As punishment for throwing a party while she was out of town at the Indian Health Services conference (which we witnessed last episode), Rita forces Bear to attend the annual IHS Youth Summit, an event seemingly designed to invigorate the self-determination of the youth in the village by building community and introducing them to positive role models. Willie Jack and Cheese tag along, incentivized to attend by the bribe of a Sonic gift card. (It’s only a matter of time before the Sonic/Reservation Dogs commercials start airing, I just know it. At the very least, they deserve their own special slushie flavor. Something!) Bear is stoked when he sees Elora walk in, only to quickly sour when Jackie also arrives with her. While everyone managed to keep the peace during Mabel’s funeral, Willie Jack and Bear continue to see Jackie as their enemy, and over the course of this episode, tensions amongst the group quickly boil over.
Everything starts out well enough with a goofy blessing by Elder Fixico and everyone holding hands. However, things go downhill as the land acknowledgement descends into pure absurdity (though the additional thanking of the “dinosaur oyate” and reptilians is a bit more entertaining than folks blandly reading off community names they haven’t bothered to learn to pronounce, which is an all-too-common practice I’ve witnessed). Soon, folks’ grudges start to get the best of them. It seems Willie Jack and Bear are still competing for Elora’s friendship, and their jealousy over Jackie is the very thing preventing them from showing up in meaningful ways.
Throughout this season we’ve gotten more glimpses into Jackie’s character, and this episode we learn more about her relationship with her now-deceased brother. During a sharing circle, Jackie opens up to everyone and reveals that one of her happiest memories is when her brother taught her how to ride a bike on her own. And, after Willie Jack opts not to catch Jackie during a trust fall, Elora also makes it known that Jackie’s brother died “like Daniel.” These bits of information connect some of the pieces of Jackie’s character together, and they also do a lot to explain the strong bond that formed between Elora and Jackie during their short trip out of town, as the two women went through similar experiences while growing up. The parallels in the deaths of Jackie’s brother and Daniel also reveal that the youth in the community are really struggling.
There is a brief glimmer of hope for Bear and Jackie to reconcile when the two win the “potato dance” exercise that forces the two to balance a raw spud between their foreheads. After some initial bickering, the pair slip into a rhythm and even share a high-five after their victory. And things also seem to be on the up and up for Bear and Elora — Elora tries to show Bear that she’s worthy of being trusted by guiding him through a maze while he’s blindfolded. Unfortunately, Bear still doesn’t seem ready to give up his beef with Elora and Jackie for ditching him (a choice that increasingly looks like they may have made for his own good).
Two boastful characters played by Amber Midthunder (star of Prey) and Elisha Pratt (who I recognized from his role in the recent remake of Castle Freak) offer some not-so-subtle satire of Indigenous “influencer” culture, as well as a critique of some college-educated Native folks who have bought a little too much into the narrative that “education is the new buffalo.” Recently, several popular Native TikTokers have come under fire for not practicing IRL the community values that they preach online. While Miss Matriarch (Midthunder) and Augusto Firekeeper (Pratt) seem to have decent intentions for the youth they seek to inspire, they seem oblivious to the fact that the Reservation Dogs have experienced a lot within their own community, and by extension, these youth already know a lot about what it’s like to be a Native person today.
Overall, the pair of wanna-be influencers come off as deeply disengaged wanna-be saviors, a persona that the episode mines for great comic effect. For example, over lunch, Miss Matriarch tells Willie Jack that her next big project is a documentary of youth on her community’s rez (which just so happens to also be my home community of Pine Ridge, South Dakota — I’ll accept the gentle teasing of Lakotas this episode, though) who “don’t have a fighting chance,” revealing that she’s looking at the village youth from a deficit thinking model. Later, Cheese presses the two “leaders” to define what they mean by “decolonization,” and all they can offer is the empty encouragement for the youth to “keep thinking for yourself.” In response to Bear’s look of pure bewilderment, Miss Matriarch adds, condescendingly, “I’m so glad that I was able to give you that gift today. You’re welcome, little brother.” Midthunder and Pratt do a great job playing into the gag, and it’s great to see Midthunder in particular play for comedy, and it hits even more given her rise to action stardom as the Comanche heroine of the latest movie in the Predator series, Prey.
After realizing the gravity of the rude comments Willie Jack made to Jackie about her brother, she tries to make peace, only to be shut out by Jackie with a threatening warning to “watch your fucking back.” And things don’t go any better between Elora and Bear. Elora tells Bear she finds the whole situation between Willie Jack and Jackie to be pretty messed up, which leads Bear to blow up at Elora for what he sees as “taking sides” among her friends. Things get caustic quickly when Bear accuses Elora of ignoring the ongoing tensions in their friend group, and then Bear accuses Elora of ditching out on her friends while also expecting them to show up for her. Elora and Bear have long been suffering from a communication breakdown, with each expecting the other to telepathically know how to act right. Ultimately, Bear comes off as the more out-of-touch of the two, especially since he belligerently tells Elora that she is destined to end up alone like her recently deceased grandmother (who, we discovered during her funeral, was deeply shaped by trauma and loss, just like Elora) and demands Elora’s praise for doing the bare minimum in their friendship. Despite being lectured to by elders and spirits for most of this season, Bear is still demanding folks meet his needs without first articulating them, and Elora, fed up, storms off. Still, she only warns Bear not to talk to her “for a while,” indicating that she’s ready to make amends when both of them have space to really open up to each other.
The episode ends with an incredibly bleak scene showing Elora alone in her grandmother’s old home, first laughing at the television and later being drawn into her grandmother’s old room by the ghostly memory of the elders singing at Mabel’s wake. Standing alone in the dark house, the camera slowly circles around Elora like a cat pacing the perimeter of its cage. Finally, after an uncertain sigh from Elora, the camera cuts to black. So — do you think Elora is going to sell the house and head out for California again? Is there a chance for the Rez Dogs to reconcile? Or is the thunderstorm brewing outside an omen that there’s much more trouble to come?
Willie Jack’s Deadly Meat Pies
• Props to this episode’s writer, Erica Tremblay, for putting together an episode that mostly takes place in one location but portrays such emotional range. Keep an eye out for her work in forthcoming series Yellowbird, set to premiere on Paramount+. The show is based off of Sierra Crane Murch’s Pulitzer-nominated novel Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman’s Search for Justice in Indian Country, and will follow a formerly incarcerated Indigenous woman as she looks for clues in a missing-persons case.
• In addition to hearing more of Jackie’s backstory, the episode also gives some comical insight into the character of White Steve. We’re shown a flashback of him getting jumped into Jackie’s gang (which he describes as “the happiest day of my life”), and he seems to have some moves during the potato dance with Willie Jack. The capper is that, after Augusto makes a comment to him about growing his hair out, White Steve responds with a totally earnest “… can I?” All of the cute side characters in the show not only offer more opportunity for jokes, but they help in making the world of the show feel more full and lively.