Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for The Old Man Season 2 Episodes 1 & 2.
FX’s The Old Man can pretend to be a political, military, spy drama all it wants, and I suppose in many ways it is. Secretly, though, this series is a soap opera pure and simple, and frankly, it thrives when it really leans into those elements. Give me the melodrama, give me the long-buried secrets. Luckily, the end of Season 1 left us poised for the most beautiful of soap opera payoffs. Dan Chase (Jeff Bridges) revealed to his longtime friend and associate Harold Harper (John Lithgow) that his daughter Emily (Alia Shawkat) is not actually his biological daughter, but rather that of Afghan warlord Faraz Hamzad (Navid Negahban), who’s been out to get Chase for a while. Gee, I wonder why. Season 1 ended with Emily brought to Hamzad’s village — where she’s referred to as Parwana — and with Chase and Harper hot on her trail. Season 2 picks up almost immediately after, so let’s dive in.
Chase and Harper Set Out to Rescue Emily in ‘The Old Man’ Season 2 Premiere
Chase and Harper, in a demonstration of how much they love Emily, are sitting in the back of a box truck, something which cannot be good for either of their backs, but needs must when sneaking across a border into Afghanistan. Though he doesn’t say as much explicitly, Harper is still annoyed with Chase for not telling him the truth about Emily, but is at least determined to rally for the sake of his protegé. Their truck manages to clear the border successfully, and the two are on their way to get their girl.
Chase is disturbed by Harper’s determination to make sense of the situation they’re in, pointing out that that kind of rational, linear thinking won’t work on a rescue mission like this. I’d argue that you probably do need to bring Harper’s style of thinking on a mission like this, if only to have something to measure the events against, but to be fair to Chase, the fact that Emily’s been gone for three weeks is probably getting to him.
Their relatively smooth trip doesn’t stay smooth for long as the truck is stopped by a group of armed men who kill their drivers, but who are also killed in turn. Chase suggests that Harper call “her” to help get them out, but Harper refuses — at least for now. Instead, he finds their driver’s GPS and suggests Chase take them to the rendezvous point himself. Chase points out that while he can get them there physically, without their driver, finding their contact to get into Hamzad’s village just got that much trickier.
Despite this, Chase agrees to drive them over, and disregarding the GPS takes them down an alternate route that leads straight to the resistance fighters they’re looking for, much to Harper’s astonishment. Though their circumstances are serious, I do want to take this moment to acknowledge that even in the midst of all that, to me, Bridges and Lithgow are comedy gold. I’m not even sure how intentional it is, but Bridges’ Chase as the gruff straight man, and Lithgow’s Harper just barely hanging on to his sanity is a pitch-perfect combination. Without their dynamic — which we got tragically little of in Season 1 — the rescue mission runs the risk of feeling extremely bleak. Not to say it isn’t still treated seriously, but with Lithgow so obviously a fish out of water, and Bridges keeping to just this side of annoyed, the two powerhouse actors inject a lot of energy into what could otherwise be an extremely understated episode.
Chase and Harper Run Into the Taliban in ‘The Old Man’ Season 2
The pair let themselves into the resistance hideout, which goes about as well as you can expect it to go when two white men arrive at a secluded house in Afghanistan unannounced. The two are hauled outside at gunpoint, and unfortunately, my limits of understanding rapidly spoken Dari as a Farsi speaker are somewhat limited, so I couldn’t make out what was being shouted at them. But whatever the resistance leader is saying, he’s definitely not happy. He’s about to have them both executed when they’re saved by a young man arriving on horseback, claiming he was sent by a Commander Abdul Nazary.
The young man, Omar (Artur Zai Barrera), asks about their driver, Hameed, who was supposed to bring them this far, and Chase explains that he’s dead, but that they were hoping the Commander and his men would help them get Emily back. Omar bristles at being treated like a mercenary until Chase tells him Emily was taken by Hamzad. That’s enough for him to order the armed men to back off, and they actually listen to him.
He invites Chase and Harper back inside to catch them up and tells them there are few units like theirs left fighting back against the government, adding that they’d all heard an FBI agent was taken, but were surprised at the lack of official American response. Harper tells them that their contact has agreed to fund the unit that helps them, and that combined with the promise of getting to cause trouble for Hamzad is enough to get Omar on board. He tries to make logistical suggestions, but Chase is adamant they get through the mission as quickly as possible.
