“The world will always try to tear us down. And when they do, we smile. Because we know who we are.”
This straightforward, lovely assertion mentioned by Mo’s mom Yusra (Farah Bsieso), lies on the coronary heart of the second and closing season of Mo, comic Mohammed Amer’s Peabody-winning, semi-autobiographical sequence. It speaks to a way of resilience, humanity, and pleasure in Palestinians, in immigrants, in refugees and displaced individuals, one which displays the general tone of Amer’s distinctive, poignant, and hilarious Netflix sequence, written with Ramy Youssef and directed by Solvan “Slick” Naim.
One in all 2022’s most necessary TV reveals, Mo examines Amer’s personal experiences as a Palestinian refugee dwelling in Houston, Texas, the institutional dehumanisation underlying the American immigration system, and the enduring sense of uncertainty for stateless individuals. Mo‘s second season comes at a unstable time for Palestinians and undocumented immigrants alike, with these in energy implementing heartless, brutal choices from disengaged, lofty places of work that influence actual individuals. By some means, past all perception, amid a way of transience and worry, of stacked odds and ranging from scratch, Mo finds levity, surrealism, and private solidarity at the hours of darkness, whereas being a genuinely humorous and transferring present.
What’s Mo Season 2 about?
Mo Amer in “Mo.”
Credit score: Netflix
Based mostly on Amer’s personal life, Season 1 adopted Mo and his household’s journey for asylum within the U.S., via delayed hearings, frazzled immigration legal professionals, and bureaucratic nightmares. This season, we choose up with Mo caught in Mexico, with no passport and no solution to get residence, a story plight that enables Mo to showcase a broader, grim actuality for immigrants trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.
Season 2 begins six months after Mo unintentionally deported himself, the place we discover our protagonist incomes a dwelling in Mexico Metropolis working a number of jobs: particularly promoting his personal specialty falafel tacos and wrestling as a luchador underneath the moniker The Palestinian Bear. He is making an attempt to safe a laissez-passer to legally get again into the U.S. in time for the household’s delayed asylum listening to in every week’s time. And he is “borderline depressed,” watching telenovelas and leaving unanswered messages on his ex Maria’s (Teresa Ruiz) cellphone.
A really actual second for Mo.
Credit score: Eddy Chen / Netflix
Mo’s wrestle to get again to the U.S. is a well timed depiction, taking him via a heartless embassy, a harmful and determined border crossing, and a horrific detention facility on the Texan border that mirrors the very actual, inhumane situations and discriminatory and racist remedy inside these amenities. In episode 2, the present makes plain each the horrendous state of detention centres and the unbelievably sturdy sense of camaraderie between the individuals detained there — a sequence of Mo capturing baskets with a shitty area blanket to Maxo Kream’s “Meet Again” makes for an unfathomably mild second.
And that is all earlier than he learns life has gone on again residence; his greatest good friend Nick (Tobe Nwigwe) has settled down into household life, his brother Sameer (Omar Elba) is navigating a potential autism analysis, and the love of his life is seeing another person. Not simply another person, both; Maria’s courting an Israeli-American chef referred to as Man (a superbly infuriating Simon Rex) whose fancy fusion restaurant with ungarnished hummus cuts Mo’s pleasure to the core. The phrases “pillaging my heritage!” come out swinging. Mo’s quest to course of all this makes for each comedy gold and heartbreaking moments of drama.
Mo is a well timed story of wrestle that wields comedy as a mirror
Farah Bsieso and Mo Amer in “Mo.”
Credit score: Eddy Chen / Netflix
With Mo caught stateless in Mexico, the second season pushes its signature exploration of cultural identification even additional, asking larger questions of recent America and the wrestle of being an undocumented immigrant. As Meera Navlakha wrote for Mashable of Season 1, “The series confidently and acutely presents a reality for so many in America, who have spent decades in a country that they cannot legally define as their own. Representation, in Mo, is far from a mere buzzword. It informs everything that show has accomplished.”
Mo tries to course of his sense of disconnection and craving for stability again in Houston — and a mid-season stunning twist will throw that every one out the window. Mo struggles with what he expects for his life, and his frustration of regularly having to begin at sq. one, saved afloat by his enduring pleasure and sense of humour. We’re consistently rooting for Mo, regardless of the towering pile of people that appear deadset towards his success at greatest, towards his personhood at worst.
Mashable Prime Tales
Matt Rife as embassy employee Jeff in “Mo.”
Credit score: Netflix
In Season 2, the present makes some extent of showcasing the anxious imbalance of energy between individuals via Mo’s experiences; Mo’s destiny usually lies within the palms of People who cruelly wave their affect in his face, from moustachioed embassy workers to gruff detention centre guards and problematic U.S. ambassadors with racist Lawrence of Arabia fantasies. Mo’s resilient bravado barely wavers, his sense of autonomy eliminated, and his comprehensible rage rising, at one level describing the sensation as having clipped wings.
