Title: Tyrant
Genre: drama
Created by: Gideon Raff
Starring: Adam Rayner, Ashraf Barhom, Jennifer Finnigan, Justin Kirk, Noah Silver, Anne Winters
Blurb from IMDB: Series tells the story of an unassuming American family drawn into the workings of a turbulent Middle Eastern nation.
Info borrowed from Wikipedia: Tyrant is an American drama television series created by Israeli director, screenwriter, and writer Gideon Raff and developed by Howard Gordon and Craig Wright. A 10-episode first season has been ordered by the American cable network FX. The series premiered on June 24, 2014. The pilot episode was written by Raff and directed by David Yates.
Bassam “Barry” Al Fayeed is from the fictional war-torn country of Abbudin. He has been living in self-imposed exile in Los Angeles for nearly 20 years. Barry, the younger son of Baladi’s dictator, ends his exile to return with his American family to his homeland for his nephew’s wedding. His arrival leads to a dramatic culture clash, as he reluctantly returns to the familial and national politics he once left.
I watched the pilot of FX’s Tyrant and I am eagerly anticipating the next episode. There is such a great framework and the potential for a truly amazing show.
Barry Al Fayeed is a pediatrician living in California with his wife Molly and two teenaged children, daughter Emma and son Sammy. But Barry is also Bassam Al Fayeed, second son of Khaled Al Fayeed, presidential dictator of Abbudin.
Barry’s brother Jamal is a frightening dictator-to-be, brutalizing his people to get what he wants. Now, Jamal’s son is getting married and everyone is invited to the happy event, including the reluctant Barry, who gives in to his wife’s urging and returns home for the first time in nineteen years. Just as his father suffers a stroke and Jamal is nearly assassinated. Leaving Barry to pick up the pieces.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfvKhQXC_lA
My thoughts:
Sammy — He is a spoiled brat and I find his sulky face annoying. I’m sorry, but that’s a kid that deserves a giant wake up call and possibly a beating.
The much underused Emma urges her brother to be careful, they’re not in America, yet Sammy is busy having a good time, including flirting with Abdul, the handsome son of the family’s head of security. Which I feel opens a storyline in which Sammy is not punished for his indiscretions, but in which Abdul may be severely brutalized, at which point Sammy will come to the realization that hey, not in America anymore.
What annoys me the most about Sammy is his disrespect toward his parents. It was bad enough when they were safe at home, but when his father came rushing in, obviously freaked out and saying “We’re going to the airport. Now,” Sammy’s ill-timed rebellious attitude made me want to smack him.
There’s something about a stupid kid putting his whole family at risk that I simply can’t stand. You’re far away from home in a place your father really didn’t want to go, where everyone is toting guns and your grandfather is someone you’ve seen on CNN being called a dictator. Is that really the time to stake your independence?
Molly — I feel as though Molly is someone that has a romanticized notion of the Middle East. She sees that her husband is uncomfortable with the idea of going back, he’s stated that those people aren’t his family numerous times, and over the years they’ve been married she has to have realized his father really messed him up. Yet she basically forces him to go back for the wedding.
Molly seems like someone that would force a former child abuse victim to confront their abuser. You know, for their own good.
I feel like hers is a character that will have to face many unpleasant truths in the episodes to come. She wanted to know what made Barry the man he is — closed off, moody, seemingly afraid of making connections — and I think she’s going to find out. And in facing that dark reality, I think she will force Barry to change, and as he changes she may not like the person he becomes.
Honestly, I feel like Molly is someone that read the Harlequin Silhouette Sheik Daddy and let herself be sucked into that compelling vision of 1990s cultural exoticization.
Before all the Lifetime movies and the “Holy crap, he only liked me for my blond hair and big boobs” escaped from harem captivity horror stories, there was Sheik Daddy.
Sheik Daddy is one of those stories that stays with you. It is the basis for many a “romanced by a hidden royal” trope. It’s the reason why, on reading the first “Liaden Universe” novel Local Custom, I had the niggling feeling I’d read the story before. The same with the Julia Stiles movie, The Prince and Me.
In Daddy Sheik there’s a college romance, a lover returned to his homeland, and a woman left to raise a child alone. Then the hero returns, reveals that he’s actually a wealthy prince, and sweeps the heroine off her feet and takes her back to his home country where she swiftly adapts to a life of luxury and they live happily ever after.
Only in Tyrant the prince fled his home in horror of what his father wants him to become and settled into the suburbs, content never to go back. He has his wife, children, and a good job, until his wife forces him to return to face what he left behind: a dictator father, an older brother that’s become a violent madman, and a country that’s poised to tear itself apart.
And now Barry — Bassam Al Fayeed — who begged his wife “Promise me we’ll go home” is the only one that can save everything his father built. By becoming the one thing he never wanted to be: a tyrant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jMhJW7-HUs
Afterthought: Barry knows that he has it in him to be what his father wants him to be. And it terrifies him.
When young-Jamal was unable to do what their father wanted, Bassam did not hesitate to pick up the gun. And when he fled his past, he was not truly fleeing his father. He was fleeing the person he saw himself becoming.