Out on the road, Omar tells them that while Hamzad was hailed as a hero a generation ago, nowadays the young men see him as more of a monster. He adds that the resistance turned to Hamzad when the Taliban took over, but he refused to help, as he’s now got business dealings with the government — namely the same lithium deposit that Abbey (Leem Lubany) warned Chase about all those years ago. Chase insists that Hamzad would never deal with the Taliban, but Omar counters that things have changed in the wake of this unexpected windfall, and shows them photos to prove it, and adds that Hamzad has set himself up as the middle man, as he’s the only one in the area the U.S. hasn’t sanctioned.
As they ride on, we get our first flashback of the season, with a young Chase (Bill Heck) and Abbey in a diner shortly after fleeing Afghanistan. There, Abbey tells him that her daughter — who I will just keep calling Emily to keep things easier — doesn’t need to know anything about where she came from, and will instead start over fresh. She also has Chase promise never to tell Emily anything about Hamzad, and to not let Hamzad find her in turn as it would put her in danger. While I get that memories grow hazy as we get older, I still have pretty clear memories of my childhood, from when I was three or so, and I find it wild that Emily doesn’t remember anything about being born elsewhere or moving to a new country — or so it would seem, but we’ll get to that later.
As the group makes a pit stop on the road because Harper just can’t hold it anymore, Omar uses the opportunity to try and figure out how it is that Chase not only fits in well with the environment but seems to know a lot about Hamzad. It turns out this is less an interrogation, and more Omar revealing just how much he knows, as he tells Chase the story he heard of an American operative who embedded himself with Hamzad during the fight against the Russians, and asks if he’s the one in the story. Chase doesn’t fully confirm it, but he might as well have.
They arrive at the camp to find a body hanging from a tree, and the residents of the camp massacred. It’s finally at this point Harold agrees to call “her,” namely his first wife, Marion (Janet McTeer). He catches her up on their progress, and asks if she’s able to help them further. She tells him to give her some time to sort something out, but tells him to ask Ali for advice on a safe place to hide. Who’s Ali, you ask? The man they were supposed to meet. This is not looking good for Omar.
Omar Is a Double Agent in ‘The Old Man’ Season 2 Premiere
While Harper presumably has a meltdown over this, Chase and Omar survey the damage and Omar asks yet again who the woman is that they’re trying to save. Suddenly, with this new information from Marion, his questions don’t feel all that innocent anymore — not that they ever did. He pushes Chase just far enough that he clues into the fact that Omar probably isn’t who he says he is and a fight breaks out. Omar gains the upper hand and reveals he is a Taliban spy, interested to know why Hamzad has been behaving strangely lately.
Chase manages to fight him off just as Harper comes charging up on a horse and the two of them take off, leaving Omar behind but with three more Taliban operatives in pursuit. They manage to shake them off at the foot of a rocky range of hills, where Chase takes Harper to an old hideout of Abbey’s in one of the caves, where they can rest and regroup using whatever supplies are leftover. Chase suggests that Harper use Marion’s help to get out of Afghanistan to get back to his family, as there are people who need him back in the States. He then shares the real reason he’s been so surly the whole trip: Chase is convinced Emily is dead at Hamzad’s hands for the crime of reminding him of Abbey, or of Chase himself.
I can appreciate that the past few decades have been rough on Chase, but I wonder at what point he lost so much perspective that he decided that a man would fight to get back the daughter who was stolen from him when she was a baby, only to kill her a few days later. I’m not questioning the fact that Chase loves his daughter or the fact that for all Hamzad is her “father,” Chase is definitely her “dad.” Somewhere in all this, however, he seems to have forgotten that Hamzad has a vested, emotional interest in Emily’s return, and it’s one he’s been pursuing for the better part of several decades.
