The heart of Reservation Dogs has always been the bonds of friendship. The precipitating incident that first introduced us to Bear, Elora, Willie Jack, and Cheese was the death of their friend Daniel. Adrift and unsure as to what that loss meant to them as individuals and also as a friend group guided much of the first two seasons of the show, which ended, in the season-two finale, with a cleansing trip to the Pacific Ocean. But death is not the only thing that can come between two friends, as friendship can be a fickle thing, disappearing before your eyes—at times with a brutal suddenness but more often than not with an equally cruel slow pace.
All of this is on Cheese’s mind as he sequesters himself in his room, away from his friends and from the world around him. Coming so soon after we just witnessed Maximus feeling alone and alienated (pun intended) from his friends, it’s hard to not to see the parallels here. Cheese wants to burrow himself in a virtual world that will never change, that will always be there. There’s no fear as to what awaits him there. Better to spend his lazy afternoons inside a VR set than in the real world where his relationships with the likes of Bear, Elora, and Willie Jack are subject to the careless whims of fallible humans (and teens, in particular).
Except we should all have known Irene would never allow that. No-nonsense parental figure that she is, she quickly calls on reinforcements and ships Cheese off to the great outdoors with Big (Zahn McClarnon), Bucky (Wes Studi), and Uncle Brownie (Gary Farmer). Perhaps some time out in the wilderness camping with these three men is what Cheese most needs. Then again, from what we’ve seen of those three would-be father figures, what Cheese is in store for will be a camping adventure like no other.
There’ll be fishing, yes. “You’re going to learn to provide. And then you’re going to learn to be a man today,” Brownie tells Cheese. But while Big would like him to patiently prepare a line to hook fish, we watch Bucky flouting such strictures and spreading ground-up drunk root over the surface of the water. It’s but one of the many instances in this episode where the adults in Cheese’s life disagree not only as to what to do but how to go about doing it.
Brownie, for instance, really wants Cheese to slow down and take in everything around him. To really look all over. To pay attention to the sounds and the views, but also the smells—all before farting loudly. But Brownie’s message is important to take in: When Cheese picks up a piece of dirt, he is the only one who is there witnessing it. There is no other place where that is happening. It’s a lesson about valuing where you are and what you have.
Which is only slightly more transferable than Big’s foray into the forest where he goes into that one time in his youth when, alone in the woods looking at a porn magazine, he saw several Bigfeet (!) who then traipsed away from him. Where Brownie’s message seems clear, Big struggles to so handily offer a lesson (other, Cheese wonders, than “don’t be a pervert in the woods”). In all those instances, clumsy as they may be, is an impetus toward not taking for granted what they all have in front of them, and to quiet down their everyday lives to better enjoy them. (There’s no better anti-colonial lesson to be teaching a young boy who was all too content to live in the virtual reality that helped close himself off from his friends.)
The episode’s climax comes when Cheese, unable to merely sit still, suggests they all talk instead. What follows is a tender moment between all three good friends who, perhaps given the opportunity to let their emotions overflow for the first time in such a welcoming space, let themselves finally grapple with a loss decades in the making.
“We all make mistakes; and it’s okay,” Big tells himself and the others. But soon, those generalized platitudes from the three of them lead to a welcome realization that turns this episode into a lovely coda to “House Made Of Bongs.” For, in nudging Cheese to not give up on his friends and to nurture those bonds before he has to mourn their loss, Big, Bucky, and Brownie have been trying to keep him from making the same mistake they made many years back. A friend of theirs needed their help. And all they did was turn their backs on him. They wish they could’ve helped him but they failed him. And now he’s gone. Not dead, though.
“His name was Maximus.”
It’s an eye-opening moment both for the men involved as for the audience. What a carefully executed narrative pay off that began with “Maximus” a few episodes ago, which took us all the way back to 1976 and now ends in 2023 with Cheese, Big, Bucky, Brownie, and the rest of the Rez Dogs hanging out together. Seeing the vulnerability his elders expressed and truly understanding their guidance and lesson, it’s clear Cheese now has a better grasp on how much Elora, Willie Jack, and Bear can and do mean to him.
Stray observations
- No one will ever look graceful or cool playing VR games. I’m happy to see Cheese and Reservation Dogs help us all feel better about that.
- Favorite line reading of the week? “What the fuck is E. coli?”
- Love thinking about the final tableau of this episode (bright, green open space, a group of friends bonding in serenity) in contrast to the one that closed off episode five (Maximus finding himself alone, figuratively though not literally, in the middle of a foggy night).
- What an acting showcase for McClarnon, Studi, and Farmer, who get to show off not just their comedic chops but also a lovely dramatic side that deepens our kinship with their characters all while reminding us the artistry these three veteran actors have long been harboring.
- Loved the callback to season two’s “This Is Where The Plot Thickens” (also directed by Blackhorse Lowe) and Big’s fascination with Bigfoot.
- Related: In between aliens and Bigfoot and the Deer Lady, I’ve enjoyed these genre moments in a series that shines precisely because it feels so grounded in “reality.”
- Overall, what a lovely intergenerational story of collective parenting. Given that so many of our characters struggle with missing fathers and mothers and all around parental figures, it’s fitting that Reservation Dogs would constantly find moments where the community around them rally to guide them. (I’m thinking, also, of that touching moment between Elora and Teenie.) It really does take a village.