From its title, “Sharia,” on down, the fifth episode of ZeroZeroZero is nominally concerned with the fundamentalist militia that becomes the latest obstacle in the path of the show’s ill-fated cocaine shipment. The way it handles the group is…tricky. Much is done to humanize them, particularly their leader, and to portray them as just another gun-toting subculture, like the Italian mob and the Mexican cartel. That said, there’s a degree of stereotyping that American eyes and ears will impose on such characters almost automatically; having a bunch of them cheer “Allahu Akbar!” when a bomb goes off in a hotel on a live news broadcast isn’t doing them any favors, that’s for sure.
But there’s a throughline for this episode, and it’s not jihad—it’s family.
I reviewed episode five of ZeroZeroZero for Decider.
Tags: decider, reviews, TV, TV reviews, zerozerozero