portrays Navajo culture<\/a>. One of the season\u2019s best moments comes when so many of the characters we love show up for Jim Chee, who thinks no one will be there for his ceremony. When the cars come over the horizon, there\u2019s a smile on Bern\u2019s face and a catch in Jim\u2019s throat that are just two of the nuanced details that elevate this show. The people who have come to support Jim prepare for what will come after the ceremony as he goes into the structure in which it will take place, and, importantly, we don\u2019t follow. We stay outside, which is such a beautiful choice. We have seen what matters: what this means to Jim and the people who support him, even an old teacher who saw something in him at a young age and the G-man who gave him that fast-food nickname.<\/p>\nOf course, all of this comes after the true climax of the season, during the first half-hour of this long episode. It\u2019s here where Zahn McClarnon gets to do some of the best work of his career, the kind of performance that would net him an Emmy nod in a just world. He\u2019s forced to play a range of emotions from anger to courage to vulnerability to, ultimately, triumph. And the show\u2019s themes surface through this section and McClarnon\u2019s work, including how we can\u2019t force family and we can\u2019t appropriate culture. It\u2019s a battle between two people who would do anything to have a traditional family again, but it\u2019s a contrast between a villain who tries to force into reality a life that she hasn\u2019t earned and a hero who desperately wants to regain something he\u2019s lost.<\/p>\n
The showdown reveals the increasing depth of Irene Vaggan\u2019s mental illness. She has kidnapped Joe and Billie with the demented belief that she can force them to be a family. Using her longtime obsession with Indigenous culture, she forces Joe and Billie to behave like her husband and daughter. She gases them to move them from sleep to a family dinner she imagines will somehow be a happy one.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Of course, Joe makes multiple escape attempts, including by using a charcoal filter to alleviate the effect of the gas, but that backfires, leading to a brutal offscreen beating of Billie. We don\u2019t see it, but we hear it and catch the aftermath at the next \u201cfamily dinner.\u201d As Joe becomes more convinced that Irene is going to kill them both, McClarnon is allowed to push into his own rich emotional back story for this character. He had so many mornings with Emma and their son around a similar table, but \u201cI blinked, and the table was empty.\u201d He wants something that he once had back. She wants something that never was.<\/p>\n
Convincing Irene that he\u2019s willing to make an offering, Joe pops outside and gets a lighter in his hands. It\u2019s another great scene for McClarnon, allowed to show both vulnerability and Joe\u2019s strategic acumen. In Navajo, he tells Billie to run, and he lights the bunker on fire, horribly scarring half of Irene\u2019s face. A battle ensues, and Joe gets the upper hand, but he doesn\u2019t give Irene what she wants: to be killed by Joe. \u201cYou\u2019re under arrest for murder,\u201d Joe says. And the action of the season is over.<\/p>\n
An epilogue to that action comes with a badass scene between McClarnon and Titus Welliver as the man who orchestrated all of this. He brags about busting his plan and sending Irene to prison for life. McClarnon has been delicately emotional this season, but there\u2019s also just great joy to be found in seeing him go into full tough-guy mode. He\u2019s not afraid of this defeated kingpin. \u201cYou know my name,\u201d he says. \u201cYou know where to find me. Come knock at my door.\u201d<\/p>\n
From here, the season finale rolls to the aforementioned ceremony and the big question of whether or not Joe will retire. After Jim\u2019s event, Emma goes to Joe and insists that any retirement has to be only for him, not to bring them back together. He needs to go sweat and pray on it. \u201cYou will always be my family,\u201d she says. It\u2019s a scene filled with loss and sadness, but it\u2019s also creatively impressive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Next, Joe gets a great scene with Gordo, who loves his life but admits he wishes he hadn\u2019t retired. And then he gets another excellent one with Jim, reminding him how he\u2019ll be undervalued in Los Angeles. They go into the sweat together to figure out their next steps.<\/p>\n
And then life gets in the way. As \u201cThese Are Difficult Times\u201d by Willie Nelson plays, Bern goes to the police station while Joe considers one of the biggest decisions of his life. \u201cDon\u2019t waste a moment unhappy,\u201d advises Willie. \u201cDon\u2019t spend too much time on the bad times, their staggering number will be heavy as lead on your mind.\u201d We hear that line twice, and it\u2019s presumably a reference to the past. But it could be a nod to the future as Joe gets a call that will weigh like a ton of bricks for the rest of his days. With a shattered look on his face he says to Bern, \u201cGordo Sena was murdered last night.\u201d Oh no.<\/p>\n
Stray observations<\/p>\n
\u2022 Remember last week<\/a> when I recommended Fancy Dance with Isabel DeRoy-Olson (Billie) and Lily Gladstone? This episode was helmed by that film\u2019s director, Erica Tremblay.
\n\u2022 It\u2019s kind of funny to think that this season was about a girl who ran away and came home with a mother she thought was dead. It\u2019s a season about family reflected through a teenager who had to leave home to find hers.
\n\u2022 It ultimately means little, but it does broaden a show\u2019s reach, so I\u2019ll say that Dark Winds has landed too few award nominations. It notched a cool one for McClarnon from the Gotham Awards for the first season and a Scripter nod last season. This should be the season that changes that at the Emmys and not just because the competition thinned notably with a lesser outing for Slow Horses and the mediocrity that was the final outing(s) of Stranger Things. They truly should find space for at least Zahn McClarnon for Best Actor, and I would strongly consider Drama Series and noms for Kiowa Gordon and Jessica Matten.
\n\u2022 This still feels like a show that works better at six or seven episodes per season rather than eight. (They could have tightened up some of the Los Angeles material here.) I\u2019m also not 100-percent convinced by some of Franka Potente\u2019s choices, although I think that\u2019s the writing of a truly sporadic character more than an inconsistent performance. It\u2019s a tough part to go from icy villain to the almost heartfelt mania that she has to play in this finale.
\n\u2022 Thanks for reading this season\u2019s recaps. See you next year! (I\u2019m already sad about Gordo.)<\/p>\nBrian Tallerico is a contributor to The A.V. Club.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the many wonderful things about AMC\u2019s Dark Winds is how it defies the traditional habit of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-585309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}