If you wanna help, you have to allow yourself to be given over to those who are chasing you.
Kurdy is understandably freaked out and attacks Smith, accusing him of working for the enemy. Smith denies it and vehemently sticks to his story. He's just there to deliver a message. When ominous helicopters glide overhead, Kurdy flees, leaving Smith alone in the forest. An intriguing introduction, and I was left with more questions about the character than answers.
His very first appearance suits the mysterious Mister Smith. He pops up right in the middle of a chase scene, interacts with one of the main characters, and just as easily slips out of the episode until later (when he pops up again very unexpectedly). It wasn't like any other character I'd seen Sean Astin play, and yet something about the way he portrayed Smith made the character instantly endearing. He might be a little nuts, but at least he's earnest. He seems to honestly believe in what he needs to share.
"I suppose anybody can look a little crazy in the right circumstances."
Markus: The guy hears voices, Kurdy.
Kurdy: Hey, that's not true. It's just one voice. (chuckling)
Markus: God! the scientific term for that is psychosis. Auditory hallucination. -- The Mysterious Mister Smith
Right from Smith's first appearance, viewers are never shown his true motives. Does he really hear God, or is this just an act? Is he a spy for the other side, or are there other forces at work in the New World besides Daniel?
There are brief scenes in early second season episodes that color the viewer's perception of the character. He totes around a pinhole camera, something that seems to be rare in the New World. When Kurdy asks what he takes pictures of, Smith nonchalantly answers: "Trees. Birds. Y'know, stuff." But later he's shown lurking in the shadows, taking candid photographs of the residents of Thunder Mountain and the preliminary meetings of the Western Alliance. When speaking to Kurdy, he claims to be from the same city as him (Portland, OR), and he knows enough about Portland to put Kurdy at ease. In fact, Smith does this with every person he meets. He also slips into different accents with complete ease, finding a common ground with strangers without rousing their suspicion.
But Kurdy, being Kurdy, grows suspicious, and eventually he (and viewers) learn the truth of why Smith sneaks photos of everyone he meets: he has no memory of his life before the Big Death. As Smith tells it, "Some part of my brain, it just doesn't wanna go there. So I...I learn from other people. I adopt their stories. That's how I get to have a home."
Smith has a deep love of history, of preserving the past for the future. This might stem from his personal lack of knowledge about himself. If he has a foundation to set his feet upon, then he has a place to belong. He collects information wherever he goes and puts them up on the walls of abandoned houses. He creates "memory rooms" for himself, all the easier to see and follow the stories of the vast amount of people he meets and the places he visits.
When Smith introduces Kurdy to the Tellers--a group dedicated to orally preserving the history of the country from the Big Death onwards--what he's really doing is showing how important the past is to those living in the present. He personally collects stories for himself because he believes that someday he'll figure out who he is, and the Tellers are doing the same thing for America. Without a solid foundation, without knowing what has gone on before, there's little chance that the country will find its way.
Smith is a traveler, never more than an arm's reach away from his knapsack. In fact, he's almost never seen without it hanging off his shoulders. He treats it like a security blanket, hugging it in times of great distress, and touching it clearly comforts him. The origins of the pack aren't explained in-series, but it's obviously very important to him. He carries all his worldly possessions in it, and can't quite accept the idea of settling down. Whether this is by choice or an act of God is a complete mystery.
"You're such a strange man. There's so much going on inside you, you know? Like a pool of water. So still on top, but if you dropped in a rock, it'd keep going down forever, never hit bottom." -- Libby, "Crossing Jordan"
There are many things about Smith that aren't quite "right". He can seem astoundingly naive and child-like at times. When wandering in a strip club, his gaze isn't on the dancer's bare chest because "the eyes are the best part." He winds a broken pocket watch because he knows, on absolute faith, that someday the world will change and the watch will start to tick. He prefers keeping secrets to sharing them. 'If I tell the truth, I'll get into trouble and other people will be angry at me.' It's basically a child's mindset.
Even after shooting and killing Libby (completely in self-defense), Smith doesn't say a single word about it to anyone. Not until the guilt grows so great does he confess everything to Kurdy. When the conflict between Daniel's forces and the Western Alliance escalates, Smith somehow comes to the conclusion that attempting to kill Sims would be the easiest way to solve the matter.
