Hatufim (tv series, season 2)
May. 24th, 2015 12:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI reviewed the first season here; to recapitulate above cut, it's the Israeli show that inspired Homeland but while it shares some themes, tropes and the occasional storyline goes about them in quite different ways. Since Homeland started to lose me after its mid s2 downwards turn in quality (I stopped watching early in s3), I'm happy to report Hatufim, by contrast, manages to stay good tv.
Of course, this is aided to no end by the very different structure; instead of one freed soldier/hostage who may or may not been Stockholmed, you have three, there is no equivalent to Carrie or the Carrie/Brody affair (imo making Carrie and Brody starcrossed lovers as of the second half of s2, complete with Brody's wife talking about their superior inner connection, was one but by no means the only symptom of the show going off the rails), the families of all three are also main characters, and "how does everyone deal with the trauma?" gets more emphasis than the spying shenanigans, though there are those as well.
Which isn't to say Hatufim doesn't make its own mistakes. For example: I really appreciated that in the first season, the relationships between the women, particularly Talia (Nimrod's wife) and Nurit (Uri's ex fiancee) were important; in the second season, they don't share a single scene, and that's only partly explainable due to a narrative shift I'm going to talk about soon. Also, Nimrod is running in emotional circles in the first half of s2, which, yes, may be psychologically realistic but narratively isn't very satisfying to watch, and I'd rather have seen scenes between Talia and Nurit instead. Oh, and just so I get the bad stuff out of the way first, in the second half of s2, there's one of my least favourite soap opera twists with Uri, i.e. character gets horrible illness, keeps it from nearest and dearest "to protect" them.
Now, on to the good stuff. Of which there's plenty. There are actually two narrative shifts, both caused by the s1 finale revelations that Amiel, the third Israeli soldier originally captured, is not dead but still alive (and in Syria), and that the late Mossad boss Jatar had some mysterious connection with Jamal, the main guy in charge of Uri, Nimrod and Amiel's imprisonment and repeated torture. For one thing, Nimrod and Uri at this point share what they know with Iris and Chaim, whom they had until then eluded, with the not unreasonable rationale that these two are intelligence and they aren't, which means they can find out what the hell is going on more likely. This means Chaim and Iris get a lot more screen time and graduate to main characters. The other narrative shift is caused by Amiel, now called Yussuf, who's not just living with the (dying) Jamal and his son Ismail but also has become Jamal's chosen successor, though he has rivals, and is the son-in-law of the head of the fictional terrorist organization "Children of the Djihad". Amiel in s1 was only present in flashbacks and via his sister Yael's imagination, but in s2 he's a main character, with his storyline being arguably the heart of the season. It's the reverse Brody situation, if you like: with Amiel, too, the question for about half a season is "has he been turned, is he sincere, or is he playing a double game?". Amiel's family - not Yael in Israel, but his Arab family, Ismail (who after the death of Jamal in the season opener lives with Amiel/Yussuf) and Laila (Amiel's wife) - is in the same situation Brody's family is in s1 and s2; he's rising in their world, they love him, he loves them, but is he lying to them? Making Laila into the third wife of a deeply traumatized-by-years-as-hostage husband is a brilliant narrative twist to Talia's and Nurit's situations. As opposed to them, Laila has actually lived with "Yussuf" through the last few years, but because of who he is and the situation he's in, that doesn't mean she knows him better, though she tries to.
Laila is the first non-Jewish pov character we get, and she and Ismail are also the closest thing we get to Arab civilian characters (since Ismail is Jamal's son and Leila is the daughter of the Scheich, I write "closest thing to" not "civilians". For part of the season, the audience doesn't know anymore than they do whether Yussuf/Amiel truly loves them or whether they're his cover, but the more we see of their family the more the emotional suspense rises because there's just no way this can end well for Laila in particular. If Amiel is truly Yussuf, he'll get killed by upcoming plot event as a traitor. If he's playing the long game and intends to go back to Israel without her, she's a traitor's wife. If he takes her with him, she'll live among people she's been taught to hate, many of which will hate her. In short, it's a train wreck you can't turn your eyes away from, especially as it becomes clearer that no matter the truth, the emotions are real.
