S03.E04: A Prayer for our Daughters

[Artsda]

Quote

Barry and Molly respond in wildly different ways to a catastrophe that threatens to throw the country off course. Violent protests break out in Abuddin.

Sammy's a real idiot going off by himself after what happened to his sister. 

I agree Molly will never forgive Barry. She'll forever blame him for not letting her trade herself and for the entire plan. Plus it seems like Barry more loves Dahlia. 

They really killed Jamal. Wow and they didn't even do it separate from Emma. Just mass killing off of characters this season. I wouldn't be surprised to see Molly survive the season at this rate.

What the.. Leila and General?

[sobodom100]

I like the series, but now it really turns into a learning material. I mean, come and see Tyrant if you want to understand what's going on in Syria at the moment. The truth, however, might be much more catastrophic and horrific of course. A television series can not really show the real sufferings of innocent people or the real evil of the Caliphate. 

Tyrant is trying to give us a view and it's positive. What is negative is that sometimes it does that in a clumsy and amateurish way.

The American presence gave only terrible failures to Abuddin and to Barry so far. Nevertheless, I do cheer for Barry that he will stand on his own feet, and find a better way to have revenge.

Edited July 28, 2016 by sobodom100

[Jade Foxx]

Ahmed looks NOTHING LIKE Bassam. 

[TVForever]

Wow, this show has taken a really dark turn. I guess I can't be surprised, given its setting and subject, but this was a painful episode to watch. I guess this is going to be a somewhat new show, because in a few weeks there won't be any major characters left.

[slothgirl]

Sammy is allowed out with no security (and amid the turmoil & grief, his priority is to get laid, endangering someone else... what a tool)

Not one, but TWO people decide this is the moment to declare their candidacy for president

Traditional comfort songs are sung in English

Maids feel free to sing to the first lady in in the worst lead-in to a music overdub EVER

Leila has a sister... wait... didn't Molly have a sister?

A US general who supposedly knows all about this kind of thing never suspected for a moment that the caliphate might use children as shields or pawns even though anyone who's ever read the news IRL would know that sort of thing is common, and that they needed FAR better intel

And OOPS! We have to retcon Rami's backstory! Good thing we killed him off so unceremoniously.

Edited July 28, 2016 by slothgirl

[slothgirl]

9 hours ago, Jade Foxx said:

Ahmed looks NOTHING LIKE Bassam. 

My sister looks nothing like either of my parents or me. She does look almost exactly like one of my grandmothers though. (Both of that grandmother's children look exactly like their father, which is why my sister can look like my grandmother without resembling my parent)

[sjohnson]

It seems to me likely the plot is being driven by contract negotiations, and these producers are a skinflint bunch. And the network really likes the American characters. Killing characters=trimming the payroll.

Barry/Bassam can do math. If he screwed Leila and Ahmed was born nine months later, he knew it was possible. And no, I don't think that woman lied about Rami's parentage in the belief that DNA testing was a Western fraud. Besides, even if Ahmed did have to be someone else's son, the likely candidate is the general. 

The ground war that will finish off the Caliphate will also kill children. That's why starting wars is such a horrific crime when they aren't for national survival or national liberation. As for collateral damage to assassinations, drone murder is not just murder, but ineffective strategy, making it morally equivalent to thrill killing. Revolutionary violence is horrifying, but history tends to say that democracy is only born from revolution or total conquest by a democratic power that deliberately reworks the invaded society (Germany and Italy in the French Revolutionary Wars, Germany and Japan after WWII...but not Iraq, where the US deliberately fostered sectarian parties in opposition to Baathists.)

[NorthstarATL]

I was waiting for Molly to kill herself to make way for Dahlia. I suppose that it will come eventually. Sammy actually did stuff last season, so I imagine that he knows better than his mother or late sister how to get around without an escort. I don't see what changing Ahmed's parentage does storywise. Erasing Jamal's bloodline? Why? Unless it's to link Barry and Leila further, but it's not as if they are going to bond over a newly-acknowledged son. Strange writing move. Noth's character continues to look inept.