Harper accuses Chase of being too scared to see Emily again, and of having to explain her past to her, but Chase ignores him and instead encourages him to go home again. As Harper leaves to call his wife Cheryl (Jessica Harper) to tell her the trip will take a little longer than expected, only to learn that Marion called his house back in the States, and that there’s some sort of trouble back home. Meanwhile, back in the cave, the episode finally gets its first surreal moment, the kind that was a hallmark of the first season, and really helped it stand out from other shows of this nature. As Chase attempts to sleep, he’s visited by a vision of a young Hamzad (Pej Vahdat), taunting him. He wakes to see an old Hamzad standing over him, and the first episode ends with a gunshot.
Emily Chase Finally Meets Her Biological Father in ‘The Old Man’ Season 2 Premiere
The decision to pair Episode 1 and 2 together as a supersized premiere is one of the few times it makes sense to do so, in this age where the eight-episode season has gone from a rarity to standard practice. In this case, it makes sense because the two episodes are essentially happening simultaneously. Where Episode 1 takes place over two or three emotionally charged days, three weeks after Emily’s abduction, Episode 2 takes things back to the moment she arrives at the village.
She’s ushered into a barely furnished room, where she is met by Khadija (Jacqueline Antarmian), who asks her how much she knows. Emily sticks to her FBI training and goes on the defensive, but Khadija already has the information she needs, a confirmation that Abbey lied to Emily about who she really is. Emily’s further attempts to bargain for her freedom go ignored, and Khadija instead instructs her to change clothes, in order to meet her “father.” Rather than dancing around the truth of Emily’s identity, Khadija lays it all out immediately, to Emily’s immediate skepticism. Even trying to play along gets her nowhere, and she’s left behind in the cell.
Eventually, three women enter, but they only stay long enough to set up an old projector before leaving again. The three don’t even switch it on, trusting Emily’s curiosity to get the better of her, which it immediately does. Whatever she might be expecting, what she gets instead is a home movie of the village, bustling and busy, with a young Hamzad sitting front and center, singing a lullaby to his baby daughter. While we do get the occasional look at the video, most of the scene lingers on Alia Shawkat’s face, as it goes from confusion to horror, to devastation as, presumably, at least some memories start coming back. The horrifying implication of this scene for Emily — that she does remember her early childhood and is now realizing how much she’s repressed — and the masterful way Shawkat pulls it off makes this, for me, the most emotional scene in the premiere, and really in the first half of the season.
The next morning, Khadija takes Emily to meet Hamzad at last, not at his residence, but instead out in the village graveyard. For all that he kept an eye on her room the night before, watching as she replayed the video, he can’t bring himself to look at her now. Emily tells him she followed Harper to Afghanistan to learn about where she came from, but pushes past his family history lesson to ask about her mother instead. Hamzad’s dismissal of Abbey only confirms Emily’s own conflicted memories of her, and he leaves her standing there to rejoin Khadija instead.
The Taliban Comes to Hamzad’s Village in ‘The Old Man’ Season 2 Premiere
Back in the village, Omar waits for Hamzad outside the village gates to ostensibly offer his assistance, but really to tell Hamzad he knows Emily is there. Hamzad invites him in but denies that there’s an American staying with him. Omar then brings up the lithium deposit that Hamzad operates without oversight as a way to bring up the real reason for his visit: Hamzad has yet to pay his most recent bribe to the Taliban. Hamzad attempts to threaten him right back, and it works well enough to get Omar to leave, but before he does so, he tells Hamzad that Chase and Harper are searching for Emily.
As soon as he leaves, Khadija tells Hamzad again that the situation he’s built for himself isn’t sustainable, and something has to give, particularly because as soon as they let Emily go, they’ll have to explain why they took her at all, and that Omar won’t be kept at bay once Hamzad’s money is no good to the Taliban anymore. Hamzad decides to take action then, and lets himself into Emily’s cell with the intent of killing her, claiming she’s exactly like her mother. Emily fires back that he’s too much of a coward to ask whatever he wants to know, and the two of them come to blows. Even though Emily gains the upper hand, and manages to get Hamzad’s gun from him, and even though she calls him a coward for not being able to kill her, she can’t bring herself to kill him either.
