[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Transplant Season 3 Episode 6 “Audition.”]
Amira (Sirena Gulamgaus) knows what will make her happy — singing — but unfortunately, not only are she and Bash (Hamza Haq) not on the same page about that, but the latest Transplant episode also ends with a major change for the siblings.
It begins with a video of Amira practicing for her audition, but Bash is not happy about his sister copying his digital signature for a school application without telling him. But Amira, as she explains when she stops by the hospital, thought it was worth the risk. “No screens, no sleepovers, no dance,” he decides, and she points out that that “no joy” affects him, too: “No more staying over at your secret girlfriend’s house when I’m out.”
Bash tells her he’s withdrawing her application. “I have to,” he explains. “What you did was fraud. I passed my citizenship exam, but I still have the interview to go through. None of this is official. We’re being scrutinized. All of it could go away.” That scares her, though he’s not trying to do so, and she argues, “You don’t want me to be happy! You act like you’re doing a good job, but they were good parents. You’re not.” (Ouch!) With that, she walks away.
Meanwhile, for Mags’ (Laurence Leboeuf) first day back, Bash offers to cook her dinner at her place, and she suggests at his with Amira. Bash initially wants his sister to face the consequences of her school audition and see how that goes first, but at the end of the episode, after realizing he was equating Amira with his own rebellion, he asks Mags to join him and Amira for dinner, what he doesn’t know: Amira’s at home, packing a bag.
“She’s trying to tell him what she wants, and one thing that Bash really struggles with is that he doesn’t let himself want more than basic survival. He lived so long just trying to survive from day to day that it’s a basic problem for him, and the world is constantly in ways operating on both sides of that,” creator Joseph Kay tells TV Insider. “His sister is telling him this is what she wants, and he just wants to protect her to make safe choices, but she wants to go to a high school that focuses on musical theater, and that freaks him out as a parent because how’s that going to earn her a living? And so he really struggles to accept that.”
Season 3 began with Bash and Mags finally together, and now, she’s someone in his life who tells him, “allowing yourself to want things is important,” Kay continues. “That whole parenting question gets underneath one of the fundamental things he’s trying to deal with on his own, which Mags wants him to deal with, which Amira, in a way is a little bit ahead of himself on. And by having Amira move out for a little while, which we do in the season, and create conflict there, it challenges Bash. It really challenges him emotionally in a volatile time of the season.”
Someone sit these two down, stat!
Transplant, Thursdays, 9/8c, NBC