3:47 AM. My eyes are burning. I think I forgot to blink for the entire second half of the season. The room is dark except for the "Are you still watching?" glare from my TV, which I've been defiantly slapping away for hours. I feel hollowed out. Like someone scooped out my insides and replaced them with sand, cigarette smoke, and the lingering taste of stale coffee (and maybe some of that weird halva I bought on a whim). I just finished Fauda Season 4 on Netflix and I don't think I'll ever be okay again.
It started so deceptively calm, you know? Doron in Brussels, selling hummus or something, trying to be a dad. A normal, boring, non-explosive dad. I was almost bored. Almost. I was thinking, "Oh, this is the season where they wind down, where it's all about the emotional fallout." And then Episode 1 happened. The call. The kidnapping. Raz, that poor kid, snatched in Gaza. And just like that, Doron's little domestic fantasy went up in a puff of smoke. My weekend plans? Gone. My hope for a relaxing Sunday? Annihilated. I was in. Hooked. Trapped. By the 30-minute mark of the first episode, I knew I wasn't sleeping.
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The rhythm of this season is a slow, agonizing burn that suddenly erupts into a five-alarm fire. It’s this constant, suffocating tension. Doron playing mind games with Abu-Ali from thousands of miles away. Abu-Ali, man... what a villain. He's not just some guy with a gun. He's smart, patient, and he has this terrifying calm. He's the perfect foil for Doron's barely-contained chaos. You spend half the time hating him and the other half being like, "...well, that's a pretty smart move." It's messed up.
But it all comes back to Doron. God, that man. I spent the first three seasons thinking he was a necessary monster, a weapon you point in the right direction. This season? I almost felt sorry for him. ALMOST. He was trying. He was really, genuinely trying to build something with Gabi and the kids. And then the pull, the addiction, the duty... it all came roaring back. There was this one moment, I think it was Episode 3 or 4, when he's back in Israel, and he has this look on his face. He's sitting at dinner with his family, but he's not there. He's already back in the dirt, already planning the next move. And the decision he makes to go back to Gaza, to lie to Gabi AGAIN... I literally threw a pillow at my screen. DUDE. JUST STOP. But he can't. And that's the tragedy.
And Gabi. Oh, Gabi. Her descent into this frantic, desperate state was so hard to watch. Every time she called him, every time she knew he was lying, my stomach just twisted. You're rooting for her to just take the kids and run, but you know she won't. She's trapped in his orbit just as much as he is.
The finale. I need to talk about the finale. It's not a TV episode, it's a panic attack condensed into 50 minutes. The raid in Gaza to get Raz back. The chaos. The dust. The sound. It’s so visceral you feel the grit in your teeth. The whole operation is a mess, a symphony of things going wrong, and it's perfect.
But the part that's really stuck in my head, the final image burned onto my retinas, isn't the big shootout. It's the very end. Doron and Shira in the car, after it's all over. He got Raz back. The mission, in a technical sense, was a success. But he looks absolutely destroyed. Empty. There's no victory in his eyes, just the cost of it all. And that final line he says to Shira, or maybe it's the way he doesn't say anything... it's just this quiet acknowledgment that this is it. This is his life. This cycle of violence and loss, it never really ends. He didn't win. He just survived to fight another day. And Raz... poor Raz is back, but he's not back. You know? He's broken. It's not a happy ending. It's not a sad ending. It's just... an ending. A door slamming shut right before another one opens to another room full of monsters.
I can't. I just can't formulate coherent thoughts anymore. My brain is just a jumble of Arabic and Hebrew phrases, the click of a rifle safety, and the smell of cordite. I need to go back and re-watch the interrogation scene between Doron and Abu-Ali. The tension was so thick you could choke on it. Or maybe I should just try to sleep. Yeah, sleep. That's a good idea.
9/10. Now if you'll excuse me, I think the sun is coming up.