This is why Smith can be seen as the heart of the series. All of his emotions simmer so close to the surface, and often they're so intense that he can't bear them. Compare Smith's reaction to being shot with Jeremiah's. Jeremiah attempts the manly thing and tries to ignore his wound, insisting that he's well enough to head out on a mission deep in Daniel's territory. Smith's plaintive and child-like "It hurts..." isn't nearly as tough, but it's heartrending, the reaction of a man dealing not only with the physical ache in his arm, but also the wound in his soul. He killed another human being, and even though the New World is filled with these "eye for an eye" moments, Smith can't help but mourn.
He's overly defensive when people accuse him of being crazy and acts extremely excited when he believes he'll be teamed up with Kurdy. When it becomes obvious that he has prior knowledge of Libby's impending death, he's shown murmuring "It's not right" over and over while huddled in a junked car. The anguish is plain on his face and his body movements; knowing this information hurts him physically. He's so frustrated and angry that he ends up ranting to the skies about his fate as the Chosen.
Which brings up the God thing.
The biggest mystery about this character is whether or not he really hears the voice of God, and it never gets completely solved. He claims to be an atheist, up until the moment God began to speak with him. His predictions always come true, he tends to appear whenever he's needed (often with no visible signs of transport), and he himself certainly believes these messages are from God. His broken watch begins working as the strange attractors of the New World (Markus and Daniel, in this case) are pulling on the future and attempting to change it. And yet, there is no concrete proof one way or the other. The predictions and the watch could be sheer coincidence, or perhaps Smith is somehow psychic and is externally manifesting his innate power by blaming it all on God. The viewer has to rely on faith, which is kind of amusing because religious belief is all about faith.
If the Voice tells him to do something, Smith will do it regardless of his own personal safety. He walks right through the middle of a battleground to save Kurdy during the climactic battle at Valhalla Sector. He offers himself up as a hostage to the raiders in "Deus Ex Machina." And even when faced with Sims pointing a gun directly at his head, Smith--his face bloodied and bruised--still says, "You cannot hurt me." God's punishment for disobeying Him must be, in Smith's mind, much worse than imminent death.
Perhaps viewers should just keep this quote from Sherlock Holmes in mind: "It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." It might just be easier to think that Smith hears God than to think up of all the other explanations for the strangeness that often surrounds him.
"I'm gonna be there to make sure that history gets preserved for future generations. I'm like your scribe, dude."
Jeremiah: If you try to hug me, I will get a gun and shoot you where you stand.
Smith: Roger that. -- Interregnum (pt. 2)
Despite his overt attempts at kinship with everyone he meets, Smith is ultimately alone. There's just too much in his past that he's chosen to keep hidden from the other characters. It's unclear if this is a personal choice or if his "mission from God" prevents such relationships from happening. But something said (or written) by Frank, the editor and lone reporter for Milhaven's newspaper, might be able to shed some light on this. In "Interregnum", Frank is given a rare chance to observe the planning before the final confrontation with Daniel's forces. He watches Jeremiah, Kurdy, and Smith as they discuss tactics. For Smith, Frank writes:
The third, Smith, seems almost not to fit in with them, though he tries desperately to keep this from becoming obvious. As if there is something that stands between him and them. Between him and the world.
It's rare when a character is known more for his effect on others rather than for how his own story arc develops. Nevertheless, all the major characters in Jeremiah react to Smith in different ways. He's the touchstone for how all these people view faith. In "The Question," when Smith informs Jeremiah, Kurdy, and Markus that God is willing to perform a miracle for each of them as proof of His existence, it's fascinating to see how each character reacts. Jeremiah, his faith in God still shaken by the Big Death, refuses the offer outright. Markus and Kurdy humor Smith and follow him out into the woods, but Markus assumes that Smith only wanted him to confront Meaghan's death and move on with his life. Markus returns to the Mountain, assured that he has created his own type of "miracle." Even Kurdy leaves, his own faith not as strong as Smith's. Naturally, Smith stays and apparently sees his miracle performed since his once-paralyzed arm is now cured.
Even at the end of 15 episodes, one full season, Mister Smith remains a mysterious character. The glimpses of his real life are intriguing. For example, the audience isn't even told that he has a daughter until the final episode. He has a personal reason to hope for the future, apart from God forcing him to become his sockpuppet. Unfortunately, studio politics prevented JMS from continuing the series, so viewers will never know any more about Mister Smith. What has already been revealed to us, however, is an endearing and fascinating character, someone who instills a sense of optimism and purpose for the future of humanity. God is, after all, a pretty useful ally.