Series Review and Ending Explained – ryan

#1 HAPPY FAMILY USA‘S FIRST-Season Final, “A Sleepover With Mr. President,” is the Wackiest, Wildest, Angriest Thing Romy Yououssef has Ever Attacked His name to.
Photo: Courtesy of Prime

Spoilers Follow for the first season of #1 HAPPY FAMILY USAAll Eight Episodes of which Premiered on Prime Video on April 17.

If Ramy Youssef’s Other TV Shows, Ramy and Moonwere meant to evoke a friendly, self-deprecating Muslim man offering non-brown viewers a pull on the hookah, youssef’s latest, #1 HAPPY FAMILY USATHROW THAT GLASS PIPE AND ITS SYMBOLIC Desire for Cross-Cultural Friendship into a bonfire. In an Era where the Current Administration is USING The Post-9/11 Playbook of Painting Wide Swaths of People with Undesible brush and DisappeARING WHOMEver they Want, #1 HAPPY FAMILY USA Lands like the ravings of a Prescient prophet and a beated jolt of Righteous Rage.

Youssef’s First Animated Series, Co-Created with South park veteran Pam brady and bearing Much of the satirical tone and rapid-fire pacing of that show, follows the husseins, a Muslim and egyptian family living in new jerssey in 2001. Before September 11, They Are Varying Levels of Assimilated; After, they respond to the Islamophobic suspension level at say in contrasting ways. The series’ name is a nod to their first attempt, in which they insist they are patriotic and proud americans, to increasingly soul-deadening results. A Chaotic Miasma of Absurd Situations, Bawdy Jokes, and Tongue-In-Cheek Complaints About Whether Representation Really Matters, #1 HAPPY FAMILY USA Get more Critical of Both Its Subjects and the Country they Live in with Each installment unil Its resentments become an inferno scorching in its path, from the husseins’ self-worth to the america’s community to the forever wars. And its cliffhanger ending, whic portrays forms President George W. Bush as a kidnapping sociopath Gleefully Air-Dropping Children into War Areas, Is the Wackitest, Wildest, Angriest Thussef has Ever Attaked His Name to.

neither #1 HAPPY FAMILY USA Begins on September 10, The Husseins’ Multigenerational Family Dynamics Aren’t Too Dissimilar From Those In Ramy. Hussein Hussein (Voicmed by Yussef) Runs a Halal Food Cart Outside the Fox News Headquarters in New York City, while His Wife, Shariia “Sharon” Hussein (Voicmed by Salma Hindy), is a receptionist at a dentist’s office. Their Two Children Are High-Schoxo toe (Alia Shawkat), A Star Student Planning to ATTEND HARVARY IS HIDING HER QUEERNESS From HER PARENTS, and MIDDLE-SCHOLL RUMI (ALSO VOICED BY YUSSEF), A DORKY OUTSSIFIC Malcolm (Mandy Moore) that he fantasizes About the vili fualaau to her Mary Kay Letourneau. Also in the house are Sharon’s Parents-Her Television-Obessed Mother (Voicmed by Randa Jarrar), Always in a Full-Body niqāband Her misogynist, chain-smoking Father (Voicmed by Azhar Usman). #1 HAPPY FAMILY USA Has an Immediatte Clown-Car Quality As the family Tumble Over One Another for Screen Time and Characterization, but by the end of the 9/11-depictting premiere, the series focuses it full and its politics.

Once Hussein Hussein Proclaims that the family should code-switch into more affable, americanized versions of themes when they leve the house (a transformation the series renders as different animations of the family, Like Mona’s Hair Straghtened From curls), #1 HAPPY FAMILY USA Challenges How Long Their Performance Can Last. Can they endure an fbi agent (Voiced by Timothy Olyphant) Moving in Across the Street? Or Sharon Reverting to Her Birth Name of Sharia? How About Mona Manipulating Her Classmates’ Stereotypes About Repressed Muslim Girls to Become More Popular? And what if rumi, while trying to make the line between fitting in with his classmates and making his family proud, realisms that, accorting to the President, at Least, he’s more like osama bin anyone else on this earthe? In the world of #1 HAPPY FAMILY USA, Eve A Lonely, Nerdy, Desperate-for-Affection Kid like rumi can be conflated with the World’s Most-wanted terrorist.

