Fauda 5: Powerful, Necessary, Unforgettable

I binged the fifth season of Fauda on Netflix the past two nights.  As is well-known, the script for this season was substantially re-written after the savage Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.  The result was the story of an increasingly desperate attempt to stop a new terrorist attack -- an attempt by three members of the original Fauda team, Doron, Eli, and Steve -- each of them with a direct involvement in the Israeli attempt to stem the Hamas slaughter of unarmed Israelis in 2023.

In fact, the most effective two episodes in this 11-part season -- episodes 7 and 8 -- tell the harrowing stories of Doron, Eli, and Steve on that October day, an emotionally explosive account that made a highly effective, two-part movie in itself.  With all the anti-semitism rising around the world, it's more important than ever for the terrible story of October 7 to get out to the world.

This explicit connection to and depiction of such a vile real life event makes this fifth season of Fauda in significant part a docu-drama, an evocative, unforgettable depiction of fictitious characters in an all-too-real situation.  That reason alone makes this fifth season uniquely important and memorable.

But the fiction was significant, too.  Mélanie Laurent's Anne, the wife of someone who may be a Hamas operative in Marseilles, is an excellent addition to the story and cast, and plays a crucial part in the narrative.  Lior Raz as Doron (co-creator of the series with Avi Issacharoff), Yaakov Zada-Daniel as Eli, Doron Ben-David as Steve, and Itzik Cohen as Gabi are always welcome on the screen -- Gabi frequently has the best lines, like "I'm getting too old for this" -- and as always, the Yiddishkeit is good to hear and see.

Indeed, last night was the final night of Rosh Hashanah, so seeing Fauda over the past two nights felt especially right.  But its story, especially the story this season, is especially appropriate, any time, and any year.

Wars always have unforeseen wretched consequences.  World War I spawned fighting from the sky, World War II gave us nuclear weapons, the October 7 Hamas attack led to the decimation of Gaza.  Fauda 5 doesn't tell us that story, but it vividly reminds us why it happened.  It will be an essential marker of an unspeakably inhuman part of history.

See also Fauda: Beyond Homeland ... Fauda 2: Another Unforgettable Visit ... Fauda 3: Blood, Tears, Humanity ... Fauda 4: Very Much Alive and Wounded ... 

Fauda 4: Very Much Alive and Wounded

Fauda is like no other military, espionage series I've ever seen, showing so many sides of a story in so much life and death and depth, in this case, Israelis, Palestinians, and other peoples in the area and further away.  Watching a season is an immersion in these cultures, and an exploration of complex personal relationships under pressure, interspersed with breakneck military battles and operations.

[And that's the most I'll say before I alert you to spoilers ahead.]

Fauda 4 opens up with Doron and other members of his team in various stages of wanting to retire.  This only progresses as the 12 episodes unfold.

The kidnapping of Gabi, and the plan of the Palestinian team that kidnapped him to launch missiles against Israel, are the main objects of our team's focus on stopping.   As in previous seasons, let's just say that they don't succeed as quickly and as entirely as they would like, if they succeed at all.  Again, this reflects Fauda's uncompromising mirror of reality, however painful that may be.

Lior Raz, star of the series as Doron, and co-creator with Avi Issacharoff, once again puts in a powerhouse performance, as does everyone else in Fauda 4, in all sides of the physical and psychological battles.  As Gabi points out to Doron, he has a tendency to start to fall in love with women who are good human beings, whether Arab or Israeli, because he has such a big heart.  This time, that's Maya (very well played by Lucy Ayoub), a Palestinian whose brother is behind Gabi's kidnapping, whose Israeli husband is in the Israeli military, and she herself is an Israeli cop -- this is what I mean about the personal relationships in Fauda being complex.  But not so complex as to get in the way of the riveting narrative, which will keep you glued to the screen (I haven't used that old metaphor in years, if ever).

The ending is about as wild as it gets.  Just about everyone on the team lying on the ground, badly wounded but alive -- and speaking of metaphors, that pretty much is the story of life that Fauda continues to tell: badly wounded but very much alive.  I'm very much looking forward to a season 5 and more.

See also Fauda: Beyond Homeland ... Fauda 2: Another Unforgettable Visit ... Fauda 3: Blood, Tears, Humanity

Hit and Run: Lior Raz and Silvercup

I've come to know Lior Raz as one of the creative powerhouses (along with  Avi Issacharoff) of three seasons and a fourth forthcoming of Fauda, about the best depiction I've ever seen of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, viewed through the eyes of an Israeli undercover unit, in which Raz plays Doron, and therein stars in the series as well.

So of course I was going to see Hit and Run, a new series which debuted on Netflix, which also was co-created by Raz and Issacharoff, and also stars Raz.  This time he's an Israeli tour-guide, married to American ballet dancer, who is killed in a hit-and-run before the first episode is over.  Before the nine episodes of this first season are over, we see Raz's Segev as much in New York as in Tel Aviv, and a narrative seething with action and a cast who promise to become memorable in their first scene and usually do.

My favorites this time, in addition to Segev, are Tali (played by Moran Rosenblatt, also in Fauda), a resourceful, pregnant Israeli police detective who is Segev's staunchest ally in Tel Aviv, and Naomi (played by Sanaa Lathan, not in Fauda, but in The Affair), who's an investigative reporter with New York Magazine, was once in some kind of commando unit with Segev, and is now his staunchest ally in New York.

In addition to the non-stop action and complex fast-twisting plot, there's also more than a fair share of death meted out to all kinds of characters, which I consider a plus in this kind of series, because you begin to realize you never will know who will survive a given episode, because in fact you don't.  The scenery was also good.  As a life-long New Yorker, I was happy to see Silvercup Bakery -- or what was Silvercup Bakery -- in one of the many chases on the highway scenes.  Hey, the bread itself was white bread, probably the worst thing to give a kid, but it sure made a tasty sandwich.

Hit and Run was better than tasty, and I'd be stunned if there wasn't a second season, but I know less about the inner workings of television series than I do about bread, so who knows.  But I'll be back here as soon as I finish bingeing it, if there is a second season of Hit and Run, so see you back here.

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