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Ramy Recap: A Poop Transplant for Ahmed

Season 3 Episode 7 Editor’s Rating3 stars ***

Photo: Hulu

This episode starts out with a warning, written in both English and Arabic across the screen: “The type of relationship depicted in this episode is incredibly hard to execute with dignity and care. The characters of Mo and Ahmed are emotionally unsound. Do not attempt this at home.”

Was that disclaimer a joke? Was it serious? Turns out, it was a little bit of both.

It’s an Ahmed episode, and while Ahmed is always a welcome sight on this show, something about this storyline felt out of characters — and it perpetuated some negative stereotypes about Muslims, which I didn’t love, even if it did make for good comedy.

Mo has come to Ahmed’s office for a second opinion about his diet and health. His cholesterol is too high, and he’s prediabetic, but instead of taking the warning to heart, Mo tries to spew some Joe Rogan pseudoscience at Ahmed, eventually revealing that he wants a fecal transplant to improve his gut health, just like he heard on Joe Rogan. They’re interrupted by the wife of one of Ahmed’s real patients, who he rushes out to see but not before telling Mo to go home, have some vegetables, and take a yoga class. Ahmed’s patient is a Saudi man who is on the brink of death, leaving behind his wife and young son. The wife is extremely grateful to Ahmed — more grateful than he could possibly know. She starts telling Ahmed that she and her husband have had conversations about the type of man she’d like to be with after he dies, and they’ve decided that man is Ahmed himself.

She knows Ahmed is married, but she also knows there are instances in which Islam allows a man to be married to more than one woman. This isn’t the first time Ramy has delved into the topic of multiple wives. At the end of season two, after Ramy sleeps with his cousin, he tells Zainab that he wants multiple wives. Just a quick disclaimer, though: I personally have never met any Muslim man who has more than one wife. Of course, the practice does exist, but it’s a wildly outdated and sexist tradition that was spawned by necessity at the time it was instated.

Back to Ahmed. The woman wants to discuss the idea with Ahmed’s wife. She said she’s been on all the Muslim dating apps, and the men on there are looking for a wife to replace their mother, but she’s looking for a father to her son. She tells Ahmed he doesn’t need to answer now, but he has her husband’s blessings. Once Ahmed confirms that’s true, he steps back and starts maniacally putting on hand sanitizer, and the woman asks if he’s doing wu’du (ablutions done before prayer), as though he needs to cleanse himself from the entire conversation.

Mo, upon learning of what happened, tells Ahmed he has to do it. God is finally giving him the kid he wants. “You’re allowed four. You’re struggling at two?” Mo says, adding “It’s a legitimate solution. Like a poop transplant.”

Fair warning: The poop-transplant discourse isn’t ending anytime soon.

When Ahmed gets home, his wife, Yasmeena, can tell that something is wrong, and he confesses everything. At least he’s honest. We learn then that the four-wives rule came about in early Islam during times of war, when there was a shortage of men, so they took on multiple wives. Shockingly, Yasmeena says she was always afraid something like this would happen because it’s in their faith and she knows how “by the book” Ahmed is and how attractive he is to women. (Is he, though?)

“Muslim men are at war,” she says. “We lost our men to porn, white women, general colonized thinking.”

Ahmed says he isn’t at war with anybody. He’s a pacifist. He’s only entertaining the idea because it’s his chance to have a kid, and Yasmeena doesn’t want one, but it’s on her to decide. The conversation felt a little odd. Yasmeena, first of all, was too calm, too understanding. And of all Ramy’s friends, Ahmed always seemed like the most stable, not like someone who would ever consider getting a second wife.

Meanwhile, it looks like Mo has followed Ahmed’s advice, and he’s at a yoga class surrounded by thin women. He’s trying to participate but also keeps staring at everyone’s body until he realizes one of the women he’s staring at is Dena. The two of them go on a walk after, and he asks her, “What’s up with all the body parts flying around? You got tits, ass, camel toe. I’m just trying to exercise.”

“I’m sorry that we don’t dress to accommodate your hormones,” Dena says to him. Good for her.

He then drops the news that Ahmed is getting a second wife, and Dena is angry now. She doesn’t believe Ahmed would do that (and neither do I), and she says that if the rule about multiple wives exists, then it should apply to women, too.

