The World According to Mo
Which
brings us to the moment with the guard at the detention facility. Mo’s several
days into his stay, and he’s been really working a charm offensive on one
particular guard, trying to convince him to call his attorney. After finally
seeming to win him over, the guard pulls Mo out of his large group cell. Mo is
ecstatic until he realizes he’s just being moved into a smaller, smellier
transitional cell. Aghast, Mo says to the guard, “we had a bond!” The guard,
who’d been, to this point, committed to deadpan detachment, suddenly becomes
animated. He replies, hotly, “why would you think that?”
Why
would you think that?
Everybody likes Mo. It’s both a character trait and a narrative feature of the
show. He gets out of nearly every jam, no matter the stakes, by talking his way
out of it. He is full of anger, but his manner is broad and convivial. In the
gap between seasons, Mo is stranded in Mexico City for six months, during which
time he starts a successful small business, makes a new best friend, and fully
ingratiates himself to the family of his ex-girlfriend. To be this kind of
rascally, huggable charmer in every situation requires a kind of perverse
optimism, a belief that systems, like relationships, are places where humanity
and fellow feeling are acknowledged and rewarded. But, over and over again, Mo
is proven wrong in that. The social currency Mo has is worthless with the
courts, with the cops, with ICE, with the IDF, with the settlers. Who he is is
worthless to them. Mo mistakes his growing relationship with the ICE guard for
a relationship with the state. Why would he think that?
But
Mo is not building toward the granting of asylum, nor the fruition of a
business plan or a love affair. It’s not held within the borders of this
country or that. The show is, in a fairly earnest and straightforward way, building
toward representation. Mo’s mother—Farah Bsieso, in the final speech of a
fearsome and fragile performance—comes right out and says it. “Your
father was like you. He saw himself through the world’s eyes,” she says. “The
world will always try to tear us down, and when they do, we smile, because we
know who we are.”
