Remember last week, when I said that Jamal could be Tyrant‘s biggest problem? Never mind, it’s Barry. Or the dialogue. Or the lack of subtitles. Point is, Tyrant has a few problems that it needs to address, pronto.
For one, why is a show with this pedigree falling back on the well-worn trope of having people speak English in a vaguely foreign accent, as opposed to their native tongue? There is actually a scene in “State of Emergency” where Jamal screams at his doctor to speak English, which underlines my point so well that it made me laugh out loud. The Americans respects its audience enough to have the Russians speak Russians, and I wish Tyrant would do the same. At the very least, it would help us keep track of the Fauzis and Ihabs and Nusrats.
Nusrat, if you don’t remember, is Jamal’s daughter in law, whom he violated at her wedding. Well, she’s still getting a pretty bum deal, as she’s kidnapped by a couple preteen terrorists. They hole up in a convenience store, attempting to negotiate a ransom. Nusrat seems to be Tyrant‘s punching bag. She was raped last week, and spends most of this episode handcuffed with her brassiere exposed. She tries to appeal to one of the kidnappers by asking him “You’ve never seen a woman’s breasts before, have you?” Granted, she’s not trying to seduce him, but rather appealing to his desire for a future, but it’s a pretty tactless move on Tyrant‘s part nonetheless.
Barry gets his arm twisted by his mother and John Tucker (Justin Kirk remains one of the show’s highlights) to appeal to his uncle, General Tariq, who wants to use Nusrat’s death to impose martial law. Tariq looks like the Middle Eastern version of Philip Baker Hall, but he lets Barry into the convenience store, and he’s able to talk the kidnappers into surrender – only to see them all shot in the head, a development that literally everyone saw coming. Barry’s response to this? A grimace. USA got knocked out of the World Cup yesterday, and people were more aggrieved by a sportsball game than Barry was by the murder of three children. So I think it’s safe to say that Tyrant is setting up Tariq as its villain.
Tyrant has the potential to be a good show, but right now it’s not. It has bright spots – the aforementioned Justin Kirk, Ashraf Barhom as Jamal – but at the moment it’s too derivative, too reliant upon The Godfather. The main difference is, The Godfather had Al Pacino, and brother, Adam Rayner is no Al Pacino.
About Author
