The Old Man
IX
Season 2
Episode 2
Editor’s Rating
Photo: FX
Dan and Abbey Chase have left a lot of victims in their wake. In season two of The Old Man, it’s time for their most prominent victim to have her say: Their daughter, Emily Chase. Now that we’ve caught up with Emily’s two dads, Harold Harper and Dan Chase, the focus rightfully shifts in the second episode to Emily’s POV. After living with a dual identity for much of her adult life, Emily is now confronted with an even more shattering reality. The woman raised as “Emily Chase” and known to Harper as FBI agent “Angela Adams” is also Parwana Hamzad, the Afghan-born daughter of Belour Daadfar (a.k.a. Abbey Chase) and Faraz Hamzad.
Even though she’s currently juggling three names, I will continue calling Alia Shawkat’s character Emily for the time being. But I give plenty of credit to The Old Man for beautifully showcasing the character’s ongoing inner identity crisis. I know I’d be just as confused as Emily/Angela/Parwana if I were in her shoes.
What I also like about this new storyline is that despite the presence of three formidable father figures, Emily isn’t so interested in their backstories. No, the person she really wants to know about is her mother. (This is a reminder that Emily’s mom died of Huntington’s disease before the events of the series premiere.)
Now the core drama is how Emily (unwittingly) travels to the other side of the world to unravel the mystery of her mother, only to come up empty. Her struggle isn’t so much accepting her new identity but figuring out how her Afghan family can help paint an accurate picture of Belour.
We pick up right where we left off in the season one finale: Emily arrives at Faraz Hamzad’s Afghanistan compound, having been kidnapped by her biological aunt, Khadija. Khadija’s initial interrogation confirms that whatever backstory Dan and Abbey Chase told 18-year-old Emily, it didn’t include all the branches of her family tree. At this point, Emily is still sticking to the “My name is Angela Adams, and you’re in serious trouble for holding an FBI agent against her will” approach.
That is until Khadija orders an old-timey movie projector into Emily’s locked room, and Emily is FORCED TO WATCH HOME MOVIES OF HER TODDLER SELF WITH YOUNG FARAZ HAMZAD SINGING TO HER WHILE YOUNG DAN CHASE CHILLS IN THE BACKGROUND. Traumatized doesn’t begin to describe Emily’s reaction as Shawkat slowly starts bawling in disbelief. Who can she trust now? The “parents” who raised her in a lie? The Afghan family she just met? Your guess is as good as mine.
The next day, Emily and Faraz Hamzad meet face-to-face for the first time in decades, and, well, it’s about as awkward as you’d expect. Faraz starts by giving his long-lost daughter some Hamzad family history: She comes from a long line of male freedom fighters. The drive to fight off invaders is in her blood. But Emily isn’t here to learn more about domineering men — she’s had enough of that for a lifetime. No, she wants to know about her mother: Why did she spirit her away and withhold the truth? More importantly, was there ever a smidgen of love buried inside this aloof woman? Why didn’t Mommy show her any affection? All valid questions, Em. Unfortunately, Faraz can’t point her in the right direction. He dismisses Belour as a “cold and unfeeling master manipulator,” insinuating that Deconstructing Belour will be one of The Old Man’s major season two mysteries.
Meanwhile, Omar, the shady Taliban spy from the previous episode, has shown up on the outskirts of Hamzad’s village. His unscathed face suggests that he hasn’t crossed paths with the Dude and Harper yet in this timeline. A meeting between Omar and Hamzad further illustrates that Omar is a mercenary piece of shit — and that Hamzad no longer holds the level of power he once did. I’m not going to parse the convoluted details here, but from what I can gather, Hamzad hasn’t been making his protection payments to the government on time, so Omar is trying to take advantage of the situation. We also learn that Omar, as the black sheep of his own family, has, like, no leverage: Even his big, powerful uncle can’t stand him. So the only move he has is to play Hamzad and Chase/Harper against one another.
