For reasons that
I’ve never been willing to probe, it has been difficult for me to watch the
final seasons of streaming series, even the ones that I have loved from the
beginning. This has been true since I started making streaming series part of
this column and remains so to this day. It’s even true for series that are only
there for three seasons or fewer.
It has been this
way for me particularly when it comes to comedy series. Much as I loved Dead
to Me, I still have not finished its second season. During the pandemic I
basically binged every episode of the first two season of Hulu’s Pen15 but
when the creators said they would be stopping after the last seven episodes I
haven’t watched them since. The third season of Ramy debuted two years
ago, and it may very well be the last one; I still haven’t watched it. And I
never saw a single episode of the final season of Ted Lasso (though
according to some critics I didn’t miss much)
I have had
difficulties saying goodbye to cable and broadcast series as well, I should
admit: the final season of This is Us is still on my DVR, unlikely to
ever be watched and I just couldn’t bring myself to watch the last few episodes
of Better Things. Is it just about being unable to let go of something
you loved? As long as the series is streaming and you haven’t watched it, that
means it is going on forever, at least in your head. Perhaps that is why it has
taken me so long to get around to the final season of the extraordinary Hulu-FX
collaboration Reservation Dogs a show that I put on my top ten list of
2022 and considering the second season nearly as remarkable. While the Emmys
have yet to ever consider it for anything, my fellow critics have been more
than generous to it: the Critics’ Choice have nominated both the series and
many of the cast members for the last two years, including this one.
Finally this
week I managed to get to the first three episodes of Season 3. Much of it is atypical
(as far as anything that this series does could be considered typical) but it
has dealt with the consequences of the Res Dogs trip to California in which
they kept their promise to Daniel and finally seemed able to move on. Of
course, this involved them getting their car stolen and losing all their money
so naturally Bear (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) had to call his mother who sent their
aunt to pick them up. Naturally this involved a series of Ubers, a meeting with
White Jesus, and a failed attempt for Daniel to reconnect with his father (so
far). But near the end of the first episode Daniel had another encounter with his
spirit guide who continued yet again to give him an incoherent set of
instructions. This time there were consequences: he got left behind on the bus
headed back home.
The two episodes
that followed (the only ones I’ve seen so far) essentially focused on Bear as
he went on what was his trip to get home. Wandering through the desert he finally
lost patience with his spirit guide, who has never been helpful and was even
less so now. The spirit guide seemed hurt and departed (though I have little
doubt we’ll see him again).
Most of the next
episode dealt with his interaction with an old survivalist named Maximus (it
was a matter of time before Graham Greene showed up on this series). Clearly
delusional, convinced in the arrival of ‘the sky people’, Maximus seemed to be
some kind of spiritual father on this long journey. We never learned what
happened to Maximus, but there’s a clear parallel between him and some of the
other indigenous people we’ve met over the last two seasons; there’s an
argument that he is just the most extreme version of what happened if Zahn McClarnon’s
deputy had been less grounded then he was. Near the end of the episode, police
and a medical aide arrive to pick him up and he sees them as the Sky People he’s
been looking for. As he leaves Daniel says: “Maximus. I believe you” and its
unclear if this is Stockholm Syndrome or he truly does feel something.
The third
episode almost seems like it is something of a spin-off and indeed, there may
have been plans for it. Titled ‘Deer Lady’, it deals with the title character
who the indigenous people seemed to consider an urban legend and that is what
Bear thinks until he walks into a diner where she was clearly waiting for him.
She had already ordered two pies. Bear needs a moment before he realizes who
she is and he thinks she is there to kill him, even though she reassures him
that is not her purpose but merely to take him home.
Much of the
episode deals with flashbacks to the young Deer Lady and the home for Native
Americans that she spent some time in. Run by missionaries who clearly are abusive
and hard to fathom (much of their language often sounds garbled) she befriends a
young boy who tells her that the only way they leave ‘is through the cemetery’.
Later on we see her meeting a handsome young man who she is told is a monster
and where we clearly see has that capability. That night Deer Lady makes a
break for freedom and while she is leaving she runs into a deer who speaks to
her. The flashback ends with the nun who chased after her being butchered.
Deer Lady’s
journey takes her to the house of an old man where she tells Bear to stay
outside. Deer Lady knocks on the door and this man lets her in, turns his back
to her and looks through his photos. Slowly she walks up to him, stands over
him and then stabs him multiple times. She emerges from the house with a speck
of blood on the coat she is wearing. Bear says nothing about it. Only when he
is about to leave her when they return to the reservation does he ask if she
killed a man. Her last words to him are: “I killed a wolf in human form.” Bear nods
and smiles. The last images of the episode are photos of the children’s home
with the young man front and center and the gravestone of that same young boy
she met saying: “Killed By Wolves in Human Form.”
There has been
discussion by the head of FX that there was originally a plan for Reservation
Dogs to run for five seasons but that showrunner Sterlin Harjo made the
decision to end it after just three. I have little doubt that this will
disappoint the show’s fans but perhaps it is the right call. For all the
problems we’ve had with shows not running as long as they used too (something
that was one of the bugs about the work stoppage in Hollywood last year) it has
done something that even the best cable series and some streaming series have
done over the first decade and that’s go on far past their expiration date. At
a certain point you wish that someone would pull the plug on shows like Grey’s
Anatomy or Law & Order SVU or that the first version of The
Walking Dead could have come to an end years before it became, well, zombified.
You want to leave your audience wanting more rather than feel like you’ve
overstayed your welcome. Barry and Atlanta certainly did, even
though the executives likely would have wished their creators kept the show
going past their final seasons in the past year. Chuck Lorre made the right
call when he ended The Kominsky Method after three seasons and I suspect
Harjo did the same here.
Reservation Dogs
was
an important show because, like Atlanta and Abbott Elementary, it
gives voice to a group that rarely gets its due in popular culture beyond the cliché.
When AMC greenlit Dark Winds in 2022, it made it clear that there is a
market for these kinds of stories and that they have the ability to reach a
larger audience. And the fact that Reservation Dogs could often be screamingly,
hysterically funny while showing you a part of the world we might not know
existed, leaves me hopeful that there will be more of these stories in the
future.
As for its
chances at the Emmys this summer, this will be a year of transition with Barry,
Ted Lasso and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s runs all over as well as
the departure of former contenders such as Dead to Me and Atlanta. Considering
that there will be fewer new shows to compete for 2024 this year’s nominations,
like the ones that occurred in 2021, may very well leave some vacancies that
might recognize shows that would otherwise fall under the radar. We will
obviously have to wait and see how the year plays out, but there’s little
argument the final season of Reservation Dogs can stand on its own in
that regard, at least so far. And it would be fitting for a series that I will
be sorry to finish and say goodbye too.
My score: 5
stars.
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