By: Brandon Wolfe
After a moment of modest promise last week, ‘Tyrant’ is back to its usual floundering about. The series remains as clumsy as ever while telling stories it believes to be compelling but that land with a resounding thud. “Sins of the Father” even begins with a thud, in a flashback to Bassam’s college days, where he arrives at his dorm room to find that it has been besmirched with graffiti and news clippings decrying a gas-attack massacre initiated by his father. This sequence is a microcosm of how inept ‘Tyrant’ is, for not only is it set to “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears, a song choice insultingly on-the-nose both in its lyrics and in its “hey, it’s the ‘80s!” era evocation, but it’s also a bungle in terms of basic numbers, since we’re told in the present day that the 20th anniversary of this attack is now occurring, which would have placed Bassam’s college experience in 1994. Add math to the list of things the ‘Tyrant’ crew can’t do.
When a desperate man sets himself on fire in an act of protest against the Al-Fayeed empire on the eve of the anniversary of the attacks, it sets off a large-scale demonstration of rebellious Abuddin citizens, whose ire is further stoked by the recently released insurgent Ihab Rashid. While General Tariq implores Jamal to take immediate, decisive action to neutralize this uprising, Bassam advises his brother to attempt to become a man of the people rather than a monster like their father and engage the masses directly, with words rather than bullets. When Jamal attempts to do just that, his limo is attacked as the protesters burn him in effigy, forcing him to flee the scene. Jamal now believes that an armed response is his best solution, but Bassam, still attempting to impose civility in a land that has never known it, keeps lobbying his brother to do the right thing. And then the episode abruptly ends without resolution, so unwarrantedly certain is ‘Tyrant’ that this scintillating predicament has gotten its hooks into you.
The week’s other subplot falls to the characters’ children, with Sammy and Emma reluctantly joining their cousin Ahmed at a local club. This thread mostly exists to further the budding, star-crossed relationship between Sammy and Abdul, the son of a member of the Al-Fayeed security team, a romance that the show still seems convinced is amounting to something more than it is. Beyond that, we just get the one-note Ahmed acting like an entitled jerk while the equally one-note Emma chastises him for not caring about the human-rights dilemma in his own country. Emma’s character could potentially work as a sort of moral compass in this world, but the way she’s written makes her come off like an obnoxious scold, an unlikable version of Lisa Simpson.
The dialogue is yet another thing that ‘Tyrant’ struggles with. The writing sounds very much like writing, and the tortured, overwritten English rolling off the Abuddin peoples’ tongues makes it come across even more awkward. At one point, Jamal comments on a diffusion plan for the uprising by saying “It all sounds so antiseptic,” which is a turn of phrase that literally no one could make sound natural, but particularly not him. Plus, we are also treated to such howlers as “Your tongue is your horse. If you let it loose, it will be betray you” and “You’re just gonna blow me then blow me off?” The show’s inability to write a single line of dialogue that sounds like anything a human being might actually say is a huge problem.
‘Tyrant’ operates as such full-stop melodrama that it remains easy enough to sit through despite its many failures. But any hope that the series will evolve into something approaching greatness, something worthy of standing alongside its FX peers, is evaporating rather quickly.
Discuss this review with fellow SJF fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @SandwichJFilms, and follow author Brandon Wolfe on Twitter at @ChiusanoWolfe.
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