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“The world will always try to tear us down. And when they do, we smile. Because we know who we are.”
This simple, beautiful statement said by Mo’s mother Yusra (Farah Bsieso), lies at the heart of the second and final season of Mo, comedian Mohammed Amer’s Peabody-winning, semi-autobiographical series. It speaks to a sense of resilience, humanity, and pride in Palestinians, in immigrants, in refugees and displaced people, one that reflects the overall tone of Amer’s exceptional, poignant, and hilarious Netflix series, written with Ramy Youssef and directed by Solvan “Slick” Naim.
One of 2022’s most important TV shows, Mo examines Amer’s own experiences as a Palestinian refugee living in Houston, Texas, the institutional dehumanisation underlying the American immigration system, and the enduring sense of uncertainty for stateless people. Mo‘s second season comes at a volatile time for Palestinians and undocumented immigrants alike, with those in power enforcing heartless, brutal decisions from disengaged, lofty offices that impact real people. Somehow, beyond all belief, amid a sense of transience and fear, of stacked odds and starting from scratch, Mo finds levity, surrealism, and personal solidarity in the dark, while being a genuinely funny and moving show.
What is Mo Season 2 about?
Credit: Netflix
Based on Amer’s own life, Season 1 followed Mo and his family’s journey for asylum in the U.S., through delayed hearings, frazzled immigration lawyers, and bureaucratic nightmares. This season, we pick up with Mo stuck in Mexico, with no passport and no way to get home, a narrative plight that allows Mo to showcase a broader, grim reality for immigrants attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.
Season 2 begins six months after Mo accidentally deported himself, where we find our protagonist earning a living in Mexico City working multiple jobs: namely selling his own specialty falafel tacos and wrestling as a luchador under the moniker The Palestinian Bear. He’s trying to secure a laissez-passer to legally get back into the U.S. in time for the family’s delayed asylum hearing in a week’s time. And he’s “borderline depressed,” watching telenovelas and leaving unanswered messages on his ex Maria’s (Teresa Ruiz) phone.
Credit: Eddy Chen / Netflix
Mo’s struggle to get back to the U.S. is a timely depiction, taking him through a heartless embassy, a dangerous and desperate border crossing, and a horrific detention facility on the Texan border that mirrors the very real, inhumane conditions and discriminatory and racist treatment within these facilities. In episode 2, the show makes plain both the horrendous state of detention centres and the unbelievably strong sense of camaraderie between the people detained there — a sequence of Mo shooting baskets with a shitty space blanket to Maxo Kream’s “Meet Again” makes for an unfathomably light moment.
And that’s all before he learns life has gone on back home; his best friend Nick (Tobe Nwigwe) has settled down into family life, his brother Sameer (Omar Elba) is navigating a possible autism diagnosis, and the love of his life is seeing someone else. Not just someone else, either; Maria’s dating an Israeli-American chef called Guy (a perfectly infuriating Simon Rex) whose fancy fusion restaurant with ungarnished hummus cuts Mo’s pride to the core. The words “pillaging my heritage!” come out swinging. Mo’s quest to process all this makes for both comedy gold and heartbreaking moments of drama.
Mo is a timely story of struggle that wields comedy as a mirror
Credit: Eddy Chen / Netflix
With Mo stuck stateless in Mexico, the second season pushes its signature exploration of cultural identity even further, asking bigger questions of modern America and the struggle 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 process his sense of disconnection and yearning for stability back in Houston — and a mid-season shocking twist will throw that all out the window. Mo struggles with what he expects for his life, and his frustration of continually having to start at square one, kept afloat by his enduring pride and sense of humour. We’re constantly rooting for Mo, despite the towering pile of people who seem deadset against his success at best, against his personhood at worst.
Credit: Netflix
In Season 2, the show makes a point of showcasing the anxious imbalance of power between people through Mo’s experiences; Mo’s fate often lies in the hands of Americans who cruelly wave their influence in his face, from moustachioed embassy employees to gruff detention centre guards and problematic U.S. ambassadors with racist Lawrence of Arabia fantasies. Mo’s resilient bravado slightly wavers, his sense of autonomy removed, and his understandable rage rising, at one point describing the feeling as having clipped wings.
