Tyrant Season 2 Finale: Deserves to Be Renewed

The Tyrant season 2 finale this week offered a rocky ending to a rocky, uneven season, which nonetheless had some excellent moments - the season and the finale - making me want to see the series renewed.  (There will be lots of spoilers ahead.)

The single most absurd part of this season was Barry managing to fool his brother Jamal into not recognizing him on the phone, with his voice just muffled by a head-dress.   No way Jamal wouldn't have recognized his brother's cadences through that "disguise".

But, with that subtracted from whatever episode a few weeks ago, we still got a pretty good wind-up to the season on Tuesday.  Barry's coming back to the capital as a hero was satisfying, and Jamal's stubborn refusal to abdicate, after he said he would, was completely believable.  Moran Atias, in particular, put in a sterling performance as Jamal's wife Lila, as, for that matter, did Ashraf Barhom as Jamal, Adam Rayner as Barry, and even Noah Silver as Sammy, who was not the greatest last season.

Jamal's getting shot and likely killed by his daughter-in-law was also both well-motivated and surprising.  I say "likely" because, I'm a firm believer in the principle that if you don't see a character's head blown off on television, he or she may somehow survive (and sometimes even with a shot to the head, if we're talking science fiction.)

But Tyrant has done an excellent job of portraying very real situations in this fictional country in the Middle East, a quasi-Syria in most respects.   As such, and given our world today, the series has made an important and even compelling contribution, and deserves to be renewed.

I'll certainly be reviewing it if it is.

See also: Tyrant 2.1: The Tyrant's Character ... Tyrant 2.5: The Caliphate

And see also: Tyrant: Compelling Debut ... Tyrant 1.2: The Brother's Speech and His Wife ... Tyrant 1.3: A New Leaf? ... Tyrant 1.4: Close to the Bone ...Tyrant 1.6: Don't Mess with Jamal ... Tyrant 1.7-8: Coup ... Tyrant 1.9: Tariq ... Tyrant Season 1 Finale: The Truest Tyrant

#SFWApro



and earlier in the Middle East ...