A
confession: despite my considering Big Sky one of the best series of the
last two years, my schedule got so crowded in the early months of 2022 that I
ended up abandoning it when it returned to the airwaves in February. Therefore I have no idea just how the search
for Ronald and Scarlett ended or how things ended for Wolf. Nevertheless, I decided to do something I rarely
do when I stop watching a series and start over relatively fresh when Season 3
(branded ‘Deadly Trails’ by ABC) started a few weeks ago.
I
was relieved that the series has decided to start with a relatively new mystery
this year – as well as starting out with occasional procedurals as the season
opens. This is a pattern that Justified one of the great accomplishments
of the 2010s was superb at and, given that the open plains of Montana are the
same kind of breeding grounds for the outlaws we would meet in Harlan County,
is a fair comparison.
To
catch up, Cassie (Kylie Bunbury) is now working on her own since Mark and
Jerrie are apparently chasing down the Syndicate that was exposed back in
Season 1. Jenny (Kathryn Winnick) is
still at the Montana sheriff’s office and is now working with the new sheriff Beau
Arlen. Jensen Ackles is the newest addition to the cast, and after spending so
much of Supernatural impersonating lawmen, it’s good to see that he can actually
play a real one. Like Dean Winchester, he has a family connection nearby (we’ll
get there) and he’s easy on the eyes. Jenny is wary of him; Cassie and he are circling
each other and Denise… clearly wants to jump him. (Dee Dee Pfeiffer continues
to have the time of her life on this show.)
The
underlying plot of this season involves a camping troop in the mountains headed
by the butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her mouth (but strangely enough, does in her
coffee) Sunny (Reba McIntire) She is perhaps the most obnoxiously cheerful troop
master you’d ever meet, and she needs that cheer because the guests she’s got
on her trail are ornery. There’s Paige and Mark, who are bickering from the
moment we meet them…and whom we very quickly learn are not who they seem to be.
There’s Emily, Beau’s daughter who’s doing a podcast and whose stepfather
(Henry Ian Cusick getting to play someone untrustworthy for a change) is trying
to keep a tight leash on her but seems far too curious about the secrets she’s
keeping. There’s Beau, the hunky guide
and her new husband who seem to be big one happy family… until you learn he’s
her second husband. And then there’s the clearly disturbed young man whose
wandering in the woods and who kills a hiker in the opening trailer. We’re not that surprised to learn Sunny is
his mother or that she’s been covering for his crimes. It is, however, a
surprise to learn just how long she might have been doing it when Denise relates
a story of the ‘Bleeding Heart Killer from twenty years ago’ and all the hearts
we see carved into trees. All of this would be a major juggling act for Sunny,
and things have already disintegrated when Paige and Mark disappear…and only Mark
comes back. We saw Mark in the last episode, and he didn’t look like someone
who just got lost. How long will Sunny be able to keep juggling these
chainsaws, especially considering Cassie is looking for the missing hiker and
Beau is very nervous about his daughter BEFORE that?
Meanwhile,
the past is coming for Jenny in a big way. In the last episode, we met her
mother Gigi, (Rosanna Arquette, how great to see you again.) Gigi is a grifter who was conning her way
across Idaho, and whose latest partner grifted a Montana rancher. From the moment the two are in the same room,
we can sense the history between them and none of it is pleasant. For all the
darkness and cynicism we see in Jenny towards her mother, there’s a small
glimmer in her that really wants to believe in the good in her. So when the
final con is played, and she learns yet again that her mother has
betrayed her – this time stealing $30,000 from her – there’s a brokenness in
her that we haven’t seen since she learned Cody was dead. And she will be even
less thrilled when she learns that Gigi has teamed up with last season’s major
villain, Tonya which has officially confirms Jenny’s certainty that she hasn’t
got legit.
Big
Sky is one of those series that has always been willing to swing for the
fences and often they have done so by casting so many characters against type
or have them lean in. Reba McIntire’s acting and music career has been built on
being wholesome and trustworthy, so the writers are gambling that her image is
a mask for a darker kind of evil. The
fact that evil is masked under the idea of ‘family values’ is actually on
brand. A similar change is done with the
character of Tanya, who is played by Jamie-Lynn Siegler known to the world as
Meadow Soprano. Meadow spent much of the series verging between resentment of
her father’s crimes, but ultimately decided to pursue a path as a lawyer to
represent the mob by the series end. It is interesting to consider Tonya as a version
of Meadow fully mature, someone who can appear to be in the world of legitimacy
that her father could never truly represent but have a seamy underbelly. Jenny and
Cassie know better, but they can’t prove it, partly because when Tonya smiles,
you can’t read it the same way you knew by Tony’s pleasant face that it was
clearly a mask.
There’s
all the long overdue fact that this is a crime procedural where the protagonists
and the villains are both women – something that I’ve never seen on network
television before and whose only example I have on cable or streaming is Damages,
another excellent and underrated FX series.
When a network series is willing to swing at two of the greatest
undervalued shows of all time, you know that its doing something right. Big
Sky is not as ambitious or excellent as either of those series were – yet –
but every so often, it sings that way. If
I were the kind of person to make unnatural comparisons, I could compare Cassie
or Jenny to Raylan Givens, Sunny to Mags Bennett and Tonya to say, Lydia from Breaking
Bad. But that would be giving the writers too little credit. All these characters
are original, fully drawn, and fascinating. ABC has gone out on a limb to keep Big
Sky alive all this time, and I hope they continue to have faith in this
product because it’s nothing short of brilliant.
My score: 4.75 stars.
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