Apple’s “Unconditional” follows mother Orna Levy (Liraz Chamami) after her daughter Gali (Ronn Talia Lynne) is arrested in Moscow. Almost immediately, Gali disappears into the corrupt and Byzantine carceral system, leaving Orna to find out why her daughter was imprisoned, where she is, and how to get her back.
Showrunners Adam Bizanski and Dana Idisis create a thriller here with surprising twists that build up rather than redirect. With a muted palette and emotional effects, “Unconditional” got my heart racing with action sequences and emotional revelations alike.
Now, a mother’s unconditional love for her child is not new territory, and “Unconditional” falls into some of the usual categories. Why Orna can’t hide what a bunch of Russian oligarchies, Indian police, and Israeli spies can’t, really doesn’t add up. His ability to become a well-known TV personality gets more explanation, but it still stretches credibility.
Mainly because Orna seems to have a problem with feeling incomplete. Sometimes, he worries that he is simply letting life push him forward, with little influence of his own. In a shocking way, Gali says the same.
Thankfully, Orna has the friends you need in this kind of predicament—a PR expert and a former secret agent. And while that relationship is certainly appropriate, it feels natural within the series, unlike his doubts.
In Orna, we see the army taking on government officials, media officials, his in-laws, spies and mobs alike. He has an uncanny ability to spot lies and act on them. How could this woman be unconscious for years, seemingly doing nothing? It’s not clear, and it doesn’t help that the show doesn’t bother to explain whether she had a job inside or outside the home….
Presumably, she stops being passive (if she ever was) because her daughter needs her, but even that doesn’t hold up under the show’s inner logic, as Orna recounts the times she failed Gali as a child by being passive. Orna says she only feels ready to be a mother now that her daughter is 23—and maybe that’s the answer. Perhaps “Unconditional,” being ready to be a mother means being able to do extraordinary things to protect the child.
You better not worry about it. TV and film are full of these types of stories, of parents struggling to protect their families. It’s a genre of its own, and parents’ ability to move mountains is just one of its tropes. Given that, the flaws of “Unconditional” fade into the background, and the program begins to stand out as more interesting to its peers because of the way it raises ethical questions.
Perhaps the best-known example of this genre is Liam Neeson’s 2008 film, “Taken.” Perhaps you can repeat his oft-repeated “certain skill set” phrase. But while that film scratched the surface (delivering white-hot, holy vengeance on the bad guys), it annoyed me with its lack of moral exploration. Neeson’s character rescues his daughter, but leaves all the other trafficked girls to rot—and the movie presents that as the logical, smart thing to do, ignoring that they’re also someone’s daughter.
In the show’s classic, “The Last Thing She Told Me About,” Jennifer Garner must protect her adopted daughter as she tries to understand why her new husband disappeared, leaving both women in danger. Like “Taken,” this Apple series doesn’t ask the audience to think too much. Its headline is “Jennifer Garner: Warm. Strong,” and that’s just it—a lesson that softens its scope.
But “unconditional” challenges, instead of posters. Orna initially believes her daughter is innocent, but as she learns more, she must investigate who Gali is and what it means to raise someone like that. As the title suggests, Orna’s love never wavers, but the shock and questions linger long after the credits roll.
Meaning “Unconditional” is clever, the kind of thing you should pay full attention to (especially if, like me, you read the Hebrew and Russian subtitles).
Going in, I was very interested in how they portrayed Levys Israeli identity. There is no mention of Gaza or the West Bank, with the plan seemingly set for some sort of unspecified gift. But there’s a lot I can find in the way Apple’s series portrays Israel’s forced military service, intelligence community, and violence more broadly. Bizanski and Idisis’ show doesn’t give either party a moral high ground, but instead finds us stuck in the mess of Orna’s impossible situation.
And this ambiguity continues in the way “Unconditional” portrays its Russian characters, giving them plausible backstories that make it difficult to read the bad. In fact, Orna makes questionable decisions, which, without giving much away, question her moral standing. The show doesn’t judge him by it, but it also doesn’t pretend that everything is fine.
And that makes this imperfect show stronger. “Unconditional,” for all the affirmation in its subject and the motivation of its protagonist, is a series of haunting, thought-provoking questions, more than most of its peers can boast.