But Ahmed is still unsure, even after Yasmeena goes to speak to the potential new wife, so Mo takes him to get a second opinion as well. Ahmed, Mo, and Steve go meet a man named Hakeem, who has four wives, all living in separate houses side by side. Even Hakeem grows frustrated with Ahmed’s indecision. When Ahmed says he wants what God wants, Hakeem says, “You can’t just put it all on God, brother.”

Mo says maybe a poop transplant can help him think more clearly. He has to think from his gut, and new poop will help him do just that. Ignoring Mo’s unhinged comments, Hakeem has Ahmed talk to his wife Ameera, who says she likes the setup because men need a lot of attention and this is just less emotional labor. Hakeem was upfront with her from the beginning, so there were no surprises. I can’t tell anymore if Ramy is making an argument that having multiple wives is completely chill or if we’re still in a parody of polygamy. But either way, I’m with Dena on this one. If the rule applies to men, then it should apply to women, too. In this version of polygamy, though, it’s only the men that have multiple spouses.

Things take a turn when Ahmed goes to the bathroom to do wu’du before prayer and sees an unflushed poop in the toilet. He slowly sneaks out of the bathroom and begins opening drawers and cabinets in the kitchen. At first, I had no idea what he was looking for until he grabbed a Tupperware container, and I thought, Oh no, he wouldn’t. But yes he would.

Later, they’re back at Mo’s restaurant standing in the kitchen, and Ahmed pulls the Tupperware of poop out of his pocket. He says he took Hakeem’s poop, grabbed it with two hands, and he’s going to take Mo’s advice about the poop transplant. Steve looks horrified.

“I was quite shocked that I was able to take poo-poo out, and I’m gonna put it in my gut,” says Ahmed.

“Have you lost your fucking mind?” Mo asks?

At home, Ahmed starts freaking out, mumbling, “Fuck Joe Rogan. Fuck Joe Rogan,” until Yasmeena walks in to find him mid-breakdown. He tells her he doesn’t want another wife. He wants a child with her, and he wants to know the real reason she doesn’t want one. She says she saw how they were starting to fight over everything like her parents, and climate change is destroying the Earth, and she doesn’t want to bring a child into that. All very legitimate reasons. But Ahmed, decisive and confident for the first time in this episode, tells her that making a kid will fix global warming.

“I’m telling you from my gut,” he says.

And he didn’t even need a poop transplant! Although I wish he would throw the Tupperware poop away ASAP.

Ahmed and Yasmeena start hooking up — but not before Yasmeena tells him to go get a condom.

This episode had a lot of funny elements, for sure, but it felt like a break from the rest of the season. We’ve stepped away from Ramy and his family to focus on his friends instead, but it didn’t necessarily add anything to the season as a whole. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Mo and Ahmed can certainly carry an episode on their own, and their characters are compelling and funny. In some ways, it’s a nice break from Ramy and his family, who can be exhausting at times. But it’s also an episode that can be skipped without losing much.

Speaking From the Gut

• In a short after-credits scene, Mo shows up at the widow’s door with flowers, offering to marry her. She calls it “highly inappropriate,” but after listing his husband credentials and saying, “I think I love you, maybe, even though we’ve never talked,” she takes the flowers and leaves the door open for him to come in. Is Mo about to get himself a Saudi wife?

• Speaking of Saudi wives, when Yasmeena asks her if this is about money, the woman says, “I’m Saudi. I don’t need money.”

• Mo asks Dena why they don’t do yoga like the mosque, with men in the front, women in the back, so that men aren’t distracted by women’s bodies. I cringed and so did Dena. “It’s so weird,” she says. “You’re our age but you think like my uncle.” This is actually an argument I’ve had with my family members, too. I always hated going to the mosque growing up because the men-in1-front, women-in-back rule bothered me so much. But maybe that will change as the younger generation takes over. Hopefully there are more people like Dena than Mo.

• Steve has a theory in this episode that we all live in a video-game simulation, and your life has to be as entertaining as possible, otherwise the “controller” will delete you. He says the simulation is thrilled with him now because he and his girlfriend (Bella Hadid) turn heads. Steve’s theories are really just a different version of God — one he refers to as “the controller.” Steve tells Ahmed that he should get a second wife because it’s his chance to do something exciting. And he tells Mo that his cholesterol is high because the controller is sending him a warning.

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