Now one of the logical flaws I saw in s1 was why Jamal, as a leading operative of a terrorist organization who could certainly afford actual teachers, would pick Uri (for maths) and Amiel (in general) as teachers for his son, since he doesn't have the same motivation Abu Nasir in Homeland does for making Brody Issa's teacher; neither Uri nor Amiel are prepared to be sent back as suicide bombers. One of the biggest puzzles right at the start of s2 is why Jamal went through the bother of converting an Israeli soldier into a Muslim operative if said former Israeli, unlike Brody, isn't sent back but staying with him, and in fact his death his faked for the Israelis and his original identity known only to a very few within the organisation. The answer, of course, lies in who Jamals is/was. Posthumously (since he dies early in the second season of natural causes), via flashbacks on Amiel's side and unearthed facts on Chaim-Iris-Uri-Nimrod's side, Jamal becomes a fascinating character. As was hinted in the s1 finale, he collaborated with the Mossad. This, however, wasn't voluntary on his part; turns out Jatar (another posthumously relevant character whose footsteps Uri and Nimrod were following in the second half of the first season) blackmailed him into it by basically holding his sister, niece and nephew (whom Uri and Nimrod met as an adult man in the s1 finale) to ransom. The irony is that Jamal hadn't been a terrorist before said blackmail, he only became one, rising in the ranks, after, so bascially Jatar created him because he needed a mole. Jamal was supposed to be extracted after ten years, but the operation went spectacularly wrong which was why Nimrod, Uri and Amiel - who had no idea what the point of the operation was - ended up as prisoners in the first place. That Jamal had extremely mixed feelings towards them now makes sense. Something that also works is Jamals determination to NOT have his son follow his footsteps and somehow get him somewhere where he can have a future as something other than a martyr, which is where Amiel and why Jamal develops the type of relationship with him he does, why he went through the whole trouble of creating "Yussuf", come in.
Mind you: Hatufim still is determinedly apolitical if that's possible given the subject. Via recurring dialogue reference we learn there's a female Prime Minister (which probably means in fictional Israel there's no Netanjahu - lucky fictional Israel). Settlers are never as much as mentioned. The only Palestinians within Israel we ever see are Jamal's nephew and sister, who are well off. All the control points are never shown, no glimpses at the West Bank, Gaza etc. There's a new seasonal villain, Abdallah, who is one of the terrorists freed in exchange for Uri and Nimrod in the pilot and who ends up with the Children of the Djiahad and as a thorn in Yussuf/Amiel's side, always suspecting his loyalties. Abdallah earns his villain credits in the seasonal opener in a flashback scene where as a young man he attacks an Israeli school full of children and their parents. At one point in dialogue the Scheich mentions to Amiel that all of Abdallah's family died in an instant courtesy of an Israeli bomb back in the day as an explanation for his behavior and ongoing distrust, but the fact of the matter is that we see no Israeli-on-Palestinian violence anywhere (unless you count the blackmail of younger Jamal by Jatar in a flashback, but that's a spoken threat, not a physically violent one), whereas we see plenty of Arab-on-Israeli violence (all the torture during hostage days flashbacks, of course, plus some present day scenes in the season finale). For a series which focuses on three (former) IDF soldiers who were hold hostage for years and their families, not about the Israeli/Palestinian conflcit, this works but, well, I noticed.
New characters: Other than Laila (Ismail was already in s1 flashbacks), Abdallah and the Scheich, there's Ynon (spelling?), one of the kids from the school Abdallah attacks in the season opener (on that occasion, Ynon's father dies right in front of him) who grows up determined to avenge his father. Since Ilan from s1 doesn't show up anymore at all (there's one scene in which Yael calls him on the phone, but we never see him), and since Ynon becomes entangled with Yael, I wonder whether there was an actor availability problem and Ilan's secret was originally supposed to be Ynon's backstory. Aaaanyway. There is a certain irony given what Ynon's determined to do versus what he actually does, but to say more would be too spoilery. There's also Zeev, who takes over Chaim's previous narrative function as official our heroes distrust and who looks distractingly like William Adama from BSG (thus ensuring I don't like him, either). As you'll have gathered by now, Laila is my favourite among the newbies and the female character I felt most for in s2 (though I continue to like our heroines from s1 as well).
Google tells me that there could be a third season, but I'm not sure I want one, because most characters at the end of s2 are at a place where I could leave them. (Other than Uri, see above re: soap upera twist. But even with Uri, one can understand why he does it.) And there's the fear it could get worse the way Homeland did if it tries to stretch a story for longer than its natural conclusion. But for now: occasional complaints aside, well done, show. It was an intense and immensely watchable second season.
