The Healing Award: Reservation Dogs (FX/Hulu)
Season one of the runaway hit Reservation Dogs was about a group of Muscogee Nation teens unpacking the suicide of one of their mates, Daniel, who killed himself before he and the crew could escape their Oklahoma surroundings and run away to California. Season two, currently unfolding, is a lesson in the power that grief plays in our ability to heal from trauma. Whereas the first season exudes an air of mystery over what happened to Daniel, in the second season, series creator Sterlin Harjo gives each character space to grieve and somehow find healing.
The first episode of the second season opens with Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis) sharing the latest gossip on what’s going on in the community. A tornado ripped through the town where the Rez Dogs live and Willie Jack feels responsible for it, convinced that all the wrong that hit the crew’s village was somehow a curse that she needs to reverse. Elora Danan (Devery Jacobs) has run away to California with a rival of the group, Jackie (Elva Guerra). Meanwhile, Bear (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) feels betrayed by Elora for leaving without him or the rest of the gang.
Healing takes place when Bear gets a job roofing and he’s paired up with Daniel’s father, Danny, who assures him that his friend’s suicide wasn’t his fault, that it was Danny and the other adults in Daniel’s life who failed him. Meanwhile, Elora returns home when she learns that her grandmother Mabel is ill and close to death. She not only confronts her friends’ sense of betrayal for abandoning them, but learns to forgive her own mother, Cookie, who died and forced her into living with Mabel. She comes closer to healing after bonding with a long-lost aunt, Tini, who (like Elora was trying to do) left home in the rear-view mirror years prior. Tini reminds Elora that she looks like her deceased mother.
The second season is not quite halfway through its 13 episodes, but the Rez Dogs have already made incredible progress in the face of immense grief. I’ll be sure to continue following along each Wednesday when a new episode streams on Hulu. — Serena Maria Daniels
Click HERE to read the article authored by JEREMY ADAM SMITH, TAYLOR FISHER, MARIAH FLYNN, JOANNE CHEN, MARYAM ABDULLAH, SERENA MARIA DANIELS, ANDREA COLLIER.
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