The draw of AMC’s critically-acclaimed ’70s noir Dark Winds has always been in its ability to balance elements of the police procedural genre with character work that makes it into more than just a random Law & Order wannabe. The mysteries and cases that were introduced, investigated, and solved in the first three seasons were deviously crafted, but it’s the character work by both guest stars and the trio at the heart of this show that separates it. And the fourth season premiere shows no evidence of creative erosion in this dangerous corner of the United States, one where trauma on a micro and macro level influences criminal activity as much as greed.
The third season of Dark Winds centered Joe Leaphorn’s (Zahn McClarnon) tortured journey to accepting his guilt in the death of B.J. Vines and his wife Emma’s (Deanna Allison) discovery of that choice. To start the fourth season, Leaphorn is living a solitary life, introduced working the soil to the plaintive melodies of Bad Company’s “Seagull.” “Here is a man asking a question,” goes one of the lyrics. “Is this really the end of the world?” Joe’s world was his family and what can it possibly be with Emma gone? As he contemplates running after her, he also considers the retirement that would be required to do so. And he has one person in mind to replace him as the Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant: Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten).
While Joe has found himself in a lonely valley of his life, Bernadette has emerged from one, returning to Kayenta and reigniting her relationship with Deputy Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon). While the two seem to be living peaceful, romantic lives at the start of the season, clouds are brewing on the horizon in the form of competition. While Chee is happy when Bern returns to work, he doesn’t know that Joe has tagged her to be his replacement instead of him. There’s no way he takes that well.
“Kǫ’Tsiitáá’ Álnééh (Baptism By Fire)” sets up a season about people on the precipice of change: retirement, promotion, relationship, adulthood, and even the decline of dementia. It’s only one episode, but themes of guilt and vengeance in past seasons were often laid into the foundation of the season in their premieres. It’s not really the end of the world. But things like retirement can feel like that sometimes.
Don’t worry. The fourth-season premiere of Dark Winds hasn’t turned into a Bergmanesque existential drama. It’s still a wicked thriller, and it reminds viewers of its brutality in its bookends: a mass shooting in a diner to open the episode and the NTPD’s discovery of the victims in the stylish close. They’re both fantastically conceived and directed, the first sequence feeling like a Cormac McCarthy movie as we watch, largely through the windows, as a silent assassin shoots up a place with a sign that simply reads “Diner,” trying to get to two young people who escape into the night. In the final sequence, the damaged jukebox moves at a terrifyingly slow speed as lights flash over the murdered bodies being discovered by our heroes in a way that feels like a nightmare that David Lynch would draft in something like Wild At Heart.
In between, the writers of Dark Winds set up the season’s prime mystery, jumping back 15 hours before the diner became a bloodbath to explain how we got here. Run Lola Run star Franka Potente plays the mysterious outsider who has come to town looking for a kid named Albert who has hit the road with a girl named Billie (Isabel DeRoy-Olson). When Billie’s disappearance from the local girls’ school, St. Catherine’s, gets the attention of Leaphorn and Chee, they begin the investigation that will likely pull its thread through the whole season.
When Bernadette goes to St. C’s to not only add her own detective skills but use her history with the clearly abusive institution to help with the case, it suggests that we may get something this show has frustratingly avoided for a few seasons: a mystery that Chee, Leaphorn, and Bern all work together to solve head-on instead of just colliding later in the season. Chee left for a bit, Bern left for a bit, but these three great characters are now by each other’s side, which portends a season with different energy than we’ve had for some time, especially with the setup of a deadly villain for them to defeat.
We also need to talk about Gordo’s (A Martinez) only appearance this episode in a roadside conversation with Joe in which we meet his wife Dee (Linda Hamilton). She has increasingly severe dementia, another nod to what feels like a season of change and also a reminder of what Joe wishes he could be doing: Taking care of his wife, even if she doesn’t know his name.
McClarnon is so good at conveying the inner core of decency of Joe Leaphorn, a man who believes in justice and loyalty to his core. He has picked Bernadette over Chee because he senses that she has a stronger connection with the people of the region. It’s not just about crime-solving for Joe Leaphorn. It’s about community, respect, and connection. A member of his community in Billie is gone and in danger. A person from outside of his community has broken into it with violence. There’s almost something comforting about believing there are men like Joe Leaphorn out there, men who may not always know the right thing to do but have the values we want from our law enforcement—and our noir heroes.
Stray observations
- • Every season of Dark Winds is based on a different book in the Leaphorn & Chee series by Tony Hillerman. This one uses 1984’s The Ghostway as its basis, the sixth novel in the franchise. There are 18 books in Hillerman’s series, so the AMC writers won’t run out of mysteries soon. Without spoiling, I’ll talk a bit about how the season and book differ from one another in future recaps, but you should know that the novel is heavy on Jim Chee, which is good given he’s been the most underwritten of the leads so far. That should change this season if they’re even remotely loyal to the source material.
- • The opening shoot-out reminded me of the remote Waffle Hut beset upon by violence in the second-season premiere of Fargo, which is one of the shows that, coincidentally, made Zahn McClarnon a star.
- • The tag at the end was heartwarming: “In Memory of Robert Redford.” People might forget that he (along with George R.R. Martin) was not only a producer on this show but had a cameo in the third-season premiere, his last acting credit.
- • Can we talk for a minute about Gordo? Martinez is so good at playing an ally without stealing focus from his lead. He truly supports McClarnon in their scenes together in a manner that’s easy to underrate. Let’s hope we get more of him this year. With Hamilton’s appearance, it seems likely we will, although she was utterly wasted in the final season of Stranger Things, so nothing is guaranteed.
Brian Tallerico is a contributor to The A.V. Club.
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