In my rave of the fourth season of Will
Trent I said:
I can see a world where Karen Slaughter's Will
Trent novels got a more faithful adaptation, much in the way the works of
Michael Connelly and Tony Hillerman have during the past decade… There could
have been more faithful adaptations of Karin Slaughter's novels but I'm
thrilled that this Will Trent is the one we go.
I was fully aware that in a matter of weeks
I would be rewarded with the return of Dark Winds AMC's towering adaptation
of Tony Hillerman's landmark Leaphorn and Chee novels. Now the fourth season
had debuted and just as I am grateful for the version of Slaughter's work that
I've been watching for four seasons I'm equally grateful for the far more faithful
version of Hillerman's work that AMC has produced. And just as grateful it took
just one year to get a new season as opposed to the nearly two we had to wait
for Season 3. (Yes, I'm aware of the outside factors. Still.)
Season 3 ended with Joe (Zahn McLarnon) at
a personal crossroads. While he manage to escape prosecution for his role in
the death of BJ Vines at the end of Season 2, it came at the expense of his
marriage. Emma made it very clear how angry she was at Joe ever since their son
died and how she had left this burden on her all this time. She was willing to
commit perjury to save her husband from jail but in the season finale she drove
away from her job and her home to parts unknown. In one of the most heart-wrenching
scenes in the series so far we saw Joe playing and replaying the taped
statement she made where she told Joe "I hope someday I can forgive him.
When Season 4 begins it has been six months
since then. Joe seems to have spent that period in a time of renewal. He has given
Emma the space she needed, has been spending time getting back and touch with
his spiritual side and has been trying to make what amends he can with his
family, including his mother. Joe is
planning to leave New Mexico and move to Los Angeles to be with his wife and
that means retiring. In what comes as a shock he makes it clear his first
choice to replace him as sheriff is Bernadette.
The happier part of Season 3's ending was
that after dancing around each other for three seasons Joe Chee (Kiowa Gordon)
and Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) have finally decided to get together.
Bernadette returned to New Mexico after the horrifying events as part of Border
Patrol left her incapable of trusting anyone there. Joe and Jim have both
gently been nudging her to return to work but only Joe has made it clear he
wants her to replace him. Jim as of yet has no idea of that fact and Bernadette
is not happy that Joe has not chosen to take Jim, who on paper is more qualified,
into his confidence. Bernadette was uneasy about what it would be like to work
together with someone she's sleeping with but Joe seems understanding. How
understanding he'll be remains to be seen because the moment Bernadette gets
back to work, a new case begins.
A 16-year girl has run away from one of the
missionary run schools for indigenous people in New Mexico. Both Joe and Jim are well-aware of the
contempt that these sisters feel for them and they feel it right back but its
only when Bernadette shows up that she gets answers. When the sister tells
Bernadette "Glad to see you made something of yourself," you can see
just how much effort its taking Bernadette to be civil and there's a brutal
honesty in what she says when she helps sort food in the pantry that she knows
none of the teenage girls are allowed to eat. That trust helps her locate where
the girl would go.
Like every season Dark Winds starts
with a flashforward, but unlike the previous two Season 4 makes the time
difference far less than usual. We see the runaway with her cousin Albert, who
we know is up to something shady. We then see a woman show up at the diner and
within seconds it erupts into a gunfight, where the two indigenous people run
off in a car that has been damaged. This actually plays out by the end of the
season premiere and we see it from a different perspective in the teaser of the
second episode.
Joe, Jim and Bernadette know they have two
problems. There is a sixteen year old girl who's run off with her cousin and
there's an armed killer who seems determined to track them down by any means
necessary. We've seen the killer quite a few times by now and she's honestly
more frightening then most of the ones we've seen so far this series. Played by Franka Potente, the German actress who
shot to stardom independent film Run Lola
Run and who's had a presence in American television (most recently in the
AMC series Mayfair Witches) Potente has a history of playing ominous
characters. This time she's more frightening because she's barely said two
lines of dialogue in two episodes. Having dyed her black hair brown her character
moves with a silent efficiency that makes her seem superhuman even though unlikely
so many other menaces she hasn't done anything that appears that way. More than
once she's had her gunsight trained on Joe and Jim and both times she's let
them live, even though she has no problem killing and though it would make her job
easier. One of the most suspenseful scenes in the season was her merely working
on retooling an automobile to the sound of German music before finally driving
off into the darkness. We know what a
threat she can be if you can get in her way; at this point the viewer is more
terrified if she chooses to let you live.
Zahn McLarnon continues to demonstrate why
his work as Joe Leaphorn is one of the best performances in TV today. Joe is a soldier who has seen horrible things happen
to his people and on the battlefield. Yet he is not hardened enough that the
individual deaths don't add to him. In a brilliant monologue in last night's
episode he tells Bernadette about his first encounter with the owner of the
diner years ago, who has just been murdered. He tells her how the horrors that
were once rare are now everyday occurrences and that he's sorry that she has to
carry these kinds of things. Part of it is very much preparation for the job he
wants her to take on but it's also a genuine expression of his feelings which
for three seasons he's mostly kept to himself. With so many major Emmy
contenders from last year on hiatus there will be some gaps for Best Actor in a
Drama. McLarnon (who made his directorial debut for Dark Winds last
night) once again makes his silent case for one of those spots.
Part of the case was resolved last night as
the missing teenager was found despite her best efforts. But the killer is
still on the loose and we already know it will lead on a trail to Los Angeles
very soon. Those who have read the books will know why this is the case (as
always I have not) but it demonstrates yet again the writers willingness to
take the characters out of their comfort zone. We saw it play out to great
dividends with Bernadette's story as part of Border Patrol; one expects it to
play out even greater when they are forced into interaction with a white
America that has never stopped showing they barely rank as second class
citizens. And as an added bonus we will
see even more brilliant character actors such as Titus Welliver, who will get a
chance to do the villainy that he hasn't been able to do since he took on the
role of Harry Bosch.
Dark Winds has become appointment television for me
and represents the greatest installation of Peak TV that AMC once used to turn
out on a yearly basis. They are still operating mainly in the supernatural on
that front, most notably in The Vampire Lestat but there are promising
signs that they might be willing to turn to something that is less niche than
before. (I'll let you know this spring if they pull it off.) Every time I watch
an episode of Dark Winds I'm
reminded this is the network of Mad Men and Breaking Bad and Better
Call Saul; the network of the slow burn cable drama before streaming
managed to erode much of the concept. There have been promising signs of
cable's slow embrace of what made it great in the last few years, mostly on pay
TV but occasionally on basic cable and Dark Winds is part of that return
to form. They don't come around as often as they used too but you savor them
all the more when they do.
My score: 5 stars.
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