Season Two of Mo, now streaming on Netflix, finds our hero in a tight spot.

If you recall where season one left off (and why should you? Season One premiered way back in 2022), Mohammed “Mo” Najjar (Mo Amer) was stuffed into the back of a truck full of uprooted fruit trees having illegally crossed the border into Mexico. Mo was trying to steal back some olive trees, a key ingredient in his families cherished olive oil.

Crossing the US border into Mexico was, however, a huge mistake. Back home in Houston, Texas, this Palestinian refugee was seeking asylum and US citizenship. That’s a big no go, Mo.

The new (and already declared final) season starts with scenes showing ever-resourceful Mo scrambling to do what he does best — hustle. We see him hard-selling his fusion falafel-tachos from a homemade bicycle food box down in Mexico City.

Amer made his name as a stand-up comedian, spinning his outsider status into comedy gold in America. He somehow finds humour even in humiliation and horror, especially in nightmarish scenes where he is moonlighting as a lucha libre wrestler or playing in a mariachi band to try and survive in Mexico.

It gets way worse. Shown trying to cross illegally back to America, he is almost gunned down by a posse of rednecks; is instead rounded up and thrown into wire fenced holding cells with a man who meows; and then gets treated worse than any dog. 

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He never gives up, however, appealing beyond any reasonable hope to glean a glimmer of humanity in a detention border guard crushed under his own crummy life and prospects. Mo endures so much hopelessness and pain but somehow prevails.

He makes it back to Houston and his long-awaited asylum hearing. His lawyer Lizzy (Lee Eddy) does her best. The rest of his family get their status, but Mo, thanks to his cross border boo-boo, is still in a form of hellish limbo that is both comic and tragic.

Drawing from his own life, what Amer is doing is showing the hell that is the life of a refugee at this time in history. It is a dark road to comedy, but my god if this isn’t the bravest show on television. Canadians caught in the screws being turned by the bitter old man now running America should draw courage from Mo. If he can keep his head, stick to his morality, keep his devotion to family and still seek asylum, there might just be a way forward.

The rest of the cast helps bring the funny, especially in the card game scenes with Mo’s posse. Look close around that table and you’ll spot Alan Rosenberg from LA Law and Cybill as crusty Aba Weinberg. Oy!

Mo’s brother Sameer (Omar Elba) seems rather shell-shocked; his babe girlfriend Maria (Teresa Ruiz) has moved on and to rub sea salt into the wound she is now with an Israeli-American chef (Simon Rex) who runs the coolest restaurant in all of Houston. Woe is Mo.

The series even manages to make a joke out of the similarities between the words “hummus” and “Hamas.” This is Larry David nervy but Amer goes there from a place of having lived it. He gets away with it because he somehow manages to make all the characters seem real and human and dark and light and possible all at the same time. 

Mo’s world is a long, long way from Mayberry. Certainly this is not a place meant to represent a time when America was great again. This is very, very now if you are not a member of the oligarchy. It is filled with people who both eat to live and live to eat as long as it is smothered in mom’s amazing olive oil.

From the front bench of his 1970 Ford Torino sits Mo, who demonstrates that If you are willing to pay an enormous price to stay true to yourself, you will emerge as the real winner.

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