“Mo” ’s Urgent, Uneven Homecoming

The archetypal occurrence of Netflix’s larkish dramedy “Mo” reveals precisely what its rubric character, Mohammed Najjar, is susceptible of. He’s camped retired successful a parking lot, peddling “authentic bootlegs”—faux decorator sunglasses, Rolex watches, Gucci belts—from the trunk of his 1970 Ford Torino erstwhile an older achromatic antheral with a cowboy chapeau and a pained gait passes by. Despite their outward differences, he’s an casual people for Mo, a heavyset Palestinian dude who tin commiserate astir backmost symptom successful a Texas twang that wasn’t determination a fewer seconds ago. At first, the older antheral dismisses the Yeezy foam slides Mo has successful caput for him arsenic “alien shoes”—and yet, moments later, helium walks distant a blessed customer, having purchased not conscionable the Yeezys but besides a fake Chanel purse for his wife.

Mo knows helium tin cajole, disarm, persuade. His speedy reasoning has been an plus to his household since his childhood: 1 memorable flashback to their flight from Kuwait during the Gulf War shows the young Mo distracting the guards astatine a borderline crossing with crocodile tears and a Ninja Turtle figurine. The Najjars yet settled successful Houston, wherever Mo has assimilated successful his ain way. He speaks 3 languages—English, Arabic, and Spanish—and, successful the archetypal season, helium has a Mexican American girlfriend, Maria (Teresa Ruiz), whom helium teaches rude words successful his autochthonal tongue. But the top encumbrance successful his life—his asylum case, which has been pending for much than 2 decades, preventing him from uncovering ineligible enactment and from visiting loved ones abroad—can’t beryllium resolved done a speech oregon a show of humanity. Not adjacent Mo tin charm a wall.

Season 1 of “Mo” débuted successful the summertime of 2022, borrowing freely from the biography and household past of its co-creator and star, the comic Mohammed Amer. (Like the Najjars, the Amers were repeatedly displaced, moving from Palestine to Kuwait, past from Kuwait to the U.S.; similar the fictional Mo, Amer utilized to merchantability knockoffs.) Three years later, arsenic the show’s 2nd and last play drops, the bid feels adjacent timelier. Season 2 begins successful 2022 and concludes conscionable earlier October 7th and the consequent devastation of Gaza—perhaps excessively dense a taxable for this amusement to instrumentality connected directly. But the 8 caller episodes, which were written successful 2023 and filmed successful 2024, implicitly code the helplessness and the heartbreak experienced by the Palestinian diaspora watching calamity unfold connected the different broadside of the world.

The Peabody Award-winning “Mo” has overmuch successful communal with different caller comedies astir migrant families, specified arsenic the rebooted “One Day astatine a Time” and “Ramy,” the brainchild of “Mo” ’s co-creator, Ramy Youssef. But the unifying taxable of this bid is statelessness. The masterstroke of the archetypal play was to representation specified an antithetic governmental information onto the acquainted sitcom trope of a thirtysomething afflicted by arrested development. Because Mo himself has been enactment connected hold, he’s enactment everything other connected hold. He won’t wed Maria aft years of dating—ostensibly holding retired until she gives up her ain religion to person to Islam, which helium knows she won’t do. And he’s loath to upset his widowed mother, Yusra (Farah Bsieso), with whom helium inactive lives, hiding from her not conscionable his haram tattoo but besides the coiled from a stray slug that grazed him during a market tally gone awry. (She yet discovers both—and, naturally, is much upset astir the tattoo.) Maybe Mo clings to his practice and to the thought of a mislaid homeland truthful tightly successful portion due to the fact that he’s been denied citizenship and belonging successful the state wherever he’s spent astir of his life. Whatever the case, helium tin beryllium a existent jerk to radical helium believes to beryllium taste sellouts, including his sister, Nadia (Cherien Dabis), who joined a achromatic man—even if some Nadia and her young son, Osama, are amended versed successful the Arabic connection and successful Islamic past than Mo is.

The effect is funny, kinetic, and unpredictable; it’s besides a deft quality survey that reveals however the creaky bureaucracy of the asylum strategy tin warp adjacent good-natured men by deferring their hopes and shrinking their possibilities. But Mo is simply a slippery-enough rascal that helium can, and does, occasionally deflect immoderate of his ain flaws onto his situation. Part of the show’s greatness is that you can’t archer wherever the idiosyncratic stops and the governmental begins.

Season 1 was cohesive successful its imaginativeness of Mo’s beingness and of the mode it fell apart—culminating, aft a bid of missteps, successful a nightmare script that leaves him stranded connected the incorrect broadside of the Mexican border, incapable to instrumentality to the U.S. Season 2, directed successful portion by Amer himself, is simply a sillier, sadder, and shaggier follow-up. Mo finds his mode home, astatine a cost. With small to lose, helium lets his disguise of affability gaffe much easily, and his outbursts marque his beingness adjacent much difficult. He takes it hard that Maria has moved on—at his urging—with an Israeli cook (Simon Rex) whom helium suspects of culinary appropriation, a complaint the amusement itself can’t rather determine however earnestly to take. And, adjacent aft Mo receives a enactment licence done a Kafkaesque administrative saga, helium becomes the biggest obstacle to the household concern that arises from the opportunity. Stasis, it seems, is inactive wherever he’s astir comfortable.

The caller play finds Mo striving toward growth: moving retired of his mom’s house, learning to enactment alongside his mildly autistic brother, Sameer (Omar Elba). It’s pulled successful little compelling directions by the wide caricatures who present populate the edges of the story, including a marriage-crazed blonde hottie Mo humors until helium can’t, and a precocious green-card-approved person whose weapon postulation seems considerably much expansive than his English-language vocabulary. But if the wit doesn’t onshore arsenic solidly arsenic before, the much superior subplots, centered connected Mo’s feelings of disconnection from his roots and Yusra’s compulsive doomscrolling astir unit successful her autochthonal Palestine, transportation the show. These arcs converge, to moving effect, successful the bid finale, erstwhile the Najjars yet get to sojourn the West Bank—a long-awaited homecoming for Yusra, and the archetypal clip Mo has laid eyes connected his ancestral land. On arrival, they’re confronted with their relatives’ regular humiliations nether Israeli occupation, the privations and genuine information that seldom made headlines during “peacetime.” And yet, “Mo” ne'er loses show of Nadia’s assertion that “we’re much than our symptom and suffering.” When Yusra suggests that they beryllium it to their fellow-Palestinians to dwell exclusively connected specified horrors, her girl offers a gentle rebuttal: “We beryllium it to them to live, too.” ♦