(Potential Best Show of the
2020s)
Even with the rise of the DVR and streaming, some things never change about
TV: Sunday night remains as much an era for prestige TV today as it did when The
Sopranos debuted in 1999. Some of the masterpieces of cable have been
fighting it out against each other throughout my lifetime: Mad Men versus
Dexter, The Good Wife versus Homeland, the final season of Dexter versus
the final season of Breaking Bad (well, we know who won that battle)…it’s
always been a feast on Sundays. And even now it can lead to crowded DVRs or
difficult choices. Such has been the case for me as 2025 began.
Yellowjackets and The White Lotus debuted
on the same night a month ago and it was a no-brainer for me which I was going
to watch first. I could have gone back to The White Lotus but then I
became aware of another show I’ve been waiting for a third season with more
anticipation: the next installment in Dark Winds, the brilliant AMC
mystery based on Tony Hillerman’s iconic Leaphorn and Chee novels. Considering
that I’ve always preferred mysteries and series that have a cast that, let’s
face it, wouldn’t go near the resorts in HBO’s drama even if they could afford
it, I decided to go back to the era of the 1970s southwest as opposed to
Thailand among the ultra-rich. Two episodes in I am still thrilled with the
decision.
The last time we saw Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McLarnon) at the end of Season
2, he had just invoked ‘Indian justice’ on B.J. Vines, the millionaire
industrialist who had been the force behind the murders of Season 2 as well as
the circumstances of the death of Leaphorn’s son years earlier. That justice
had involved abducting Vines from his home at gunpoint and leaving him hogtied
in the desert to die. When it happened Leaphorn seemed free in a way we hadn’t
seen him so far in the series.
But as Leaphorn knows all too
well, nothing stays buried forever. Even before the new season begins he’s
suffering from nightmares and hallucinations so potent that they are following
him into the daylight. It’s becoming far more difficult for him to hide his
burden from his wife (Deanna Alison) and extenuating circumstances may force
his hand in the form of the FBI agent Sylvia Washington (a subtle Jenna Elfman).
She claims she’s her to clear up some old cases but the first thing she asks
Leaphorn about was what happened to BJ Vines. In their next conversation she says
she’s upset about how it happened to him. Leaphorn says cynically: “White man
justice.” Washington asks neutrally: “Is there any other kind?” It’s clear she
knows about Leaphorn’s history with Vines and its clear this will come back to
haunt him.
As it Leaphorn and his deputy Jim
Chee (Kiowa Gordon) are dealing with what at first seems to be a missing
persons case. One of them is the son of an old school rival of Jim’s Shorty
Bowlegs. It’s clear that the last decade is not enough to erase the initial
hostility between the two men but that becomes even more prevalent when one of
the bows is found dead, stuffed in a drainpipe with an arrowhead in his mouth. The
two teenagers have a connection to an archeological dig of an ancient people.
One of them is Dr. Reynolds who tells him the arrowhead is knock-off, his
assistant seems far more shook up by the death of one of the teenagers then her
superior.
We know that something far darker
beyond these two teenage boys is going on then is being told. The season opens,
as Season 2 did, in media res with Joe clearly suffering from a bullet wound
and lying on the ground, crawling for his radio. Somewhere around him is a man
in jungle camouflage with a rifle and grenades strapped to him. This will happen
in a week. We also know there’s a connection between this and a murder that
took place at the start of last night’s episode where a Navajo attempted to
suffocate a man with a plastic bag, drove his truck into a ditch and then used
a bulldozer to bury the truck in the sand – even though he had finished killing
the man.
Somehow we also know this will
connect back to what is going on with Bernadette (Jessica Matten). At the end
of Season 2, she left the sheriff’s department for the Border Patrol, determined
to see if she could find her own path. At the start of her storyline last week,
she encountered a mother and a child trying to cross the border which ended
with her getting her gun taken. While they were being deported Bernadette
suspected they were being trafficked but she was told to let it go. Clearly her
boss didn’t know Bernadette the way the viewer does. She ended up tracking the
van to Tom Spenser (the always reliable Bruce Greenwood) the head of a major
oil drilling company and a major source of intel for the Border Patrol. This
led her to being transferred to weigh station duty and naturally the first
thing she found was a Spenser oil truck that seemed normal but had a driver who
looked odd. She tried to call Joe, she ended up reaching Jim and…well, things
got awkward. We next see her going on a ‘date’ with a colleague who’s been flirting
with her. I think we know how this is going to go.
Those of you who are familiar
with the novels of Hillerman (which I am not) will see the novel that this is
based on and have an idea of what is coming next. Those of you who are not will
no doubt enjoy the great pleasure of watching something that television would
not have been capable of even five years ago: a brilliant drama in which all
the stars, and most of the writers and directors are made up of indigenous
people. To see them in a procedural that shows that the issues of half a
century ago are being fought to this day will discourage some but encourage
those who grew up never even dreaming of seeing a story like this being told.
And for those of us who are fans of exceptional television Dark Winds provides
everything you can hope for.
And for myself as a TV critic Dark
Winds represents something more. I didn’t believe that the era of Peak TV ended
when Better Call Saul did back in summer of 2022 but I did think it was
the end of AMC as the purveyor of prestige television that had started with Mad
Men in 2007. At that point they had all but given themselves over to The
Walking Dead franchise and I truly believed Saul would be the last of
the kind of series I’d loved for the past fifteen years.
But in the interim between the two
halves of Saul’s final season, Dark Winds debuted. Since then AMC
is still committed to the supernatural -
more Walking Dead series are planned and they seem to be going all in on
Anne Rice – but even that has shown room for greatness given the incredible
critical and popular response to their reimagining of Interview With A
Vampire. They’ve also aired some incredible limited series such as Monsieur
Spade as well as the gone too soon Lucky Hank and Parish. If
AMC is moving into a new phase of Peak TV as well, it is likely shows like Dark
Winds will be considered the future. And I’m grateful for that.
Note: George R.R. Martin and
Robert Redford are listed as executive producers on Dark Winds. In the season
premiere they made surprised and delightful cameos as two old prisoners playing
chess in a jail cell. Redford’s character said: “it’s your move. George, everyone’s
waiting!” I guess even in 1970s New Mexico everyone’s still waiting for the
next volume of Game of Thrones to come out.
My score: 5 stars.
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