Note: This review contains spoilers for the entirety of the season. Trigger warning for mention of suicide.
There are times when you can’t seem to stop grinning from ear to ear during the entirety of a cinematic sequence. This was me at least once per episode while watching Reservation Dogs. Disguised as a comedy heist television show, Reservation Dogs is a coming-of-age story with its real focal point being the interconnected stories of a group of Indigenous people living on a reservation in Oklahoma. We see the reservation through the eyes of the four protagonists: Bear (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), Elora (Devery Jacobs), Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis), and Cheese (Lane Factor). Showrunners Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi created a series true to their heart, a modernized look into a community that is often overlooked and misrepresented. Reservation Dogs ignores the unrealistic Hollywood portrayal of Indigenous folk, and instead Harjo looks at the Oklahoma Natives as ordinary people with both universal problems and others specific to Indigenous people. The story of the first season is simple: it follows the four young teenagers who call themselves the Reservation Dogs as they prepare to leave for California. The real story emerges when we learn that the recent suicide of their friend, Willie Jack’s cousin Daniel (Dalton Cramer), is still on everyone’s minds one year later.
This narrative is told through an unconventional storytelling technique, in that the episodes are character-focused and each young member of the Reservation Dogs creates a bond with an adult. This helps hone in on the aspects where the series shines. Reservation Dogs isn’t supposed to be an episodic television series with dramatized dilemmas or one that finds unique ways to trap the protagonists in funny predicaments. This series instead focuses on character development. The older generations are used as mentors and physical representations of what the teenagers could turn into. The adults embody cautionary tales, such as Bear’s father Punkin Lusty (Sten Joddi), who left the reservation and is successful in his music career but unsuccessful with his family. Lusty doesn’t care about his children and only worries about his current hip-hop star life. He continues to fail Bear by not coming home even though he said he would. On the opposite end we have Big (Zahn McClarnon), who consistently stays positive about being a cop and is a genuine person doing his best. His attempts at being a role model in the community can be seen in examples such as making sure the kids don’t get into any serious trouble by consistently checking up on them.
The adults and the teenagers create bonds with each other throughout the show. This is where the heartfelt moments radiate. In “NDN Clinic,” which is only the second episode of the season, we learn that Cheese has one legal guardian who is never around. While getting his pupils dilated, Cheese comes across an older blind woman (Casey Camp-Horinek) in a bed. She’s taken away from her comfort zone, the free air, and is instead hooked up to wires and monitors in a lonely room. She mentions how she misses being in the country with the dogs and the oak trees outside her home. By the end of the episode, Cheese takes her outside, and they share a peaceful moment. In “Come and Get Your Love,” Cheese shares a heartfelt moment with Big as he learns why Big sticks to his spiritual beliefs and why he chose to stay a tribal cop despite being ridiculed by the state officers. Throughout the episode, Big is shown as a huge believer in the paranormal because of his encounter with the Deer Lady at a young age. The Deer Lady is an entity known for murdering criminals and bad men. When she encounters Big, she tells him if he always behaves and fights evil he’ll never have to come in contact with the Deer Lady ever again.
Instances of these bonds between both generations are prominent within the show. For example, we are told that Elora’s mother died when Elora was a baby. She is never told how it happened. Details begin to emerge when Elora reconnects with her Uncle Brownie (Gary Farmer), who disappeared after Elora’s mother’s death, and her old coach (Bill Burr), who grew up with Elora’s mother, in their respective episodes “Uncle Brownie” and “California Dreamin.” With each interaction, Elora realizes how death is always near and decides that she needs to leave for California even when her other three friends become hesitant.
However, Bear’s focused episodes are lacking. Although the first couple of episodes mainly follow him, his bonding moment is with his mother after Lusty fails to reconnect with Bear once again. The scene is emotional and life-changing for Bear, but not enough time is spent exploring the relationship between Bear and his mother. Yet Bear’s episodes do include the biggest laughs, because they include arguably the standout character of the show, William “Spirit” Knifeman (Dallas Goldtooth), who takes over as Bear’s male authoritative figure. Every appearance made by the spirit ends with laughter in hilarious moments.
Willie Jack only has one major episode, titled “Hunting,” yet it’s the most impactful and my personal favorite episode of the series. The episode shows the father-daughter dynamic between Willie Jack and her father Leon (Jon Proudstar) and depicts Daniel’s final hours before his suicide. This makes the flashbacks to Daniel’s final day all the more devastating. As Willie Jack and Leon reminisce about their last hunting trip with Daniel, their pent-up feelings of missing him are finally spilled.
Dealing with suicide is a delicate topic that can quickly lean into exploitation if not handled with precision and delicacy. In “Hunting,” which is directed by Harjo himself, that line is never crossed and is treated with care. Instead of giving the viewers all of Daniel’s backstory in one go, the episode strategically reveals Daniel’s emotions through flashbacks. Although there isn’t much to indicate Daniel’s inner problems and state of mind on the surface level, his demeanor subtly becomes more disheveled and anxious as the night progresses. A few other instances outside of this episode further the effects of Daniel’s passing. In one of the early episodes, Daniel is nothing but a flash to Bear at night, just like the memories I’ve had of my close family members after they died. His passing is also used as the catalyst between Elora’s and Bear’s falling out in the climax of the season finale.
At the end of “Hunting,” we see all of Willie Jack’s deceased family members as spirits. They’re humming in unison to a rhythmic pattern. Reservation Dogs does a great job of introducing customs and legends specific to Native Americans. Sometimes when a new piece of folklore is presented, it’s shown with a horror direction. The introduction of the Tall Man, who Willie Jack believes is Daniel walking the forest, is shot in an eerie way with dark lighting and an ominous score. There are other instances where Indigenous traditions and beliefs are quickly shown without context. This creates references within the Indigenous community and forces non-Indigenous viewers to do their homework and research what was mentioned. For instance, the camera pans over Uncle Brownie’s house in “Uncle Brownie” and briefly shows an owl with blurred eyes. For viewers like myself, this may seem like a stylistic choice done by the director. I quickly learned, however, that many Native people believe looking at the eyes of an owl is a bad omen.
Blackhorse Lowe directed the episodes “Uncle Brownie” and “Come and Get Your Love.” The latter episode stood out to me the most out of the entire season because of his inclusion of tension-filled scenes with the Deer Lady. The episode’s introduction shows a woman hitchhiking from the side of the road. The camera pans down from her head, and the final frame of the scene is hooves coming out of the hitchhiker’s pants. In the middle of the episode, once the Deer Lady enters a small liquor store and meets Big for the first time, the liquor store gets held up by two criminals and the tension almost builds up to the likes of the Gecko Brothers’ standoff in From Dusk Till Dawn.
With a series title like Reservation Dogs, you would expect it to be filled with Tarantino references and other pop culture influences scattered through the show. A few shots throughout the series do feel more inspired by pop culture than others, but every episode feels original and like a breath of fresh air for the viewers. We’re transported to a place in America that has many misconceptions due to its underrepresentation. Reservation Dogs does a great job opening up this world. The show is written and directed with many layers and subtle Indigenous traits in mind. Harjo and Waititi create a world full of laughs and tears while highlighting the lives of Native Americans.