[Archangel]

I guess that Barry will find out when Molly doesn't wake up that she overdosed. I was hoping he was going to find something that would have clued him into that reality. I think between seeing the videos, having the maid sing to her and her general grief over Emma and not having her body to bury, was too much for her to take. Whether this clears the way for Dahlia and Barry remains to be seen. I also don't know how he is going to respond to having Ahmed as his son if Leila eventually tells him. As far as the General, he is starting to grate on my last nerve. Surely someone who has the experience he has within that region of the world would suspect that he would be using women and children as shields. What they need to do is take out one of these people when they are walking around with umbrellas. Eventually Ihab is going to have to die. Also if Fazi is falling in love with Dahlia what will that do to their friendship if Molly dies and she turns to Barry and vice versa. I think Fazi found common ground with Barry over the loss of their daughters. His running for president of Abuddin may further complicate their relationship. 

[Jade Foxx]

I thought Molly overdosed too, but didn't we see her in the previews for next week?

[slothgirl]

1 hour ago, NorthstarATL said:

I was waiting for Molly to kill herself to make way for Dahlia. I suppose that it will come eventually. Sammy actually did stuff last season, so I imagine that he knows better than his mother or late sister how to get around without an escort. I don't see what changing Ahmed's parentage does storywise. Erasing Jamal's bloodline? Why? Unless it's to link Barry and Leila further, but it's not as if they are going to bond over a newly-acknowledged son. Strange writing move. Noth's character continues to look inept.

Yeah, but everyone knows WHERE he goes (destination). They just have to hang around campus and wait. It's not like there aren't people there already who are enemies... who was that guy who blamed the chick for his beatdown? And she arrogantly brushed him off. Yeah, THAT'S not going to come back to bite anyone's ass later.

The hubris of all these people in what is essentially a front line war zone is mindboggling.

I seem to remember hints in one of the past seasons that maybe Jamal wasn't Ahmed's father. But the knowledge that her son wasn't Jamal's would explain a lot about Leila's insistence that she was doing "all this" for Ahmed. If Jamal or his minders had ever suspected that Ahmed wasn't Jamal's, both Leila and Ahmed would have been executed pronto. She might have had some bargaining ability to extricate herself from this life had she not lived in constant fear of being found out.

I admit however, that all this motherly love and sacrifice  is something of a ret-con from the Lady Macbeth portrayal we got in season 1. Plus, was it ever mentioned before that she had humble origins?

Edited July 28, 2016 by slothgirl

[catrox14]

I was expecting Barry to stumble over Molly's pill bottles and freak out and call for help.

But then I had a terrible thought. That if Barry is going darkside here, he might just be okay with Molly dying. Especially if he wants to be with Dahlia.  I feel terrible thinking Barry would be that bad but...I crossed my mind.

[slothgirl]

1 hour ago, Archangel said:

I guess that Barry will find out when Molly doesn't wake up that she overdosed. I was hoping he was going to find something that would have clued him into that reality. I think between seeing the videos, having the maid sing to her and her general grief over Emma and not having her body to bury, was too much for her to take. Whether this clears the way for Dahlia and Barry remains to be seen. I also don't know how he is going to respond to having Ahmed as his son if Leila eventually tells him. As far as the General, he is starting to grate on my last nerve. Surely someone who has the experience he has within that region of the world would suspect that he would be using women and children as shields. What they need to do is take out one of these people when they are walking around with umbrellas. Eventually Ihab is going to have to die. Also if Fazi is falling in love with Dahlia what will that do to their friendship if Molly dies and she turns to Barry and vice versa. I think Fazi found common ground with Barry over the loss of their daughters. His running for president of Abuddin may further complicate their relationship. 

As much as I haven't liked Molly (or Barrry, or Sammy, and to a lesser extent, Emma) even I have to admit that Jennifer Finnegan acted the hell out of her scenes in the last couple of episodes. I do hope they let her go out on a well-scripted and well acted note. If she just ends up dead next epi because she slipped away during the week off camera, that would be a shame. 