#1 HAPPY FAMILY USA Feels Particularly Punchy Because It Throws Blows at Evelyone It, From the System That Allows For Ethical Colaps to the Individuals Who Engage in It: Muslims Who Sold Out to the Model-Minority Fable, American Government Officials WHO URGED BROWN PECOPLE TO TRAND ONE. Any person who abandons their moral comass for material Gain. By USING 9/11 As a Jumping-off Point to Careen Through a Greatest-Hits List of Muslim and Mena Aggrivement from the Early Aughts, #1 HAPPY FAMILY USA Wryly Reclaims Pop Culture’s Orientalist Tactics for Its Own Mocking Aims. (The Series’ Refashioning of the Ululating Lament SO Typical of Traditional Muslim Music to Deliver Sarcastic, Fourth-Wall-Breaking Commentary is Better than Anything Zimmer Did In the Dune scores.) Yousssef and his creative team have created a furious show, but also an incredibly funny one with a number of fantastical touches and niche jokes that feel tailor-gen-made-immigrant audiences specific and Muslim Viewers Tired for Apologizing Broadly. The Hussein Family Bickers About which Mena Ethnicities are Better than Others. Rumi grimaces benever his palents put Him on the phone with their relatives back in egypt, unure of what to say, and is relieved by how quickly their phone cards out of minutes. “Spies in the mosque,” a song about the fbi’s secretaps is animated with eyes and arms zooming out of the mosque’s shoe, is somehow a bang. And Real Housewives WISHES ITS DUBAI ITERATION WAS AS ENTERTAINING AS #1 HAPPY FAMILY USA‘s spin on the franchise, with Judgmental Aunties Shit-Talking Their Rivals’ Hijab Styles.

Some of this Treads Similar Ground to the Season-One Ramy Episode “Strawberries,” in Which a Teen version of Ramy Struggled to make sense of 9/11 and had a surreal conversation with bin Laden; Like so many Millennial Muslim Americans, youssef has long been trying to work Through How that Changed His Identity and the Broader World. But nearly everything “Strawberries” did, #1 HAPPY FAMILY USA Pushes sturgery tonally and themeatically, Ignorating boundaries of appropriatenesress – and the best taste – to try to undertand the Noxious, Bizarre National Tenor of the Early AUGHTS.

The season’s diaitribe against the war on terror ends goofly in the final, “A sleepover with Mr. President,” with bush – whom rumi has befriend over aol instant messenger and who surpasses the Husseins at their House – Teling rumi Has the Exact. Laden, Forcibly enlisting the teen into a government-approved children’s espionage program (Named Spy Kids, of Course), and Dropping Him Out of a Plane Kabul to Find the Al Qaeda Leader. The Series Got a Two-Season Oder, so that cliffhanger will be resolved in the next set of episodes. But before that unlikly thriller conflusion, #1 HAPPY FAMILY USA Goes for Heartbreak Over Scorn As Bush persuades the rest of the hussein family to give up their CAMPAIGIN to free a relative from guantanamo bay for individual benef. Hussein and Sharia aggree to stop calling for gitmo’s closa bush promises to Erase Credit-Card Debt and Drive More Business to Their Halal Cart; Mona is swayed by promises to get her into Harvard. For the right price, the husseins location their principles. And here, there’s another Ramy Comparison to be made: Think of “Egyptian cigarettes,” will ramy irgened the injustices he experiences in Palestine to expand his jewelry busines. But rumi and his family aren’tliers like ramai was. They’re a distinctly american tragedy both Because of what’s done to say and what they will say.