The Other Two & Mo: Comedy Gold

Over the past month, I binged all of Mo in two days and then made my way through two seasons of The Other Two. One's a New York comedy about a showbiz family, the other is about a Palestinian asylum-seeker in Houston. They could not be more different but they are both hilarious and deserve your eyeballs. Let's get into it.

Mo: Created by and starring Mo Amer as the titular character, the show is loosely based on his story of growing up as a Palestinian refugee in Houston. This is not the typical sitcom character we get to see on television and it's absolutely revelatory. The show was co-created by Ramy Youssef, which explains why it gave me strong Ramy vibes, but it is a unique and wonderful foray into the American immigrant experience and the endless hustle and paperwork it entails.

There's a lot of Arabic, which of course made me happy, but there's also a fair amount of Spanish, showcasing the cultural hodgepodge that immigrants are so often quick to embrace. Teresa Ruiz plays Mo's longtime girlfriend, Maria, a Catholic Latina, which sets up some wonderful religious tensions with the family and Mo himself who does embrace his Muslim identity and thinks she should convert. It's very funny to see his discomfort when he walks into a church and wants to take his shoes off, or his horror if she makes the sign of the cross over him as that might anger Allah. And watching his mother (played by the extraordinary Farah Bsieso) reconcile herself to the fact that her son is dating this woman, makes for a fun adventure. 

The supporting cast is rounded out by Omar Elba as Sameer, Mo's possibly autistic brother, Tobe Ngigwe as Nick, Mo's Nigerian best friend, and Lee Eddy as Lizzie Horowitz, Mo's lawyer. This is a dynamic, vibrant cast that plays off each other in interesting and endlessly compelling ways for eight episodes. It's a comedy but it also features a great deal of drama - there's a lot of trauma that Mo needs to unpack about his undocumented status in America, what happened to his family in Palestine, and how to deal with everything going on in his life. It's a singularly beautiful show that has much to say about mental health, family, chosen family, and why you always need to carry a bottle of olive oil around with you. I laughed, I cried, it was a wild ride. And it all ends with a bang that ensures I will be the first in line to hit Play on Season 2.

The Other Two: I cannot think of any other comedy I have recently watched that is so eminently quotable. For example, my boyfriend can't stop saying "I sell milk" and loudly cackling, while I keep going "I am his son. I am straight. I am from Kansas." None of this will make any sense to you, but my God, just start watching this show and fall down the rabbit hole with us.

The show is about the Dubek family, consisting of Pat (the great Molly Shannon) and her three children. The two oldest, Brooke and Cary (Helene York and Drew Tarver) are millennials struggling to carve out an identity for themselves in New York City. Cary is a struggling actor, who never seems to find a decent guy to be with, while Brooke is a former dancer who now has no idea what to do with her career or her love life. When their thirteen-year old brother, Chase (Case Walker, who is basically a mini Justin Bieber), becomes insanely famous after a song he released on YouTube goes viral, the two older siblings must reconcile themselves to playing second fiddle to their kid brother, but also perhaps leech off his fame to make their own dreams come true. 

Ken Marino also stars as Streeter, Chase's hapless manager, and over the course of two seasons, this show has leaped from strength to strength in developing its characters. In the first season, everyone was coming to grips with Chase's fame and what this meant for them. In the second season, everyone is more established, getting more famous, and therefore becoming more self-absorbed, causing many spirals of increasingly complex hilarity. This show could so easily be a cynical satire, but what really makes it sing is that at the end of the day, this is a family that truly cares about each other and wants each member to be happy. So no matter how wacky their antics get, there is so much heart as they find their way back to each other and seek out some normalcy underneath all the trappings of fame. Created by Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, each episode is a tightly-scripted farce that will make you laugh till you cry. You could watch and re-watch endlessly and still find another joke to crack you up. So start your binge and prepare to never stop.