Khadija walks in on this sorry sight and decides a new strategy is needed — never doubt who it is that really runs things around here — and takes Emily to stay with the other young women in the house. One of them, Faruza (Sara Seyed) takes point on patching Emily up, and introduces herself as her cousin — technically, they’re related through Khadija, who’s Emily’s paternal aunt, and Faruza’s maternal uncle’s wife, but hey, I’ve called people cousin for less. The next day, Emily finally asks Khadija about her mother, trying to paint a picture of why she left, Khadija doesn’t answer, telling Emily that she needs to ask the “right” questions before she will, and leaves her behind. While her efforts on that front go poorly, at least Faruza is more forthcoming in painting Emily a picture of what’s been happening in the village since Chase and Abbey left. Emily meets Faruza’s son Farouk (Michael Sifain) — who takes an immediate liking to Emily — and learns that his father was killed fighting back against the Taliban, but that the Taliban retreated after Hamzad stepped in. It is, by far, the most sympathetic picture of Hamzad anyone has painted thus far.
I know we’ve repeatedly been told that Hamzad is a monster, and it’s true that he’s far from being a saint, but the further we get into Season 2, the more I struggle with that depiction. He might be violent, and he might use shady methods to achieve his purposes, but I would argue that Dan Chase does very much the same thing. Hamzad spent decades trying to get his daughter back from the man who stole her, and now Chase is doing the exact same thing. And this is not to say that the show takes a hypocritical stance on this — Faruza wouldn’t be singing his praises if it did — but I wonder if the rest of the season will bring this kind of perspective and clarity to Chase as well.
The Danger Hits Close to Home in ‘The Old Man’ Season 2 Premiere
The episode then catches up to the present timeline, shortly after Chase and Harper leave Omar in the dust and take off for the cave. Omar, now minus one eye, heads off to talk to his bosses, telling them Hamzad’s been lying to them about having an American in their custody. Said boss assures him that the Taliban has decided to take a firmer hand in his business affairs to get him under control, before urging Omar to pay Hamzad a visit. Because Khadija is the real brains behind the entire operation, she’s already caught on to the Taliban’s control of the lithium deposit and hops on the phone with someone English-speaking, someone who promised the Hamzad family wouldn’t be sanctioned, and that whatever assurances had been put in place have been violated.
Back in the village, Emily gets a chance to open up to Faruza about how little she knew her mother, and when it finally seems like she’s making some sort of emotional headway on that front, Hamzad shows up and tells her it’s time for her to leave the village, as it’s become unsafe for her. The danger? The Taliban literally at the gates. Omar tells Khadija he’s come to see Hamzad and will not be taking no for an answer. She escorts them into a courtyard where they’re surrounded by Hamzad’s men. Her ploy to throw them off fails, as Omar tells her he’s gone from just wanting to take Hamzad to now conscripting every boy in the village into the Taliban.
I suppose this is mostly on me for making assumptions about American media in general, but I typically expect stories of this kind to paint an entire nation as in league with the big bad government in power. A lot of time in Season 1 was dedicated to showing that Hamzad and his people were fighting against Russian invaders, though granted we barely saw those invaders and instead spent time with the people to see how that fight was affecting them. I appreciate that now, in Season 2, with the Taliban poised to be the villains on this second go-round, the show is taking the time to demonstrate how they’re making life impossible for the people in Afghanistan, as most totalitarian government hurt their homelands first before expanding outward. It’s an unfortunately topical element of the show, but the distinction is appreciated.
Hamzad gets Emily out of the compound and the two of them head for the same rocky cliffs that Chase and Harper are hiding in, and bound for the same cave. Here, at the tail end of the second episode, we get another example of the surreal visuals The Old Man does so well. As they walk and talk, Hamzad sees Emily not as the adult she is, but as the child she still is in his imagination, the child he never got to meet. He confesses he brought her there for a sense of closure, and finally agrees to talk to her about her mother, telling her Abbey taught him that you can either love a person, or trust them, but not both. I mention this because I’d be shocked if this didn’t come back in some way this season, whether Emily wants it to or not. They arrive at the cave, and a noise inside catches Hamzad’s attention. He ventures in alone, and we hear the same gunshot, but as for who actually got shot? That’s something that’s going to have to wait for next week.
The first two episodes of The Old Man Season 2 are out now. New episodes air on FX every Thursday and are available to stream next-day on Hulu.
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