Review: Netflix's Mo Captures the Absurdity of the U.S. Immigration System
A stateless protagonist dodges the federal government in comedic fashion.
In its second and final season, Netflix's Mo continues to ease heartbreak with humor as Mo Najjar (Mohammed Amer, the show's co-creator) grapples with the ramifications of inadvertently entering Mexico while seeking asylum in the United States.
Loosely based on Amer's life—his Palestinian family fled Israeli occupation for Kuwait, then had to leave Kuwait during the Gulf War—the show captures the absurdity of an immigration system that leaves people in limbo for decades. As a stateless person desperate to remain in his Houston home yet also longing to reconnect one day with his family in the West Bank, Najjar masterfully maneuvers between two cultures and three languages while dodging the feds and working any job that will accept him without a permit.
Season two heightens the tension (not at the expense of comedy), testing viewers' patience as much as Najjar's, as he repeatedly ignores legal advice, speaks when he shouldn't, and complicates his own path. His missteps are sometimes maddening—almost as maddening as being kicked out of every home you've ever known and waiting 20 years for an asylum hearing.
