Wanting to escape from your hometown is every young person’s birthright. In America, pulling up stakes and hitting the road is embedded in popular culture: it’s “Go West, Young One”; is a Bruce Springsteen lyric.
For some Americans, however, like the four teenagers on an Oklahoma reservation in FX’s sublime coming-of-age comedy “Reservation Dogs,” the idea of home, who belongs and who belongs there , is more complicated. The romance of the road, after all, is tied to a history of seeing North America as a frontier. When your ancestors lived in what others saw as a blank space to fill, this American myth comes out a little differently.
The push from home and the pull toward it form the dynamic that drives “Reservation Dogs,” which emerged from the box last year as one of the most lived-in, drawn-out comedies on television. The fantastic first season focused on the desire to escape; the second, which returns to Hulu on Wednesday, is about what it takes to rediscover your home.
The pilot episode bursts into your screen as if someone is chasing it. Their self-styled gang of four (the show’s title comes from their nickname, a reference to Quentin Tarantino’s film “Reservoir Dogs”) is thrust into the middle of taking over a potato chip truck. Their plan is to raise money, leave for California and leave behind the reservation they blame for the suicide of their friend Daniel (Dalton Cramer).
Like many improvised skits, this takes a few twists and turns and the season rounds out the kids in a relaxed, observant character piece. Elora (Devery Jacobs) is a heartbroken walker who especially feels the loss of Daniel (we eventually learn that she was the one who found his body). Bear (D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai) is a scrawny kid who stumbles to be the man he appears to be. Cheese (Lane Factor) is unreleased and thoughtful; Willie Jack (an instantly winning Paulina Alexis) has a prodigious mouth and a loyal heart.
California is less a concrete destination for them than an idea, a substitute for “not here.” But “Reservation Dogs” is deeply in touch with the feel and flavor of the place it portrays.
Creators Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi produced a story about indigenous people by indigenous peoples, shot in Oklahoma, with the delicate texture of great regional television. (It’s both a welcome example of television paying attention to rural life and a reminder that “rural” is not synonymous with “white”). It is loaded with traditions, ways of life and pop history; a Season 1 episode delves into the mythos of the vengeful Deer Lady and the career of 1970s Native American band Redbone.
Like “Atlanta,” another realistic FX comedy, “Reservation Dogs” has a sincere irreverence and an aversion to the romantic cliché. Bear is visited by the spirit of a Lakota warrior (Dallas Goldtooth) who was at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, but not inside, because he died when his horse hit a gopher hole, and who imparts pepes of wisdom in a torrent brother speaks. In a new episode, he solemnly tells Bear, “Go on, my rebellious son, there’ll be peace when you’re done,” a blessing from classic rock band Kansas.
The eight-episode first season goes nowhere fast, building the world and the cast of local eccentrics. Zahn McClarnon, who anchored AMC’s crime drama “Dark Winds,” gives a tongue-in-cheek performance as Big, a hapless tribal police officer with a penchant for insight; an episode set in the Indian Health Service clinic sketches the reservation’s afflictions and support systems in miniature.
As in so many teenage romances, the things that Dogs hate about home (the insularity, the money problems, the bad memories) give way to the things that, whether they admit it or not, they like (the relationships, the interdependence, better memories).
One by one, the friends get cold feet to leave, and Elora heads to California alone, taking her grandmother’s car with her nemesis, Jackie (Elva Guerra, also from “Dark Winds”). She is free at last, but seems more unmoored the further west they travel. Meanwhile, his friends are trying to find ways to make a home at home, making up for the past and processing the loss of Daniel.
The new season takes a few steps closer to the dramatic side of drama, but there’s still plenty of laid-back humor. In the second episode, Willie Jack and Cheese turn to Uncle Brownie (Gary Farmer), an old man who dispenses decades-old advice and weed, for help in lifting a curse. He stumbles upon a ceremony, which he says must conclude with “an old song.” He pauses and summons music from within: “Free Fallin'” by Tom Petty. (“It’s like 30 years. That’s old!”)
The miraculous and the mundane always rub elbows in “Standby Dogs.” Jackie receives a prophecy in the form of a souvenir card from a “Medicine Man” divination machine at a gas station gift shop. (“You’ve got to get off the path you’re on.”) Bear’s spirit guide visits Uncle Brownie, who at the end of Season 1 performed a ritual to ward off a tornado and now believes he’s a man saint The spirit says this is nonsense. “It turned into a storm,” he says, but “anyway, anyone can do it.”
Like the spirit, “Reservation Dogs” believes that any of its characters are capable of magic, not just the literal, meteorological kind. Everyone, even an underprivileged, has power and responsibility as part of a larger community. You can get a prophecy from a drunk sitting in a bar or wisdom from a guy getting a haircut on the porch.
Also, sometimes you can see the lighting as you go about a day’s work. In the new season, Bear takes a construction job and finds himself working alongside Daniel’s father, Danny (Michael Spears), stirring up uncomfortable memories for both of them. The bear almost falls off a roof trying to grab some loose shingles, but Danny catches him. “The first rule of the deck,” says Danny. “Don’t chase him if he’s already falling.” It’s a lesson Bear and all his friends are trying to learn: how to know what to let go and how to save what matters.