By: Brandon Wolfe
The crux of ‘Tyrant’s’ first (and hopefully only) season finally locks into place in “Meet the New Boss” as Bassam begins the preliminary stages of a coup against Jamal, drawing in allies to remove his brother from office. This is the character arc that Bassam has had earmarked since the pilot, embarking on a journey from wanting nothing to do with his country or legacy to gradually developing an inevitable thirst for power. After the debacle with the sheik’s death, Bassam has decided that Jamal’s incendiary temper makes him unfit to rule Abuddin, which is almost certainly true, but one begins to wonder how much of Bassam’s drive is truly motivated by what is best for his country versus what his own ego suddenly demands.
You’re going to keep wondering about that, too, because Adam Rayner isn’t getting across any of the ruthless ambition fueling Bassam. This is very much the Walter White character template being played out here, where a seemingly good man sets foot into a world in which he doesn’t belong and allows it to corrupt him bit by bit. Yet Bryan Cranston always allowed us to witness the gradations of megalomania chipping away at Walt’s soul, where Rayner gives the same flat, passionless performance in every scene. Whether Bassam is motivated by what’s right or what he desires is anyone’s guess because all Rayner does is recite his lines with no fire behind any of them. He remains completely inaccessible to us as a character, a flavorless avatar going through the motions of what the plot demands rather than a flesh-and-blood creation brought to life.
“Meet the New Boss” functions almost entirely as tablesetting, with Bassam putting all the pieces together for his power play while Jamal remains entirely in the dark, believing more than ever before that his brother is looking out for him. Bassam gets oily American ambassador John Tucker on his side, as well as Lea Exley (Leslie Hope, Jack Bauer ill-fated wife from way back in ‘24’s’ first season), a hard-bitten spook from some undisclosed intelligence agency. The group agrees that any strike against Jamal will only succeed if General Tariq, Bassam and Jamal’s fearsome uncle and head of Abuddin’s military forces, can be brought down first. Bassam implores the father of Jamal’s daughter-in-law, who owns the largest telecommunications company operating in Abuddin, to use his influence to oppose Jamal and Tariq, but the man fears them too much.
Bassam also realizes that what he is attempting to do will create some very powerful enemies, so his first order of business is to get Molly and the kids out of Abuddin and back to America. When Molly opposes Bassam’s insistence that the family board a plane home immediately, he snaps at her to do as he says for once. This leads to a conversation where Bassam has to finally disclose his plans to his wife, who is stunned to learn that the man who didn’t even want to come to Abuddin in the first place for a quick wedding now wants to stay and become its president. This should be a powerful scene, but Jennifer Finnigan matches Rayner note-for-note in fresh-faced blandness, so none of it lands with the oomph that it should. We’ve been too spoiled by similar scenes between acting titans like James Gandolfini and Edie Falco, Cranston and Anna Gunn, for these daytime-soap-caliber thespians to have any impact.
Jamal doesn’t have much to do this week beyond constantly mooning over how great his brother is and how much he loves him, allowing ‘Tyrant’ the clumsy dramatic irony that it mistakes for complex nuance. He does confront Nusrat, the daughter-in-law whose pre-wedding violation by him has saddled his son Ahmed with an instantly dysfunctional marriage. Jamal attempts to sanitize his previous actions with what he believes to be sound logic, but it doesn’t fly. Nusrat instead disrobes and dares Jamal to finish what he started, either as a challenge to him to see what kind of man he is or as evidence of how much his attack has damaged her. Either way, Jamal opts to turn around and leave the room rather than pursue any further untoward dalliances with his son’s wife. What a guy.
With two episodes left, it seems clear that the remainder of ‘Tyrant’s’ inaugural season will deal with Bassam deposing his brother and ascending to the top. I can’t say that I’m altogether that eager to see what happens, but I certainly am very eager for ‘Tyrant’ to be over with.
Discuss this review with fellow SJF fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @SandwichJFilms, and follow author Brandon Wolfe on Twitter at @BrandonTheWolfe
Please Leave A Comment-
Comments