![]() ![]() Have a good life, Dad.” That is a long way from the Bear of previous seasons who refused to accept that Punkin would always let him down. As William will admit in the next episode, he can only be so helpful, because the spirit council says, “I can only give you cryptic aphorisms.”Įventually, though, we get to see Bear very much in the real world as we get the rest of his conversation with the mother of his new half-siblings, and we see the message Bear left for Punkin: “For once, I get to decide how you disappear. The rest of the ensemble is having fairly down to earth conversations - Willie Jack and Cheese about the inevitability of their other friends eventually leaving the rez, Teenie telling Elora that she shouldn’t expect to change very much once she’s an adult - while Bear is caught up in the mix of mysticism and absurdity that is William Knifeman. So the episode follows parallel tracks and tones. Bear gets stranded at a rest stop in Amarillo because he’s distracted by William’s talk of destiny, and the rest of the group doesn’t notice that he didn’t get back on the bus. ![]() Most of the episode is travelogue, including an Indiana Jones-esque sequence where we see them (as Fozzie Bear once put it) traveling by map. Instead, it’s Elora’s Aunt Teenie to the rescue (after a nausea-inducing Uber ride) with bus tickets back to the rez. Bear takes the group to his father Punkin’s apartment, but of course the useless fool isn’t there he’s clearly neglecting his new family at least as much as he once did Bear and Rita. In the end, though, it turns out that we’re seeing things unfold in the exact order we should. The story bounces around in time a bit, and at first this seems to be because it’s being told by the highly distractable William Knifeman. “Bussin” picks up largely where Season Two left off: the four main kids stuck in Los Angeles, having lost their car and cash, and with White Jesus as their only friend. ![]() Whatever Sterlin Harjo and company want to accomplish, they do, brilliantly. We can get shaggy ensemble comedy in one episode, and then a dark, sad, but ultimately sweet two-character piece in the next. William Knifeman can be an idealized symbol and also a fool. Even though its subject matter in theory is incredibly specific - Indigenous teenage friends growing up together on a reservation in rural Oklahoma - the show somehow has room for almost any subject, any tone, any idea. Or maybe it has yet to even happen.” And as he prepares to ride off and let us watch the story unfold, his horse stubbornly refuses his commands to move.īoth that scene and the episodes that follow it are the perfect curtain-raiser for what we now know will be the final season of this incredible series. Though his speech is often a mix of wise old sayings and more modern idiom, here he is largely in the former mode, albeit with an undercurrent of gibberish. This is classic Old West right here, but the iconography is instantly undercut by the fact that the warrior in question is our pal William Knifeman, the lovable idiot whose spirit mainly seems to exist to annoy Bear. A tumbleweed blows across the plains, a Native warrior rides into the center of the frame, and calls out to all us young and old warriors watching from more comfortable surroundings. “Bussin,” the first of this week’s two episodes, opens in typical, wonderful Reservation Dogsfashion. This post contains spoilers for the two-episode Season Three premiere of Reservation Dogs, which is now streaming on Hulu. ![]()
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