Tuesday, July 7, 2020

What I’m Watching: Ramy


Ramy: Season 2, Episode 6 “They” (B+)

I should have known to expect a Maysa-centric episode after Dena got her own spotlight, just one episode earlier than this same point in season one. While this half-hour wasn’t nearly as powerful or emphatic as the last time we got to spend time exclusively with Ramy’s mother, it was still quite entertaining and poignant. She was awfully vocal about her dislike for Trump in her citizenship interview, though it didn’t seem to faze that particular employee. I like that she suggested to two people speaking Spanish that they should practice their English when they were there for a completely different purpose. That was far from the extent of her unintentional microaggresions (and full-on aggressions) which she thought got her flagged for suspension from her driving job. Dena was a good stand-in for the audience, asking her how she possibly felt the way that she spoke to her passenger was acceptable. Tracking them down and asking them to help her while once again making problematic statements was cringe-worthy, and I wonder if this friendly police plotline would still have been featured if this show was being filmed now. I remember an episode of “Black-ish” where the matriarch purported to be a lifelong Democrat yet echoed almost all of Trump’s policies directly, and it was nice to see Maysa respond with such a fervor for not being identified that way, dreaming of Ruth Bader Ginsberg and throwing her newly attained citizenship in Trump’s face while staring directly at his photo during her oath.

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