Of course, this is aided to no end by the very different structure; instead of one freed soldier/hostage who may or may not been Stockholmed, you have three, there is no equivalent to Carrie or the Carrie/Brody affair (imo making Carrie and Brody starcrossed lovers as of the second half of s2, complete with Brody's wife talking about their superior inner connection, was one but by no means the only symptom of the show going off the rails), the families of all three are also main characters, and "how does everyone deal with the trauma?" gets more emphasis than the spying shenanigans, though there are those as well.
Which isn't to say Hatufim doesn't make its own mistakes. For example: I really appreciated that in the first season, the relationships between the women, particularly Talia (Nimrod's wife) and Nurit (Uri's ex fiancee) were important; in the second season, they don't share a single scene, and that's only partly explainable due to a narrative shift I'm going to talk about soon. Also, Nimrod is running in emotional circles in the first half of s2, which, yes, may be psychologically realistic but narratively isn't very satisfying to watch, and I'd rather have seen scenes between Talia and Nurit instead. Oh, and just so I get the bad stuff out of the way first, in the second half of s2, there's one of my least favourite soap opera twists with Uri, i.e. character gets horrible illness, keeps it from nearest and dearest "to protect" them.
Now, on to the good stuff. Of which there's plenty. There are actually two narrative shifts, both caused by the s1 finale revelations that Amiel, the third Israeli soldier originally captured, is not dead but still alive (and in Syria), and that the late Mossad boss Jatar had some mysterious connection with Jamal, the main guy in charge of Uri, Nimrod and Amiel's imprisonment and repeated torture. For one thing, Nimrod and Uri at this point share what they know with Iris and Chaim, whom they had until then eluded, with the not unreasonable rationale that these two are intelligence and they aren't, which means they can find out what the hell is going on more likely. This means Chaim and Iris get a lot more screen time and graduate to main characters. The other narrative shift is caused by Amiel, now called Yussuf, who's not just living with the (dying) Jamal and his son Ismail but also has become Jamal's chosen successor, though he has rivals, and is the son-in-law of the head of the fictional terrorist organization "Children of the Djihad". Amiel in s1 was only present in flashbacks and via his sister Yael's imagination, but in s2 he's a main character, with his storyline being arguably the heart of the season. It's the reverse Brody situation, if you like: with Amiel, too, the question for about half a season is "has he been turned, is he sincere, or is he playing a double game?". Amiel's family - not Yael in Israel, but his Arab family, Ismail (who after the death of Jamal in the season opener lives with Amiel/Yussuf) and Laila (Amiel's wife) - is in the same situation Brody's family is in s1 and s2; he's rising in their world, they love him, he loves them, but is he lying to them? Making Laila into the third wife of a deeply traumatized-by-years-as-hostage husband is a brilliant narrative twist to Talia's and Nurit's situations. As opposed to them, Laila has actually lived with "Yussuf" through the last few years, but because of who he is and the situation he's in, that doesn't mean she knows him better, though she tries to.
Laila is the first non-Jewish pov character we get, and she and Ismail are also the closest thing we get to Arab civilian characters (since Ismail is Jamal's son and Leila is the daughter of the Scheich, I write "closest thing to" not "civilians". For part of the season, the audience doesn't know anymore than they do whether Yussuf/Amiel truly loves them or whether they're his cover, but the more we see of their family the more the emotional suspense rises because there's just no way this can end well for Laila in particular. If Amiel is truly Yussuf, he'll get killed by upcoming plot event as a traitor. If he's playing the long game and intends to go back to Israel without her, she's a traitor's wife. If he takes her with him, she'll live among people she's been taught to hate, many of which will hate her. In short, it's a train wreck you can't turn your eyes away from, especially as it becomes clearer that no matter the truth, the emotions are real.
