‘Mo’ Season 2 Is an Emotional Homecoming

When we last saw Mo, it was the summer of 2022, and the comedy series, created by Mohammed Amer and Ramy Youssef, had just completed an excellent first season by stranding Amer’s Mo Najjar — a Palestinian asylum seeker living in Houston — on the wrong side of the U.S.-Mexico border. There was periodic talk of Mo’s Muslim faith and of his family’s hope that they could one day return to their homeland, but the show was primarily a light, wry comedy about the logistics of life as an undocumented immigrant. 

More than two years later, Mo has returned to a vastly bleaker reality for Palestinians. At times in this second and final season, Amer and Co. palpably struggle with how to keep making the show they did in 2022. The action picks up only a few months after Mo got trapped in Mexico, which turns the season into something of a period piece that largely sidesteps the nightmare in Gaza. There are plenty of hoops to jump through just to get Mo back to Houston to see his mother Yusra (Farah Bsieso), brother Sameer (Omar Elba), sister Nadia (Cherien Dabis), and estranged girlfriend Maria (Teresa Ruiz). This includes a stay at a border detention facility that’s as unpleasant as it sounds, plus Mo discovering that Maria is now dating Guy (Simon Rex), a successful Israeli-born chef. 

But a show made by, and about, a Palestinian man — in a business not exactly overflowing with Palestinian creative voices — can’t just ignore what’s been happening where its hero’s parents grew up. Early on, whenever there’s an allusion to events in the Middle East — even in this pre-Oct. 7 world — it’s as if the show has touched the third rail and isn’t prepared to handle the voltage. One scene begins with a mortified Mo being asked to fulfill the cucking fantasies of a diplomat who can potentially get him back to the U.S., then ends with the two men arguing whether it’s appropriate to refer to the state of things between Israel and Palestine as “the conflict.” When Mo makes a scene at Guy’s restaurant and screams about how much he hates the hummus, it inspires a nervous customer to ask, “What did he say about Hamas?” Even the most vaguely topical reference overwhelms the jokes that surround it. 

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Then comes the finale, where Mo, Yusra, and Sameer finally get to visit Palestine (in scenes filmed in Malta). After seven episodes spent dancing around current events, this one makes them into subtext — and, eventually, text. It’s a staggering episode. Set prior to Oct. 7, for much of its running time it’s an idyllic family reunion, which only makes everything feel more devastating, because we know what’s about to happen, and how many people who are just trying to go about ordinary, peaceful lives will be hurt or killed. 

In the penultimate episode, Nadia tries to talk Yusra out of doomscrolling all the time, arguing, “We’re allowed to do things we enjoy, aren’t we?” She adds, “We’re more than our pain and suffering, Mom!” Mo began its life as a show that tried very hard to prove this point, finding silliness and joy in the lives of characters who have almost exclusively been depicted in American pop culture within the context of pain and suffering. Amer and his collaborators would be well within their rights to want to keep doing that — to offer a brief respite from all the suffering that’s happening right now. And there are moments when Season Two works very well as a straightforward joke-delivery system. Ultimately, though, Yusra can’t look away from her homeland, nor can the series. And the only way to do that is not by alluding to it in the midst of slinging punch lines, but by confronting it directly, with shatteringly understated power. 

All eight episodes of Mo Season Two are now streaming on Netflix. I’ve seen the whole thing.