Tyrant Season 3 Episode 6 Review: Truth and Dignity
Elizabeth Harlow
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The Al-Fayeed family continues to fall apart on Tyrant Season 3 Episode 6:
Barry's acting more and more like Jamal every day and Sammy's reverting to his naive and spoiled ways, while Leila's had it with them all and is moving out. Poor Ahmed just wants somebody to love him.
The rest of characters didn't fare much better, but at least no one died. Okay, so there were a few close calls, and Fauzi had his heart broken, but they all made it out alive in the end.
Barry is falling further and further down the rabbit hole. It's understandable that having his daughter killed would upend his world. But his pathological need for revenge is one of the reasons the United States adopted the twenty-fifth amendment.
In a democracy, positions of power should not be used for personal gain or as a way to work out personal vendettas.
But our protagonist (I can't quite call him our hero at this point) is abandoning his principles one by one. He's limited religious freedom by closing the prayer rooms, and he's infringing on free speech through his antics with El-Amin.
It's his banning of Al-Qadi and his freedom party that takes the cake. The worst part is, not only is he betraying his personal ideals, the ones that his countrymen back him for, but by doing so, he's playing right into Sheik Abudullah's hand. He should really take his sister-in-law slash foreign secretary's advice on this stuff.
You know what your problem is? You're too filled with hate now. You have your daughter in your head, and that might make you a very good father, but it makes you a terrible president.
Leila [to Barry]
I really loved how Leila and Daliyah's storylines intertwined with and mirrored one another in this episode. Their first face to face meeting was rather...tetchy. They really do have a lot in common (outside of the mistake of sleeping with Barry), and I appreciate that the writer's acknowledged that.
Leila catches a lot of flak for coming off a coldhearted bitch, but I would argue that most of that attitude developed out of self preservation. Like Daliyah, she was forced into marriage with a man that she didn't love, but she also couldn't respect him and she had the extreme pressure of royal scrutiny bearing down on her.
While Daliyah is considered a saint, she resents her image as much as Leila does hers. They're really just both women trying to find personal fulfillment and recognition through their contributions to their communities, and hoping to find mutual love as well. They're basically trying to achieve the work-life balance so many women dream of, all while bullets rain down around them.
This whole damn world is insane, and I'm just trying to find something, anything, to help me through it, even if it's not mine.
Daliyah
They're both attempting this and managing to sound like the smartest, most capable leaders we've seen so far. Fauzi seems like a nice guy and all, but the little rhetoric that we've heard from him hasn't been that inspiring or insightful.
He's basically got a boiler plate pro-Westernization, anti-extremist campaign going on, and half his attraction to Daliyah is her political capital and the fact that he really isn't comfortable with the idea of actually governing. Al-Qadi might have some regressive ideas about an ideal society, but at least he takes some misguided action.
Seriously, how did he ever think that going to meet with Ihab, alone, was a good idea? The smart move would have been to form a coalition with Leila.
As soon as he said he was going to go to Syria, I kept hearing Admiral Ackbar in my head: "It's a trap!"
Family's a screwed up thing, isn't it? Democracy, too.
Sammy
Sammy proved that he's not very good at taking a moment to assess the landscape for potential mines before rushing in headlong either. His accidental reveal of his relationship had me cringing.
And the fact that he didn't understand why Barry was so upset with who his paramour was had me wishing Emma was alive to explain it to him.
On the other hand, El-Amin's rant to Sammy was pretty damn good. Really, what did Sammy know about him, other than his sexual preference?
And after his last boyfriend was murdered by the Caliphate, I would have thought that he had a better grasp on just how dangerous being outed as a gay man can be in Abuddin.
I mean, he's probably right that his father won't betray the knowledge of their relationship, but still. Maybe he should have shared Barry's secret just to even the scales.
Family's a screwed up thing, isn't it? Democracy, too.
Sammy
Can we all take a second to acknowledge how ridiculous the Abuddin version of Twitter is? I know plenty of people initially considered "twitter" a nonsensical word, but it is based on common parlance -- "a little bird" is code for gossip, a twitter is a type of bird call.But what the hell is "Bliffer?"
Seriously. Also, the Caliphate posts pictures of dead bodies and videos of executions, but has managed to maintain an active account for six years? Where is this company based?
I do love that the third recommendation for who to follow was "Caliphate Style" which had me imagining "Gangam Style," but with camels.
It's nice when families can have activities they can do together. We kill each other. We bury each other.
Ahmed
Airing on August 17th, "Bedfellows" (Tyrant Season 3 Episode 7) will find Leila and Cogswell trying to hush up whomever was taken photos of their petit liaison. Was it a Abuddin gossip rag, a political rival, or Cogswell's wife?
While they fight for their relationship, Barry (per his habit of compartmentalization and his martyr complex), is busy pushing Daliyah away.
If you missed any of Tyrant Season 3, you can always watch Tyrant online to catch up! Join us in the comments section to share your take on "Truth and Dignity" and how Abdullah is playing Barry like a cheap fiddle.
Elizabeth Harlow was a staff writer for TV Fanatic. She left the organization in October 2018.