Now one of the logical flaws I saw in s1 was why Jamal, as a leading operative of a terrorist organization who could certainly afford actual teachers, would pick Uri (for maths) and Amiel (in general) as teachers for his son, since he doesn't have the same motivation Abu Nasir in Homeland does for making Brody Issa's teacher; neither Uri nor Amiel are prepared to be sent back as suicide bombers. One of the biggest puzzles right at the start of s2 is why Jamal went through the bother of converting an Israeli soldier into a Muslim operative if said former Israeli, unlike Brody, isn't sent back but staying with him, and in fact his death his faked for the Israelis and his original identity known only to a very few within the organisation. The answer, of course, lies in who Jamals is/was. Posthumously (since he dies early in the second season of natural causes), via flashbacks on Amiel's side and unearthed facts on Chaim-Iris-Uri-Nimrod's side, Jamal becomes a fascinating character. As was hinted in the s1 finale, he collaborated with the Mossad. This, however, wasn't voluntary on his part; turns out Jatar (another posthumously relevant character whose footsteps Uri and Nimrod were following in the second half of the first season) blackmailed him into it by basically holding his sister, niece and nephew (whom Uri and Nimrod met as an adult man in the s1 finale) to ransom. The irony is that Jamal hadn't been a terrorist before said blackmail, he only became one, rising in the ranks, after, so bascially Jatar created him because he needed a mole. Jamal was supposed to be extracted after ten years, but the operation went spectacularly wrong which was why Nimrod, Uri and Amiel - who had no idea what the point of the operation was - ended up as prisoners in the first place. That Jamal had extremely mixed feelings towards them now makes sense. Something that also works is Jamals determination to NOT have his son follow his footsteps and somehow get him somewhere where he can have a future as something other than a martyr, which is where Amiel and why Jamal develops the type of relationship with him he does, why he went through the whole trouble of creating "Yussuf", come in.
Mind you: Hatufim still is determinedly apolitical if that's possible given the subject. Via recurring dialogue reference we learn there's a female Prime Minister (which probably means in fictional Israel there's no Netanjahu - lucky fictional Israel). Settlers are never as much as mentioned. The only Palestinians within Israel we ever see are Jamal's nephew and sister, who are well off. All the control points are never shown, no glimpses at the West Bank, Gaza etc. There's a new seasonal villain, Abdallah, who is one of the terrorists freed in exchange for Uri and Nimrod in the pilot and who ends up with the Children of the Djiahad and as a thorn in Yussuf/Amiel's side, always suspecting his loyalties. Abdallah earns his villain credits in the seasonal opener in a flashback scene where as a young man he attacks an Israeli school full of children and their parents. At one point in dialogue the Scheich mentions to Amiel that all of Abdallah's family died in an instant courtesy of an Israeli bomb back in the day as an explanation for his behavior and ongoing distrust, but the fact of the matter is that we see no Israeli-on-Palestinian violence anywhere (unless you count the blackmail of younger Jamal by Jatar in a flashback, but that's a spoken threat, not a physically violent one), whereas we see plenty of Arab-on-Israeli violence (all the torture during hostage days flashbacks, of course, plus some present day scenes in the season finale). For a series which focuses on three (former) IDF soldiers who were hold hostage for years and their families, not about the Israeli/Palestinian conflcit, this works but, well, I noticed.
New characters: Other than Laila (Ismail was already in s1 flashbacks), Abdallah and the Scheich, there's Ynon (spelling?), one of the kids from the school Abdallah attacks in the season opener (on that occasion, Ynon's father dies right in front of him) who grows up determined to avenge his father. Since Ilan from s1 doesn't show up anymore at all (there's one scene in which Yael calls him on the phone, but we never see him), and since Ynon becomes entangled with Yael, I wonder whether there was an actor availability problem and Ilan's secret was originally supposed to be Ynon's backstory. Aaaanyway. There is a certain irony given what Ynon's determined to do versus what he actually does, but to say more would be too spoilery. There's also Zeev, who takes over Chaim's previous narrative function as official our heroes distrust and who looks distractingly like William Adama from BSG (thus ensuring I don't like him, either). As you'll have gathered by now, Laila is my favourite among the newbies and the female character I felt most for in s2 (though I continue to like our heroines from s1 as well).
Google tells me that there could be a third season, but I'm not sure I want one, because most characters at the end of s2 are at a place where I could leave them. (Other than Uri, see above re: soap upera twist. But even with Uri, one can understand why he does it.) And there's the fear it could get worse the way Homeland did if it tries to stretch a story for longer than its natural conclusion. But for now: occasional complaints aside, well done, show. It was an intense and immensely watchable second season.
no subject
Date: 2015-05-24 11:12 am (UTC)Oh, I took it that the repeated depiction of Arab-on-Israeli violence but no Israeli-on-Palestinian violence was political!
Are we avoiding spoilers about the finale, because there was one thing in there that got me really worked up, and I am hoping that if there is a third season it will turn out that all is not as it seems...
