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Does 'Tyrant' offer a deeper look into the Arab world?

How many times have you looked at news reports from Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, or Syria and thought, "How come they can't keep it together?"

Adam Rayner as Barry in "Tyrant." (Kata Vermes/FX)
Adam Rayner as Barry in "Tyrant." (Kata Vermes/FX)Read more

How many times have you looked at news reports from Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, or Syria and thought, "How come they can't keep it together?"

How is it the elite in Arab countries can't move beyond repressive regimes? How come they haven't discovered democracy yet?

How many of us have fantasized, "If only I were king, I'd figure it all out"?

With FX's political soap opera Tyrant, created by Gideon Raff, the Israeli TV wunderkind responsible for Prisoners of War and its American remake, Homeland, we got a chance to do just that: take a struggling, oil- and mineral-rich desert dictatorship and guide her to freedom.

Fascinating and perplexing, enjoyable and frustrating, intelligent and obtuse at the same time, Tyrant - the second season premieres Tuesday at 10 p.m. - gives viewers a chance to look at the workings of the fictional Arab state of Abbudin through the eyes of an immensely likable American Everyman. A pediatrician, no less.

By setting the story in the Arab world, the series should be applauded for trying to present the region not through the occasional stereotypical characters that crop up on American shows about the War on Terror - say 24, The Grid, or Sleeper Cell - but, as it were, on the ground, on the region's own terms.

Yet the show can't but help perpetuate a certain paternalistic and patronizing - though perhaps not outright negative - image of Arabs.

Barry is one of us

Tyrant succeeds because the show's hero isn't an exotic other, a strangely dressed, strange-talking foreigner fresh off the boat (or camel caravan). Bassam al-Fayeed (Hunted star Adam Rayner), or Barry, as he's known in America, is handsome, kind, and perhaps most crucially, most unethnic looking.

Barry was born in splendid luxury to the president of Abbudin, Khaled al-Fayeed (Nasser Faris), and his glamorous wife, Amira (Alice Krige). He was so shocked by his father's vicious repression of his own people - including a Saddam Hussein-like chemical gas attack that left 20,000 dead - that he left his homeland at 16, never to return.

We first meet Barry while he's jogging in his nice Pasadena, Calif., neighborhood. He has a charming and very blonde white wife, Molly (Jennifer Finnigan), and two typical teenage kids, the openly gay Sammy (Noah Silver) and his spoiled younger sister, Emma (Anne Winters).

Twenty years after leaving, Bassam relents to pressure from both his Abbudin and Pasadena families to return home for his nephew Ahmed's (Cameron Gharaee) wedding.

Long story short, Dad dies, leaving Bassam's older brother, Jamal (Ashraf Barhom), in charge of the nation. Written no doubt with Hussein's sadistic sons Uday and Qusay in mind, Jamal is a broken man. He's "just a tick below [Jeffrey] Dahmer" on the psychotic personality scale, CIA officer Lea Exley (Leslie Hope) tells Bassam.

When Jamal is injured, Bassam agrees to stay and help turn Abbudin into a free nation. Eventually, he stages a failed coup.

The drama is fascinating, showing the difficulties Bassam faces in introducing the most basic ideas necessary for a working democracy to a country that has no free speech, no right of assembly, and no elections.

Even Bassam rallies to reform the country, the streets fill each day with protesters and terror attacks led by Islamist rebels.

Secular tyranny. Islamist tyranny. Or American-style democracy.

The new season opens with Jamal ordering Bassam hanged. Or does he? There's a thrilling desert odyssey coming up; a terrifying gas attack; and more domestic drama.

But Bassam sure isn't

Perhaps it's not possible for an American show to avoid giving in to Orientalism, a term coined by critic Edward Said for the exoticism - attractive on some levels, repulsive on others - that pervades Western representations of Eastern cultures.

The so-called oriental person was shown as a distant creature in such as shows as I Spy, far too different from us. Before Sept. 11, Arabic terrorists on TV were either effete men played by Brits or growling savage creatures.

Shows after Sept. 11 had Islamist characters cropping up on American soil. Yet their ideology seemed so different from ours they might as well be a thousand miles away.

Through the course of the first season, the audience feels increasingly alienated from Bassam, as well.

As the first season progressed, American Bassam - good ol' Dr. Barry - began to be replaced by a much darker man.

In the pilot, we learn Bassam murdered a man when he was in his teens in place of Jamal, who was too scared to pull the trigger.

Bassam murders another man by his own hand later in the season. His actions lead to dozens of deaths. Such is the burden of leadership.

But Arab Bassam also becomes more dogmatic, impatient, and dictatorial when it comes to his American family.

Rayner's costars, the Arabic characters, no longer speak with British accents, yet they have ridiculous-sounding quasi-Arabic ones. They are, for the most part, sympathetically drawn individuals. Yet again, they are too different from us to count as real people.

This season, Tyrant has Bassam going deeper into his Arabic roots. Will that help us see Arabs as fellow individuals or will it alienate us further?

Only time will tell.

TV REVIEW

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Tyrant

Season Two premieres at 10 p.m. Tuesday on FX

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