But it would also be a shame to drag out her decline all season and add stupid relationship triangle drama to it. Just put the poor woman out of her misery already while we are impressed with the actress.

At least in the previews someone is calling out the sheer nonsense of elevating Daliya to such a powerful position other than to bring the pretty. (is it just me or has her hair gotten even longer quite rapidly?)

And I realized why the song had to be in English... so we would understand the lyrics about Bedouin women and comfort. But it was still way to contrived and silly the way they introduced the song.

[scrb]

Jamal carried the first two seasons and they just dump him unceremoniously.

If the ratings were boffo, they probably wouldn't have seen the need to shake things up.

I'm not sure that any Arab nation is calling the shots in the ground war against ISIS so why would Barry be able to give the word on whether to hit a target outside of Abbudin?

[sjohnson]

^^^Because it's in the script?

[AlliMo]

As much as I hate losing the actor, I really don't see where else they could have possibly gone with Jamal's character. Watching Bassam, and to some degree Ahmed as well, slowly become him is both more interesting and believable.

Edited July 29, 2016 by AlliMo

[candall]

Well, this was all kinds of messed up.

 

Do I understand that LEILA is running for president?  That's just nuts, on every level.  Wouldn't most of Abbudin be more likely to throw a rock at her instead of a vote?  Her new campaign manager telling her the 1%-ers were her target demographic did not convince me the imperious Madam Al Fayeed could ever mount a viable candidacy.

Which didn't stop me from sitting on my comfy couch at home, silently pleading with her not to hand Ahmed such enormous power over her by telling him her secret.  He's still a giant unpredictable pup, likely to flop in any direction.

I expected the information that Jamal wasn't his bio-father would send Ahmed into a deeper spiral--that his patricide couldn't be traced back to an evil genetic streak.  He seems relieved so far, but this reveal will not turn out well.  (Sorry General Eyeliner, your story ends with a handwave.)

I'm not too inclined to give Jennifer Finnegan a lot of extra credit for her performance.  I think it's easier to swan around like mad Lady Macbeth than it is to deliver the more nuanced stuff, where she's generally pretty wooden.  (Also, I took issue with the grief-stricken mother stumbling into the war room and pushing the go-button on the air strike.)  But I agree that the scene where she watches the footage and absorbs the causal connection was her best work, rich emotion from minimal movement.

What the hell with that air strike?  They can track a single black umbrella and make out the model number for a stack of rifles, but no one notices a hundred kids scampering around looking for candy handouts? 

I have no idea who the man is with the bloody mouth or why he's blaming that woman.

Long pause while Sami's grief takes the form of a hormone flush.  I guess that makes sense.  I did appreciate Sami not going off on a wild tear about finding his father and Daliyah in close proximity.

For me, Bassam was the MVP tonight.  His tightly wrapped style of acting served him well when he was saying that Molly's grief left no room for his, when he admitted he was not okay, when he let himself go more with Fauzi than with Daliyah.  The people in the war room wouldn't have known they needed to slow down and take into account the President's state of mind as much as his tear-stained crazy-eyes wife.

I loved the Bedouin girl song and it's application.  Okay, weird that it was in English, but I needed to understand it to appreciate it.

[SoothingDave]

The young lady helping Fauzi, the one who had shit thrown on her last episode, she went into the one mosque while they were "studying the Koran."  The guy there made some vaguely threatening statements about the Al-Fayeeds and she called the police on him.

So that was him, obviously beaten by the police, confronting her in this episode.

[candall]

6 hours ago, SoothingDave said:

The young lady helping Fauzi, the one who had shit thrown on her last episode, she went into the one mosque while they were "studying the Koran."  The guy there made some vaguely threatening statements about the Al-Fayeeds and she called the police on him.

So that was him, obviously beaten by the police, confronting her in this episode.

Okay, good, thanks.  I'm trying to remember the gist of her speech before she got pelted.  I don't think many of the citizens are onboard with the whole "confess, apologize, forgive" plan.  Why is this young woman watching out for the safety of the Al Fayeeds?

