I recently watched both seasons of the Netflix drama-comedy Mo (2022-25), expecting a good laugh, since the show is headlined and written by funny and smart comedian Mohammed Amer.
Mo does provoke a lot of laughter, but it also stirs deep emotions, including despair, loneliness and helplessness, as the episodes explore life in America for people on the margins.
Mo is a semi-autobiographical depiction of Amer’s life. He’s a Palestinian who grew up in Houston, Texas, immigrating to that city when he was nine years old by way of Kuwait.
In the series, Amer plays Mo Najjar as he navigates a complex balancing act between the different cultures that have shaped his life. Mo undergoes struggles to obtain asylum status in the United States as a “stateless person” with no passport.
Amer uses elements of a situation comedy to introduce increasingly troubling sociopolitical themes, leavening an existential darkness with the love and laughter of the main character’s friends and family.
The comedy-drama format allows Mo to address difficult and divisive issues, such as immigration in America and the Israel-Gaza war, in non-threatening ways.
Amer’s comedic writing also serves to humanize his characters. This is particularly important accomplishment in the case of Palestinians, both at home and in the diaspora — and more broadly for Muslims globally — given the long history of misrepresentation of Islam in western discourse.
Comedy tackles erasure of Palestine
In his writing on the first Gulf War, Canadian researcher Karim H. Karim explains how western war propaganda attempted to dehumanize their enemy. He cites comments from the U.S. army members during the Gulf War as examples. They described Iraqis as non-human and animals: “fish in a barrel,” “cockroaches” and part of a “turkey shoot,” alongside the use of longstanding stereotypes about Arabs and Muslims
Dehumanizing techniques can also be seen in today’s conflicts in the Middle East.
For example, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich delivered a speech in October 2024 in which he said: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian nation. There is no Palestinian history. There is no Palestinian language.” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also said: “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.”
Read more:
How colonialist depictions of Palestinians feed western ideas of eastern ‘barbarism’
Mo counters these types of messages repeatedly as features representations of strong women, respectful men and loving families, instead of the angry terrorists or oppressed women depicted in western imaginings.
Several researchers have previously documented such stereotypes, including Edward Said, Leila Ahmed, Yasmin Jiwani, Karim Karim and Ross Perigoe and Mahmoud Eid.
(Netflix)
Comedy is non-threatening
Viewers get to know Mo’s family, the Najjars, and their quirks and idiosyncracies, as well as the complicated path they tread.
During the family’s asylum hearing, an opposing lawyer raises an objection to their claim, saying the U.S. does not recognize Palestine as a state. The statement is brief and the moment passes quickly, but the viewer is now aware of this kind of daily erasure of Palestinian people.
Over the course of the show, viewers see the many ways Mo protests the general erasure of Palestinian culture, including a recurring argument over the origin of hummus (made with chickpeas, garlic, tahini and olive oil).
Building that statement into a comedy is less likely to attract negative attention than a high-profile drama or documentary. For example, Hamdan Ballal, one of the directors of the Oscar-winning Israel-Palestine documentary, No Other Land, was injured in an attack by masked settlers and then arrested by the Israel Defence Forces in the West Bank. Israel’s culture minister said changes had been made to public funding rules to help prevent similar films from being made in future..
Comedy as simultaneous defusion and resistance is also practised by the Palestinian-Canadian comedian Eman el Husseini, whose stand-up routine touches on the idea that Arabs are perceived to be dangerous while painting a picture of her own family as affectionate, overbearing and harmless.
The strategic use of comedy to make characters relatable is a technique that has proven successful with racialized comedians tackling difficult issues, both for stand-ups like Russell Peters and situation comedy formats like Black-ish.
(Netflix)
Crushing challenges
Humour may seem like an odd response to the characters’ crushing challenges. At one point, while in negotiation with a criminal who is threatening to amputate the foot of his friend, Mo suggests cutting off just a pinkie instead, hissing to his outraged friend, “Hey, you don’t wear pinkie rings, anyway!”
But in this series, humour becomes the coping mechanism for Mo‘s characters, however fraught or fragile the issue, from a lighthearted chuckle to the darkness of gallows humour.
At times, Mo’s mother, Yusra (Farah Bsaiso), seems utterly consumed by stories of dispossession taking place back in Palestine, while Mo becomes increasingly angry about examples of appropriation and erasure.
His sister, Nadia (Cherien Dabis), trying to forge a way forward, urges her mother to pull herself away from stories of tragedy back home and resist oppression finding moments of happiness. She insists:
“We’re more than our pain and suffering.”
Ultimately, it is Yusra who summarizes what it means to smile through one’s pain, telling Mo:
“The world will always try to tear us down. And when they do…we smile. Because we know who we are.”
Resilience
In Season 2, Mo, still undocumented in Texas, gets accidentally trapped in Mexico after unwittingly crossing the border. His Mexican fiancée leaves him in frustration and loneliness.
Throughout this season, Mo’s anger at the American immigration system grows as he repeatedly tries — and fails — to get home. He seems to be engaging in constant self-sabotage, in which he simply cannot accept the process that his lawyer and the bureaucracy have outlined for him.
Yet, as the depth of the dehumanization experienced by Mo and his family becomes more and more apparent, Mo’s simmering, ever-present anger starts to seem less dysfunctional. Instead, the world’s indifference becomes spotlighted.
During these episodes, Mo begins to learn how to live with — but never accept — injustice.
However, this is still a sitcom, and some things do work out for Mo. At the end of Season 2, Mo and his family get their U.S. passports and so can finally visit their family in Palestine.
As Mo is getting ready to return to Texas, after a joyful and also heartbreaking visit with his relatives, he is harassed by an Israeli border guard. At this moment, Mo realizes he must develop the same inner strength and resolve embodied by his mother, earned after years of having to bear such harassment.
Although Mo is consumed by anger and sadness at the unjust actions towards him by the guard, against all his instincts, he thanks the border guard, smiles and walks on.