Take Three: Ramy

Ramy: Season 1, Episode 3 “A Black Spot on the Heart” (B+)

I wasn’t so sure about the way this episode started, with the depiction of the Orthodox Jew that had workarounds so that he could have his granddaughter pay for his watch feeling more than a bit unnecessarily exaggerated. Fortunately, after the weirdness of Ramy being asked “what is time” and then being told to take off his clothes, things got a whole lot more normal. I like that Ramy told Sarah that he was actually “the other Middle Eastern thing” and attributed his hair as belonging to the whole region rather than “Jew curls” since the Jews get the land, a humorous breakdown of the area that didn’t feel all that layered or complicated. I knew I recognized Sarah from somewhere, and that’s because she was played by Molly Gordon, who appeared in two great comedies I saw at SXSW that will be coming out soon, “Booksmart” and “Good Boys.” I hope we’ll see her again, since her Palestine comment while on drugs and her apparent dalliance with someone else didn’t feel like the proper goodbye, especially considering how much Ramy seemed to like her. His drug trip was indeed impulsive, and I’m glad that it wasn’t just a generic stoner scene like the ones featured on so many shows, pushing him instead to say some very real things that were horribly offensive to the mother of the one person just as typically offensive as he was in that moment. Steve will certainly forgive him, and I’m sure he’ll be clearer once he comes down from his first drug experience.