[scrb]

Didn't she help Bassam out during the civil war?

When Sammy went out to meet the rebel (and he didn't know it was actually his father), wasn't this the same girl he met?

In the first or second episode of this season, she's giving speeches but her boyfriend (the same guy who got beat up?) just wanted to fool around, actually grabbing her breast.

[SoothingDave]

She's pro modernity and anti Caliphate

[Ottis]

Molly is, and always has been, useless. Sammy was except for his resistance work. Have them join Emma.

How do you attack a terrorist camp without knowing that your main target is still there?

Killing Jamal was a mistake. This should have always been about he brothers, the Arab family and the culture clash. The Americans should have remained simply an anchor to Barry's other life that would eventually be shed.

After Molly slapped the maid, I wondered if the maid would run for president. 

Edited July 30, 2016 by Ottis

[ganesh]

Nothing against the actor, but Molly rambling incoherently and getting into the bath with clothes on. Ok. Olivier couldn't make that engaging. I don't know if she was directed to read her lines like that or not (I'm going with directed because I don't want to think an actor is that silly), but just ugh all around. It's not her fault. The character (not the actor) just was inconsistent overall, and just mid boggling to me (not knowing things one could easily google.) Yet apparently now Molly knows how to use the internet. I guess that counts for character growth.

I get that she's going to unravel, but I just don't agree with the narrative direction that it took.

On 7/28/2016 at 2:20 PM, catrox14 said:

But then I had a terrible thought. That if Barry is going darkside here, he might just be okay with Molly dying. Especially if he wants to be with Dahlia.  I feel terrible thinking Barry would be that bad but...I crossed my mind.

What else has the show to offer at this point? 

I don't think killing Jamal was a good move. The give and take between the brothers was always the strength to me. Jamal was president and didn't want to be and felt trapped. Barry was the 'chosen one' who thinks he can do different. So much there to build on. 

Half the country is running for president.

I don't think retaliating so overtly was a good idea. But when has anyone had a good idea on this show? The American president has waged war on children of islam. Well, no shit. Who could have possibly foreseen that? Or, oh I don't know, I'm not a president, but maybe gather some intel first? Don't let you know that you're on to them? At this point, Barry should cut losses and walk away. They've already ruined the country to near beyond repair. 

I don't know if the show knows what the show is or wants to be. 

Edited July 30, 2016 by ganesh

[thuganomics85]

Yikes!  Barry and Molly's grief and anger over Emma's death, just caused them to get tricked into bombing a building full of children!  Sure, we know they got played, but thanks to some handy propaganda, I'm sure a bunch of Abuddin is going to turn on them now.  And that's why if your daughter is brutally and left on the side of the road like trash, you should probably wait a few days before making decisions like this!

So, Jamal really is dead.  There was probably only so far they could go with the character and it would have been extremely unrealistic to have him survive again, but I will miss Ashraf Barhom's prescence on this show.  But now Leila just drop the bombshell that Ahmed is actually Barry's son instead of Jamal's.  Oh, boy...

Sammy's new romance with the professor is totally going to end badly, right?  It always does on this show.

Speaking of romances, they are going all over the place on this one.  Leila hooks up with The General/Chris Noth, but still seems to carry a torch for Barry.  Barry still somewhat seems to care for Molly, I think, but is totally being enthralled by Daliyah, even if he doesn't know it.  And she and Fauzi still seem to be having something going on.

As of now, the election is basically boiling down to Leila, Fauzi, and this other guy, whose name I don't remember, but is apparently known for being really big on religion, I guess.  I can't see either one of them really winning at the moment, but I guess that will change going forward.

Continuing to wait for Annet Mahendru to do more then just complain about the Al-Fayeeds.

Always great to see Jay Karnes, but what accent was he going for?

 

[Constantinople]

Barry loses a daughter and gains a son.

I wonder what the chances are that Barry finds out just as Ahmed is dying and/or Ahmed dies in Barry's arms.

Also, does this mean Ahmed should be known as Ahmed Sand instead of Ahmed Al-Fayeed?