Netflix's Mo Keeps the Faith For Insightful Muslim-American Stories | TV/Streaming

But where “Ramy”’s good intentions have met with some amount of controversy—its depiction of Muslim women, the flattening of Ramy’s religious journey as a Muslim—“Mo” feels lighter on its feet and warmer towards its characters, even as its eight twenty-five minute episodes lean on contrivance to gin up some drama. It helps that Amer himself is an affable, likable screen presence, a big teddy bear of a guy who buoyantly bounces between Arab and American culture. 

It’s a juggling act Amer has managed his entire life, much of “Mo” being dawn directly from his experiences growing up in the diverse-but-difficult Houston suburb of Alief. The fictional Mo Najjar is a Palestinian refugee who fled to Kuwait with his strict mother Yusra (Farah Bseiso) and brother Sameer (Omar Elba), only to emigrate to America after the Gulf War hit, after which he and his family await the years-long business of securing asylum. His father Mustafa (Mohammad Hindi) died years before, an event that still haunts Mo, as we see in frequent flashbacks that begin each episode; midway through the season, we (and Mo) learn that was tortured for two years in Kuwait, a revelation that further exacerbates Mo’s guilt. 

Still, he smiles through the pain, even as his immigration status (and the gang-laden environs of Alief) set all manner of obstacles in front of him. Minutes into the first episode, he’s fired from a cell phone repair shop because of the boss’s fear of an ICE raid, forcing him to lean on his side hustle selling knockoff Yeezys and Versace handbags. Not long after that, a trip to the grocery store for cat food puts him in the crosshairs of two traumatic events. First, a bored sample lady introduces him to the existence of chocolate hummus. Then, a stray gunman shoots him in the arm.  

It’s only a graze, but Mo’s desire to avoid hospital bills takes him to a tattoo parlor, where the chop-shop doctor stitches him up and gives him lean (a potent mix of codeine and syrup; you might also clock it as sizzurp or purple drank) for the pain. It’s not long before he gets addicted, just one of many demons that pounce on him throughout the first season. 

But it’s a credit to the show's creative team, from Amer down to series director Solvan “Slick” Naim (“It’s Bruno!”), that the show maintains an effective balance of ebullience and pathos. Even as Mo faces trials both figurative (his grief over his father’s absence) and quite literal (a late-season hearing to decide his family’s status once and for all), the jokes come fast and furious, mostly thanks to Amer’s slick, quick-witted delivery. It’s the way he diffuses his own misplaced anger and resentment, as evidenced by his growing frustration at the arcade games he plays with his Catholic girlfriend Maria (Teresa Ruiz) and childhood friend Nick (Tobe Nwigwe) one night at the Houston Funplex: “F**k Skee-ball; probably has racist origins.”