Dark Winds: Season 2
Based on: 1970s & 80s Leaphorn & Chee novel series by Tony Hillerman
Created by: Graham Roland
Starring:
Zahn McClarnon (Joe Leaphorn), Kiowa Gordon (Jim Chee), Jessica Matten (Bernadette Manuelito), Deanna Allison (Emma Leaphorn), Nicholas Logan (Colton Wolf)
I jumped into Dark Winds season 1 for a more in-depth glimpse at Indigenous culture and life. I then got sucked into the stories of three tribal police offers dealing with the trials of life on the Navajo Nation reservation.
The show centers on the perspectives of these officers as they tackle cases on their reservation such as smuggling and murder. As exciting as the actual crimes were, my true love for the series came simply from watching these three characters as they went about their lives and solved the cases, and seeing how their different levels of experience and degrees of loyalty to their own culture shaped their attitudes, especially in contrast to the sometimes-closed-minded white FBI agents.
The main character, Joe Leaphorn, is the senior officer who's worked the reservation for the majority of his career. With decades under his belt, a full life already in the area, and a vested interest in protecting the future of the land, he tackles each case with a passion for the locals and their shared culture, and a need to protect his way of life. His co-star, Jim Chee, is a young college graduate just beginning a career in the FBI. He's from this reservation and, in season one, was assigned back to the reservation to start his career. While his core values are true and justice and he feels a loyalty to his homeland, he's ambitious to jump-start his FBI career and create a solid future for himself-- values which sometimes conflict. In season 2, he's seemingly left his FBI career behind and is pursuing PI work, which can be similarly conflicting. The final character of focus, Bernadette, has Jim's youth but Joe's loyalties: she's never left the reservation herself and is passionately protective of the traditions and values she's grown up surrounded by. However, she also feels an itch to gain experience and see the world.
While season 2 focused on the compelling story of a murderer fleeing his crime through the reservation land--and the murderer's ties to the death of Joe's son--this plot still took a back seat in my mind to the trials faced by our main three. While Joe takes lead on this investigation, the mental strain of searching for his son takes a toll on his marriage and they turn to their tribal customs for healing. In another plot, Joe's wife, Emma (Deanna Taushi Allison), who works at the tribal hospital, is fiercely protective against a white journalist who tries to interview Navajo locals for a story. Later in the season, she is shocked to find the other Navajo women around her increasingly open to sharing their experiences for the journalist. Finally, Jim's PI work leads him to a rich white woman with a case against her husband-- who ends up being intertwined in the aforementioned murders.
Detective work has never interested me as a genre, but this series takes the viewer through some of the inner lives of the Navajos and provides some brutal truths about life on the Navajo Nation. In one episode, they face a solar eclipse, and Bernadette teaches Jim a thing or two about appropriate protocol. In another, Emma continues to look after teen mother Sally (Elva Guerra), passing on maternal traditions through their bond.
That's not to say the detective action isn't interesting! I'm not one to meticulously keep up with investigative turns, but several moments kept me on my toes: several shoot-outs, one deadly game of hide-and-seek in a hospital (that can be glimpsed in the trailer), and one very tense full episode in which a badly injured Joe leads the murderer through the desert at gunpoint.
The mysteries continue to be fun, and the plots in each season so far have led Joe inches closer to learning the truth about his son's death. However, as season 3 comes out, it will still be Joe, Jim, Bernadette, and intriguing side characters like Emma and Sally simply navigating life together and showing us Navajo culture and customs through their eyes that will keep me coming back.
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