Prologue:
A top Israeli agent comes out of retirement to hunt for a Palestinian militant he thought he’d killed, setting a chaotic chain of events into motion.
IMDB: 8.3
Rotten Tomatoes: 100%
Plot:
The story of Fauda resumes after the events of Season 3 ending where we saw Doron’s (Lior Raz) die in a bombing and Doron suffers a loss because of it. The story continues as we see Doron struggling with his emotional balance and traumatic experience. Doron is currently on his family’s farm, working there and keeping a low profile. Doron is attacked at the farm where the fight between the intruders and him becomes brutal, Doron is arrested by the police.
Next day we see Gabi getting Doron bailing him out of the prison. Seeing Doron struggling, Gabi aka Captain Eyov (Itzik Cohen) takes Doron as his security officer to Brussels to meet with an agent, Omar Tawalbe (Amir Boutrous) as he is facing a few problems on his mission. As the two Israeli agents reach Brussels, many such moment occur that keep on getting Doron more and more agitated towards the security issues and safety of their meeting. Later when Gabi goes to meet Omar, the things that got Doron worried sum to the safety compromises and leads to the kidnapping of Gabi.
From there we see how our agents plan to save Gabi, but the smartness and alertness of the terrorists group keeps their possession Gabi strong and decisive. From here on, we can only anticipate even if our Israeli agents will be able to save their Captain Gabi. Or even if they get a hold of Gabi, will he be dead or alive.
Review:
After hardly getting any recaps and pointers of what happened in the past seasons of Fauda, we start Season 4 with the knowledge of just remembering that someone died in the last season in a bomb blast and the vivid image of Doron crying in front of that house (I found the summaries of past season, so don’t worry about the review, the story continuation remains in-tact).
As we expect from Fauda, this season delivers on the level that the series has set for all these years. But the difference we see in this season is that Doron does not get control over everything instantly or even in the complete season. Doron is now operating under the Brussels Government, so it turns out that the operations are led by the Brussels Secret Agency, but the ground agents remain the same – Doron, Hertzel (Doron Ben-David), Nurit (Rona-Lee Shimon), Sagi (Idan Amedi), Shirin El Abed (Yaakov Zada Daniel). The additional new member to the group of our agents is Shani Russo (Inbar Lavi), who has been previously involved with the group sometime in the past and makes her way back to the team. The head of the operations in this season for our Israeli agents is Dana (Meirav Shirom).
Although the writers did good enough to keep their viewers excited and interested enough to keep them watching the series. But lately, after watching 3 seasons of Fauda, season 4 becomes predictable. While watching the events occurring in this season, I was able to predict about what can happen in the near future for the agents and how they will manage to deal with it. Throughout the series, I was assured that the agents will somehow manage to save Gabi and everything will be fine yet again.
But not all was predictable. There were some things that came out of nowhere and really stunned me as a viewer. Now all we can do is wait for Season 5. And the things that came out of course, will be discussed below.
5 things I liked about Fauda Season 4:
- The story buildup of the entire season was fantastically implemented. By the mid-way of Season 4, I was in doubt about how the series will manage to complete its story as merely a few episodes were left. But the sudden pace-up of the series was executed to its perfection and wrapped up the story for this season beautifully. No matter what happens in the series, the writers of Fauda are perfectionists, even with the limited resources they have.
- The introduction of new characters was really well-built. Whether it was Russo, Omar, or his sister Maya, along with their cousin Adel. Every character was given enough attention to be built well enough to have a long-lasting impact on the viewers when they are watching the series. But maybe, Adel could have had more screen time and character buildup in the series.
- The emotional buildup of existing characters like Sagi, Nurit, Shirin, and Hertzel was built really well. The career path of these characters is a really dangerous and exhausting one. And now as we reach Season 4 of the series, these characters have started getting exhausted and having burnout because of their tiring job. As for Sagi and Nurit, these two get married and expect a child, so they want to spend some time together as well.
- The character buildup of Omar Tawalbe was brilliant. The way Omar’s story starts up when his father was a secret agent who betrayed his country and was later killed by radicals. Then Gabi gives the Tawalbe family shelter in Israel and raises the two kids of the family to serve Israel, Omar in Secret Agency, and Maya as a police officer. Still, we see that Omar gets manipulated by Islamic radicals as he turns against Israel and kidnaps Gabi for information.
- The cliffhanger in the last episode was an epic spectacle to watch. The way we realize that Gabi revealed all the secrets of the Israeli Secret Agency and now Adel knows everything about Israel. The agents are assigned to kill Adel after a series of air bombing that happens in Israel and many people are killed. And at the final shot, as the agents somehow manage to kill all the terrorists and members of Adel’s army because of the ‘Fauda’ that happens, we have to wait to see how many of our beloved agents survived the shootout.
5 things I disliked about Fauda Season 4:
- The story of the series has somehow started getting predictable. While watching the series, I was able to guess and predict who will survive and how the events will occur. Yes, some of the events like Gabi getting shot and kidnapped was unpredictable, similarly the cliffhanger at the end of the season where we are quite not sure who survived the shootout. But after watching the four seasons of Fauda, the story has started getting repetitive and predictable for viewers.
- The anticipation of the Israeli agents getting into some action became really boring. Yes, it is acceptable that considering the real world, no country will give authority to the agents of another country to progress with their missions on their grounds. But the agents getting from Israel to Brussels and then getting the authority to carry on their mission to find Gabi took longer time than one could have expected.
- The action sequences in this season were very limited. Most of the time the Israeli agents were planning and making sure that every step that they take is correct. Yes, this is what it should have been from the start. But as a fan of Fauda, we are used to seeing Doron going berserk and out of his limits to complete a given task. Those particular stints with Doron were mostly missing this season. Although there were sequences where Doron did take such actions when he was with Maya in order to find where Omar is, but in the past few seasons, we have seen Doron doing such things much more than we saw in this season.
- The countries were not mentioned and built for the international audience good enough. The story was going everywhere around the neighboring countries of Israel, and someone who is hardly familiar with the countries surrounding and neighboring Israel will be clueless about where the characters currently are. Even for me, there were instances where I had to open the world map to spot the countries mentioned in this season and how it was affecting the story. Previously, the writers of Fauda had done a better job than this as I can clearly remember them building the storyline around Palestine and various other countries.
- And as I mentioned above in the things I liked section, the development of Adel Tawalbe (Loai Nofi) could have been done better. We saw him recruiting people for his radical army and later even visiting their families when one of them passed away, but the way he was built and the screen time the character got was unjustified. Although, the actor looked like he had good potential in him, but he was killed too soon when the entire story diverted from Omar to Adel.