Spoilers for the finale
Date: 2015-05-24 12:01 pm (UTC)Finale spoilers: I tried not to get into too much details in my review, but feel free to do so in the comment, readers can always avoid those if they wish to given they're headed "finale spoilers".
Re: getting worked up about...
...
...what got me most was that Amiel basically used Laila to poison her father. And was surprised she didn't want to come with him anymore after that one. Don't get me wrong, I don't object to him committing the murder per se - if there's ever a viable target, the head of an organisation devoted to killing certainly is -, but he tricked her into committing patricide. (Oh, and I also found it ironic that Ynon after all that avenging training actually didn't do any avenging. Ismail killed Abdalla, and Amiel via Laila killed the Scheich. If Ynon hadn't killed the two henchmen, I'd say he turned out to be utterly superfluos.
Re: Spoilers for the finale
Date: 2015-05-24 12:37 pm (UTC)Oh, I did have a problem with Amiel-Yusuf poisoning his father-in-law. I wouldn't have minded Ynon doing it, because, as you say, legitimate target. But for Yusuf - it's his father-in-law - his beloved wife's beloved father, who has been depicted as treating Yusuf kindly. (Admittedly the Sheikh gave Abdallah the chance to expose him as a traitor, but he was sceptical about the suspicions and I think pleased when Abdallah couldn't back them up. And Yusuf doesn't know about that.) For me, the family obligation trumped the politics and I couldn't accept that he put the politics first - particularly when he then expected Leila to put marital loyalty before politics by coming with him after he's admitted that he just poisoned her father!
So I was hoping, that in the montage of happy reunited families at the end, we'd suddenly get a clip of Leila taking tea with her parents, alive and well. Because I constructed an alternative explanation of what was happening: Ynon has made it clear that he won't leave until he's killed the Sheikh, and Yusuf realises that the only way to get everyone out without breaking his wife's heart is to pretend he's killed the Sheikh himself, so the mission is completed and they can all go home. But he can't tell Leila, because he needs her horrified reaction to convince Ynon that he's really done it; at the same time, he knows he's actually saving her father, as the ultimate proof of his love of her, and he's going to tell her the good news as soon as it's safe to do so, and at some level he expects her to understand all this subconsciously and come along with him on trust.
But I fear this won't actually happen, because the first series ended with the revealing of Amiel as Yusuf, so they could have had an equivalent revelation in the final seconds this time, whereas in fact the only twist shown was that he was no longer sure whether he was Amiel or Yusuf now.
Re: Spoilers for the finale
Date: 2015-05-24 01:06 pm (UTC)Re: Spoilers for the finale
Date: 2015-05-24 02:10 pm (UTC)I agree what he seems to be doing with the pendant is tricky, but I'm sure there's some way they could get round it if they wanted to. My guess is that they won't though, partly for the political reasons we mentioned; the default assumption is that the Sheikh deserves to die. Though at least the writers recognise that Leila can't possibly accept it, and possibly it's guilt about what he's done to her that triggers the Yusuf v Amiel existential crisis at the end.
Re: Spoilers for the finale
Date: 2015-05-24 02:21 pm (UTC)Another thing, though I'm not sure the irony was intended: one of the few lines I thought were ooc clunkers in the Yusuf storyline was when the Sheikh said to him mit season how amazing it was that Yusuf had such a great heart, that Yusuf had forgiven them the original torture and that an Arab wouldn't have, but that "that was always a problem you Jews had, you have such a great heart" (I'm not sure how this was phrased in English, that's what the German subtitles said). And I thought - since the Sheikh wasn't speaking in irony - no way an Arab (we don't know whether or not he was Palestinian, Syrian or whatever, so I'm not more specific than Arab) leader of a Jihad organization would say this with a straight face, even if he wanted to be complimentary to his son-in-law, and that this was one of the few times when the writers were being self conglatuatory and misstepped. However, with the finale event in mind, it IS of course a narratively ironic pronouncement, since the Sheikh evidently did not foresee Yusuf killing him - using his own daughter as a means - in cold blood.
Re: Spoilers for the finale
Date: 2015-05-24 03:07 pm (UTC)Exactly what the Sheikh said about Yusuf's great heart is one of the things I've forgotten, but it does sound an implausible line, unless it's a complicated attempt to test his loyalties, which I don't think he was going for at that point.
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Date: 2015-05-24 02:14 pm (UTC)Re: PS
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