“Tyrant” and “Almost Human”: My Entertainment Weekly Recaps are Making Waves!
I have been busy, busy, busy and I’ve missed sharing some of my Entertainment Weekly recaps with you.
Apparently, I haven’t shared snippets of my Tyrant recaps since Episode 2. A lot has happened since then and yet, a lot hasn’t. One of the most important things that haven’t happened are reasonable storyline and character developments. Everyone and everything is all over the place. Here’s what I said about:
Where we last left Barry (to be known from here on out as Bassam) and his family, Bassam had decided to stay in Abbudin, much to his brother Jamal’s delight. Now Jamal is facing his first day as president, and his first action is to find and kill the husband of the woman who tried to killed him. Jamal’s army does find the man, Hamid, and brings him out to Jamal at his first presidential meeting.
By the way, the cabinet meeting scene is very much like something out of The Godfather. Indeed, the show’s one-sentence pitch is “The Godfather in the Middle East.” But the scene is a little hilarious in the juvenile way it’s presented. Jamal names Bassam as the president’s special counsel, which is setting the scene for a Michael and Fredo Corleone–style betrayal. We know that Bassam is going to become the real leader of Abbudin, right? Can’t you just see Jamal trying to fight for his title, screaming, “You broke my heart!” to Bassam, who will calmly lock him in the dungeons to rot? Back to the meeting.
First, there’s wildly inconsistent characterization with some of the main characters—mainly Jamal. This certainly isn’t the same Jamal we met in the pilot. How does a character go from raping women, torturing, and hitting his wife to hanging onto his wife’s word, abiding by his brother (or, according to Tariq’s logic, a blood traitor) and wincing at the mention of blood and death? There should be at least a couple of episodes going into more depth about this change. But will he turn back into his terrible self the moment he gets his “manhood” back in working order?
Ahmed is also suffering from inconsistencies. When did he go from being a “good husband” to a drunk jerk? Is this just because Jamal told him to keep his wife guessing? I want considerate Ahmed back!
and the most recent, Episode 5:
Bassam and Molly—who has been having her own adventure—meet up at this shindig in honor of Nusrat and Ahmed. “Why did I think I could come here and do something my father couldn’t?” asks Bassam, discouraged and somewhat disillusioned about everything. What Bassam says and what Molly said earlier in the episode—that running the country is Jamal’s job, not his—are foils of sorts for how Bassam describes Ihab: as a “narcissist with a messiah complex.”
Ihab may have some narcissism, but he certainly doesn’t have a messiah complex, seeing how he was willing to let his followers become martyrs in the square and not stand with them when the guns would start. However, he also has more of a reason to be angry and militant than Bassam does. Even if Ihab isn’t the perfect leader, his message is what his followers believe in. Also, his message makes sense: Give the people of Abbudin some peace and independence. Bassam is more of a narcissist with a messiah complex, between the two of them. He thinks he can come to a country he’s forgotten all about, to a family he hasn’t talked to in years, and to a regime he knows nothing about, and just decide to take over the running of the nation. He might be an Al-Fayeed by blood, but he’s just as removed from his family as an in-law like Molly is.
I’ve also been recapping Almost Human as part of Entertainment Weekly’s Community nostalgia recaps. Here’s what I’ve said since the second recap.
There are a lot of interesting moments in this episode that reveal how robotic Dorian still is despite his ability to be extremely human. One such moment comes when they’re investigating the lobby and Dorian sees that the criminals have shot up the cameras. “They killed the cameras,” he says, when he could have said something a human would say, like, “They destroyed the cameras.” I would like to think that this is a genius bit of writing. If the scriptwriter was thinking in terms of how Dorian would feel about his relation to machinery, making him say “killed” is as brilliant as it is revealing about Dorian’s character.
The challenge for the team is to find someone with a knowledge of chemistry to be able to pose as a cook and get to The Bishop. Kennex unwisely offers himself, earning Maldonado’s scoffing. “You can’t even cook ramen,” she tells him, to which he replies, “I can cook ramen … I can order ramen.” Suddenly, Kennex has a flash of brilliance. What about Rudy? He’s smart, and a whiz with chemicals and other strange things. He can do it!
It doesn’t take much for Kennex and Dorian to talk him into going undercover. Rudy has dreams (or delusions) of grandeur and he’s always wanted to be seen as a James Bond-type. So he goes whole-hog into it, including wearing a three-piece suit, nifty glasses and a fedora. Paul and Kennex can’t agree on much (read: anything), but they both agree that the fedora is a no-go. Rudy wears his fedora-turned-security blanket anyway, so their opinions don’t really matter.
Maldonado is fairly certain that Avery is behind it, but she’s not sure how. When she confronts Avery about this once he’s returned to his holding cell, Avery lights into her, Hannibal Lecter-style. He states, in so many words, that he’s going to win and that she’s using her insecurity about being a woman of a high rank as fuel for putting him behind bars. “I’m surprised you’re not more highly ranked, for a woman your age,” he tells her, saying how she probably keeps certificates on her desk to show just how far she’s made it. (She doesn’t keep a certificate, but she does have an award.) He also says how she longs to have a relationship or someone to look at her as a woman, but it hasn’t happened for a long time. “You’d be content if just one person could see you and want you, but they don’t, do they?” he says. “At the end of the day, it will always be just you, alone.”
I’m not sure the whole Hannibal Lecter discussion is fully earned. Ever since Anthony Hopkins donned the creepy mask and discussed body parts pairing well with “fava beans and a nice Chianti,” tons of serial killer characters have been written as an imitation of that character. Law and Order: SVU is notorious for this, especially with the latest sociopath, William Lewis. In short, it gets tiring after a while. Rant done.
There’s some more stuff going with Almost Human that I’ve got to divulge, but that deserves its own post.
