What Goes Around, Comes Around
Episode 3 of Alrawabi School For Girls begins with Dina and Hawai engaged in a food eating contest. The latter ends up vomiting on the floor though, while Mariam tries in vain to convince her former-best friend that Layan and the girls are just playing her. Unfortunately Dina doesn’t see it, and worse, she continues to call out Mariam for her “lies.” Thee school is abuzz though as the charity event looks set to go ahead. All the girls get changed out their uniform and into their casual gear. Ruqayya though is uncomfortable with Layan showing so much skin in her pics sent over to Laith. As they talk though, Rukayya admits she’s been talking to a guy on Facebook for the past couple of days. Layan believes he should send a topless pic to confirm he’s legit, while Mariam listens from the stall and grins knowingly. When she leaves though, Layan and the gang terrorize Dina, pouring nail polish on her white trousers and sending pictures around school of her “accident”. With Dina upset and distraught, Mariam shows up to comfort her friend. In fact, Mariam even breaks the news about the bully revenge. Noaf isn’t exactly pleased and believes their plan has been compromised. Well, the charity event goes ahead and Ruqayya is tellingly alone after catfishing her with this fake Facebook friend. A message is sent over to reel her in, “I wish I were with you tonight,” but things take an unexpected turn when Yazan shows to profess his love to Mariam. Our protagonist is forceful with him, telling the guy that they’re not together and are just friends. Humiliated, the boy walks away. With their distraction gone, the girls work together to try and bring Ruqayya away from Rania and Layan. While off getting snacks, the girls seize their opportunity to stall Ruqayya. All of this works to drive a wedge between the trio, deciding to send a picture of a random guy across with a link. This link allows the girls access to Ruqayya’s phone, where Dina steps up and manages to convince her to take pictures with her headscarf down. This picture consequently gets sent all round school, along with a torrent of abuse to follow.
The Episode Review
While Ruqayya probably deserved to be taught a lesson, catfishing her and sending these pictures around raises some very real moral questions about whether it really should be “eye for an eye” when it comes to revenge. Now, don’t get me wrong, these bullies deserve to be taken down a peg but the show does a pretty good job adding shades of grey so these punishments and showing that they aren’t quite as satisfying as they could be. This is probably Alrawabi’s biggest strength at the moment, although the storyline is a bit predictable and obvious. Despite that though, the show has done a decent job with its three episodes, and it seems like the attention is about to turn toward Rania next.