Whereas Mo endures risk and humiliation by the hands of American authorities all through the sequence, his sense of identification stays entire — and albeit, his sense of humour retains him alive. Irrespective of the seriousness of his state of affairs, Mo all the time manages to emotionally join with the opposite individuals sharing his plight. “I speak three languages and I don’t have the words to describe your situation,” Mo tells a younger boy in a midway home, awaiting a border crossing. Mo even valiantly tries to attach man-to-man with the jaded immigration officer on the Texas border, and it is this unwavering sense of humanity that makes Mo who he’s.
Mo Season 2 performs with fantasy to convey actual anxieties
Mo Amer in “Mo.”
Credit score: Eddy Chen / Netflix
This season, Mo’s reference to non secular steerage from his ancestors is the first throughline, with the protagonist piecing collectively weird indicators that may make sense later within the sequence.
Notably greater than Season 1, this season performs with fantasy and surrealism, together with a tacky telenovela dream sequence, an overtly Shawshank imaginative and prescient in detention, a Lucha libre second with Maria’s new boyfriend, and an imagined fight state of affairs in Houston suburbia, to offer levity at occasions, depth in others, to Mo’s actual plight. Many of those moments expose Mo’s sense of grief and disconnection together with his household, the breakdown of his relationship, and his frustration with the immigration system. They usually’re very humorous. Episode 3’s fantasy courtroom outburst feels effectively overdue, and sees Amer in considered one of his greatest scenes, evoking Mo’s internalised frustration to perfection — the phrases “and YOOOOU,” have by no means been higher delivered.
Again in actuality, there are hilarious nods to the sheer, surreal folly of bureaucratic processes — in episode 2, throughout Mo’s on-line listening to on a Google Meet-like video name, the decide actually mutes Mo as he describes the horrific situations within the detention facility, with livid gestures and all of the inappropriate animated thumbs ups and balloons many endured in severe video calls. In truth, the flexibility of Mo, his household, and his associates to seek out levity after life-threatening, humiliating moments is nothing wanting miraculous. Some are uncomfortably hilarious — when Mo’s associates are suggesting his ankle monitor get “bedazzled” — whereas others are moments of pure resistance — when Mo’s household laughs loudly in the lounge a few really terrifying second at gunpoint.
Mo reaches a deeply transferring, deliberately infuriating conclusion
One of many episodes of the 12 months.
Credit score: Netflix
With out spoiling the storyline, Mo involves a detailed with among the best episodes of tv you are prone to see this 12 months. The present finishes with a deeply transferring, private, and well timed episode solely set inside Palestine, referring to all-too-real struggles for Mo’s household enduring the knife’s edge nervousness of Israeli occupation, whereas permitting our protagonist a way of pleasure and deep connection together with his Palestinian roots. “Look at the artistry of Palestinians. This is all resistance. It’s struggle and pain. They just want to be free of this war,” Yusra says because the household drives previous the West Financial institution wall. It is unattainable to not really feel the burden of this second, watching this in 2025.
Mo’s spirit nears breaking level this season, and Amer’s efficiency is nothing wanting beautiful and uncooked, transferring Mo via great conversations together with his uncle, aunts, and cousins, and thru to one of many sequence’ most brutal moments, scored to Nina Simone’s “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free” — it is worthy of being one of many 12 months’s defining TV photos. Greater than something, the present provokes deep thought for very actual conditions.
Farah Bsieso and Cherien Dabis in “Mo.”
Credit score: Eddy Chen / Netflix
Maybe one of the vital necessary scenes within the sequence belongs to Mo’s mom Yusra and sister Nadia (Cherien Dabis) within the sequence’ penultimate episode. The pair focus on the emotional influence and emotions of accountability towards monitoring information out of Palestine; Yusra is glued to stories of settlers attacking Palestinian houses and IDF violence in Ramallah, Yatta, Jenin, Nablus, and Al Khalil, whereas Nadia expresses a have to dwell presently too.
“We owe it to them by watching at least,” Yusra says. “And we owe it to them to live too,” replies Nadia. “It’s on us to pass who we are to our kids. This is how they’re not going to erase us. No matter how hard they try. We’re more than our pain and suffering, Mom. You wouldn’t know that watching this news.” It is a essential, brilliantly written and acted scene, and permits a second of nuance for the pair’s completely different views.
In the end, the present’s coronary heart and core messaging concerning the resilience of Palestinian individuals comes from Mo’s mom, whose quote started this evaluate and stays the clearest, most poignant message of the sequence. Yusra reminds her son that the world will attempt to tear them down, “And once they do, we smile. As a result of we all know who we’re.”
In two seasons of simply 16 episodes, Mo manages to comprehensively discover identification and inhumane coverage inside the experiences of a Palestinian household in search of asylum in fashionable America, whereas sustaining its signature sense of levity and hilarious perspective. That is pure excellence in tv, and a must-watch by all definitions of the time period. That it is Mo’s closing season is a heartbreak we’ll should dwell with.
Mo Season 2 is streaming on Netflix from Jan 30.