But it’s not just Omar who’s on thin ice: A brief convo between Hamzad and Khadija reveals that, yeah, they’re in a precarious position too, and Emily’s kidnapping wasn’t because they desired a family reunion: She’s an asset. This, compounded with Hamzad’s decades-long conflict over his daughter’s abduction and an unforgivable betrayal courtesy of his wife and his trusted American ally, means his emotions are ready to boil over. And boy, do we get that in spades. First, Hamzad enters Emily’s room, pointing a gun to her head, furious that she is exactly like the woman who absconded all those years ago. What he didn’t expect was for Emily to rebuff his anger with expert FBI training. She calls him every insult under the sun, taunting him with the knowledge that he wants just as many answers from her as she wants from him.
What transpires here is exactly what Chase was afraid of: Emily triggers Faraz into a rage that spirals into a batshit brawl between father and daughter. It’s disturbing to watch because Faraz and Emily are the victims here. They’re only fighting each other because they can’t release their anger at Johnny and Belour, the real perpetrators. But I digress: We’ve got Faraz nearly choking his daughter to death because he can’t separate her from Belour, and Emily almost pulls the trigger on her own father.
In this dysfunctional family, Emily’s self-defense weirdly wins her newfound respect. She’s moved into a nicer room and given medical treatment. Emily meets her cousin Faruza (Sara Seyed), who thankfully provides a smidgen of the insights she’s been craving. Faruza is on Team Hamzad because the Taliban killed her husband, and Faraz has kept the soldiers at bay ever since. It’s not much, but it’s better than Khadija’s stonewalling. The hardest part for Emily isn’t the trauma of her biological father trying to kill her, but the disappointment that the people of her childhood village can’t give her the “endless supply of answers” she’s so desperately seeking about her mother. Emily also meets Faruza’s cherubic son Farouk, who serves as the conduit for Emily’s growing acceptance of her new family. He teaches her Dari! He shows her his hidden toy stash!
To demonstrate the passage of time, we cut to Omar, now wearing a big ol’ pirate patch after Chase took a giant bite out of his eye socket in the previous episode. An ominous conversation with a Kabul-based minister establishes that Faraz Hamzad’s situation is indeed on shaky ground, especially now that Omar has confirmation that Hamzad is holding an important American asset. As soon as Khadija discovers Taliban soldiers surrounding the lithium mine, she knows the tables have turned.
Suddenly, a horde of Omar-led Taliban soldiers descend upon Hamzad’s compound. Khadija holds them off, and Omar smugly announces that he’s conscripting every boy in the village as punishment for lying about Emily. Faraz, realizing his daughter is no longer safe with him, smuggles a confused Emily into the mountains.
I can’t think of a better time for these two to finally have a heart-to-heart conversation than during a high-pressure escape from the Taliban, can you? To lower the dramatic temperature, The Old Man takes a cute approach, presenting this exchange as Old Faraz speaking to Emily’s childhood self. He offers his condolences on Belour’s death and his divergent thoughts over why he brought Emily to Afghanistan. But he knows what she really wants to hear is something positive about her mother. Since he can’t give Emily what she most desires, he passes along a piece of fatherly wisdom he learned from Belour herself: “You can love someone, or you can trust them.” Gee, who needs warm fuzzies at a family reunion when you can have pain and chaos instead? But before Emily even has time to absorb this bonkers advice, Faraz goes to investigate the sounds from his secret cave hideout. Why could this be the same secret cave hideout where Chase and Harper are currently taking cover? (Yes, yes, it is.) Emily hears a familiar gunshot and enters the cave. Since we don’t know who shot whom, her horrified expression will have to hold us over until next week.
• Is anyone else bothered by how Emily referred to Raymond Waters as her friend? During their physical confrontation, Emily accused Hamzad of killing her “friend.” I’m assuming she meant the moment Khadija stole her away from Waters and Julian Carson in the season one finale. Waters spent the entire first season antagonizing Emily, only to eventually kidnap her on Morgan Bote’s orders. Why would she ever feel any love for that guy?