While Mo endures threat and humiliation at the hands of American authorities throughout the series, his sense of identity remains whole — and frankly, his sense of humour keeps him alive. No matter the seriousness of his situation, Mo always manages to emotionally connect with the other people sharing his plight. “I speak three languages and I don’t have the words to describe your situation,” Mo tells a young boy in a halfway house, awaiting a border crossing. Mo even valiantly tries to connect man-to-man with the jaded immigration officer on the Texas border, and it’s this unwavering sense of humanity that makes Mo who he is.
Mo Season 2 plays with fantasy to convey real anxieties
Credit: Eddy Chen / Netflix
This season, Mo’s connection with spiritual guidance from his ancestors is the primary throughline, with the protagonist piecing together bizarre signs that will make sense later in the series.
Notably more than Season 1, this season plays with fantasy and surrealism, including a cheesy telenovela dream sequence, an overtly Shawshank vision in detention, a Lucha libre moment with Maria’s new boyfriend, and an imagined combat situation in Houston suburbia, to give levity at times, depth in others, to Mo’s real plight. Many of these moments expose Mo’s sense of grief and disconnection with his family, the breakdown of his relationship, and his frustration with the immigration system. And they’re very funny. Episode 3’s fantasy courtroom outburst feels well overdue, and sees Amer in one of his best scenes, evoking Mo’s internalised frustration to perfection — the words “and YOOOOU,” have never been better delivered.
Back in reality, there are hilarious nods to the sheer, surreal folly of bureaucratic processes — in episode 2, during Mo’s online hearing on a Google Meet-like video call, the judge literally mutes Mo as he describes the horrific conditions in the detention facility, with furious gestures and all the inappropriate animated thumbs ups and balloons many endured in serious video calls. In fact, the ability of Mo, his family, and his friends to find levity after life-threatening, humiliating moments is nothing short of miraculous. Some are uncomfortably hilarious — when Mo’s friends are suggesting his ankle monitor get “bedazzled” — while others are moments of pure resistance — when Mo’s family laughs loudly in the living room about a truly terrifying moment at gunpoint.
Mo reaches a deeply moving, intentionally infuriating conclusion
Credit: Netflix
Without spoiling the storyline, Mo comes to a close with one of the best episodes of television you’re likely to see this year. The show finishes with a deeply moving, personal, and timely episode entirely set within Palestine, touching on all-too-real struggles for Mo’s family enduring the knife’s edge anxiety of Israeli occupation, while allowing our protagonist a sense of pride and deep connection 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 as the family drives past the West Bank wall. It’s impossible not to feel the weight of this moment, watching this in 2025.
Mo’s spirit nears breaking point this season, and Amer’s performance is nothing short of exquisite and raw, moving Mo through wonderful conversations with his uncle, aunts, and cousins, and through to one of the series’ most brutal moments, scored to Nina Simone’s “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free” — it’s worthy of being one of the year’s defining TV images. More than anything, the show provokes deep thought for very real situations.
Credit: Eddy Chen / Netflix
Perhaps one of the most important scenes in the series belongs to Mo’s mother Yusra and sister Nadia (Cherien Dabis) in the series’ penultimate episode. The pair discuss the emotional impact and feelings of responsibility toward monitoring news out of Palestine; Yusra is glued to reports of settlers attacking Palestinian homes and IDF violence in Ramallah, Yatta, Jenin, Nablus, and Al Khalil, while Nadia expresses a need to live 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’s a crucial, brilliantly written and acted scene, and allows a moment of nuance for the pair’s different perspectives.
Ultimately, the show’s heart and core messaging about the resilience of Palestinian people comes from Mo’s mother, whose quote began this review and remains the clearest, most poignant message of the series. Yusra reminds her son that the world will try to tear them down, “And when they do, we smile. Because we know who we are.”
In two seasons of just 16 episodes, Mo manages to comprehensively explore identity and inhumane policy within the experiences of a Palestinian family seeking asylum in modern America, while maintaining its signature sense of levity and hilarious perspective. This is pure excellence in television, and a must-watch by all definitions of the term. That it’s Mo’s final season is a heartbreak we’ll have to live with.
Mo Season 2 is streaming on Netflix from Jan 30.
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Comedian Mo Amer’s Peabody-winning semi-autobiographical Netflix series “Mo” returns for its second and final season. TV review.
