“The world will all the time attempt to tear us down. And after they do, we smile. As a result of we all know who we’re.”
This easy, stunning assertion mentioned by Mo’s mom Yusra (Farah Bsieso), lies on the coronary heart of the second and ultimate 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 folks, 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.
Considered one of 2022’s most vital TV exhibits, Mo examines Amer’s personal experiences as a Palestinian refugee residing in Houston, Texas, the institutional dehumanisation underlying the American immigration system, and the enduring sense of uncertainty for stateless folks. Mo‘s second season comes at a risky time for Palestinians and undocumented immigrants alike, with these in energy implementing heartless, brutal choices from disengaged, lofty workplaces that influence actual folks. Someway, past all perception, amid a way of transience and concern, of stacked odds and ranging from scratch, Mo finds levity, surrealism, and private solidarity at midnight, whereas being a genuinely humorous and shifting 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., by means of delayed hearings, frazzled immigration legal professionals, and bureaucratic nightmares. This season, we choose up with Mo caught in Mexico, with no passport and no technique to get dwelling, a story plight that permits Mo to showcase a broader, grim actuality for immigrants trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.
Season 2 begins six months after Mo by chance deported himself, the place we discover our protagonist incomes a residing in Mexico Metropolis working a number of jobs: particularly promoting his personal specialty falafel tacos and wrestling as a luchador below the moniker The Palestinian Bear. He is attempting to safe a laissez-passer to legally get again into the U.S. in time for the household’s delayed asylum listening to in per week’s time. And he is “borderline depressed,” watching telenovelas and leaving unanswered messages on his ex Maria’s (Teresa Ruiz) telephone.
A really actual second for Mo.
Credit score: Eddy Chen / Netflix
Mo’s battle to get again to the U.S. is a well timed depiction, taking him by means of 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 therapy 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 folks detained there — a sequence of Mo capturing baskets with a shitty house blanket to Maxo Kream’s “Meet Once more” makes for an unfathomably mild second.
And that is all earlier than he learns life has gone on again dwelling; his greatest buddy Nick (Tobe Nwigwe) has settled down into household life, his brother Sameer (Omar Elba) is navigating a attainable autism prognosis, and the love of his life is seeing another person. Not simply another person, both; Maria’s courting an Israeli-American chef known 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 battle 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 greater questions of contemporary America and the battle of being an undocumented immigrant. As Meera Navlakha wrote for Mashable of Season 1, “The sequence confidently and acutely presents a actuality for therefore many in America, who’ve spent a long time in a rustic that they can not legally outline as their very own. Illustration, in Mo, is way from a mere buzzword. It informs all the things that present has achieved.”
Mo tries to course of his sense of disconnection and craving for stability again in Houston — and a mid-season surprising 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 start out at sq. one, stored afloat by his enduring pleasure and sense of humour. We’re continuously rooting for Mo, regardless of the towering pile of people that appear deadset in opposition to his success at greatest, in opposition to his personhood at worst.
Mashable High 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 folks by means of Mo’s experiences; Mo’s destiny typically lies within the fingers of Individuals 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 menace and humiliation by the hands of American authorities all through the sequence, his sense of identification stays entire — and admittedly, his sense of humour retains him alive. Regardless of the seriousness of his scenario, Mo all the time manages to emotionally join with the opposite folks sharing his plight. “I converse three languages and I haven’t got the phrases to explain your scenario,” 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 religious steering from his ancestors is the first throughline, with the protagonist piecing collectively weird indicators that can 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 scenario in Houston suburbia, to offer levity at instances, depth in others, to Mo’s actual plight. Many of those moments expose Mo’s sense of grief and disconnection along 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 one in every 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 choose 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. The truth is, the power of Mo, his household, and his associates to seek out levity after life-threatening, humiliating moments is nothing in need of 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 couple of really terrifying second at gunpoint.
Mo reaches a deeply shifting, deliberately infuriating conclusion
One of many episodes of the 12 months.
Credit score: Netflix
With out spoiling the storyline, Mo involves an in depth with among the finest episodes of tv you are prone to see this 12 months. The present finishes with a deeply shifting, private, and well timed episode fully 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 along with his Palestinian roots. “Take a look at the artistry of Palestinians. That is all resistance. It is battle and ache. They only wish to be freed from this battle,” Yusra says because the household drives previous the West Financial institution wall. It is inconceivable 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 in need of beautiful and uncooked, shifting Mo by means of great conversations along with his uncle, aunts, and cousins, and thru to one of many sequence’ most brutal moments, scored to Nina Simone’s “I Want I Knew How It Would Really feel to Be Free” — it is worthy of being one of many 12 months’s defining TV photographs. 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 probably the most vital 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 duty towards monitoring information out of Palestine; Yusra is glued to experiences 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 a minimum of,” Yusra says. “And we owe it to them to dwell too,” replies Nadia. “It is on us to move who we’re to our children. That is how they don’t seem to be going to erase us. Regardless of how exhausting they struggle. We’re greater than our ache and struggling, Mother. You would not know that watching this information.” It is a essential, brilliantly written and acted scene, and permits a second of nuance for the pair’s completely different views.
Finally, the present’s coronary heart and core messaging in regards to the resilience of Palestinian folks comes from Mo’s mom, whose quote started this evaluation and stays the clearest, most poignant message of the sequence. Yusra reminds her son that the world will attempt to tear them down, “And after 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 ultimate season is a heartbreak we’ll need to dwell with.
Mo Season 2 is streaming on Netflix from Jan 30.
