'Reservation Dogs' Recap: Season 1 Premiere

Hulu new teen drama Reservation Dogs, created by Sterling Harjo, is about four native American younglings in a small town in Oklahoma. Bear, Cheese, Elora, and Willie Jack are on a mission to level their small town to Califonia.

The series premiere with a chips heist, the quirky teenagers masterminded and executed the hijack of a chips truck which they eventually drive to a salvage yard owned by Kenny Boy to sell off and earn some cash.

In return for their successful heist, Kenny Boy agreed to let them keep the bags of chips in the truck all for a dollar! Soon enough the quarter begins to sell the chips in their neighborhood. 

Elora says it'll take them two months to get the amount they want for the trip, here lies the propulsion of most of the sequence of events. The teens want to leave so badly to get out of Oklahoma into the city of California and we don't expressly know why but there are hints here and there, breadcrumbs for us to follow as the first episode follows the lives of each of them in their small native American neighborhood.  

Slow-paced and seemingly plotless, Reservation Dogs drags on in a deadpan comedic style through the blocks of the reservation, goading our patience with the promise of a laid-back tale of poverty, freedom, and fate, a narrative approach much more satisfyingly novel than any drama we have seen in years.

There is a streak of daredevilry in the little group that not even the lazy sheriff, Big, can keep at Bay. They've stolen cars, ripped the copper of headlamps, run off with steaks from stores, and are willing to go farther.  It's not very far into the episode why we begin to learn the cause of their desperation.

They had a fifth member, Daniel, who had died from some mishap, traced to the environment in which they live. Was it gang-related? We are not told. But we soon learn that there is a gang after them, the NDN mafia, a bunch of mean white kids who strut about in a black Malibu like they own the town.

Through some fault of Mose, one of a duo of dwarf twin rappers (the other is Mekko) who had told the mafia about the quartet's bravado, the four teens have now been known after their celebrated truck heist as the Reservation Bandits, and later the Reservation Dogs, a nod to Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs' characters. 

The white kids keep an eye out for them, shooting them with paintballs as they waltz the streets in their car. Bear crashes to the ground during the shootout and enters a trancelike state, where he meets with an indigenous ancestor on a horse, a spirit warrior who claimed to have "fought at the Battle of Little Big Horn, accidentally killing William with his horse. 

This encounter leaves him doubtful as to his motives of leaving for California, as the spirit warrior asks him what he is fighting for and tells him it's easy to be bad but difficult to be a warrior with dignity and that in his time they made sacrifices on their people's behalf. Since no one would be there to protect his people after they are gone, he decides he'll stay back and contemplates forming a vigilantes gang, an idea that sits well with Cheese. 

On a deeper level, the spirit warrior's words as an admonishment to him to protect his identity and culture from the white man who four hundred years ago cleared the Indian population and,  through cultural imperialism, is slowly stripping them of any identity. 

Bear, more than the other two, feels some remorse when the truck driver from whom they had stolen the truck comes into a diner where the four regularly eat catfish and reveals that he had been let go of his job, which made his wife leave him, he would soon lose his foot and get bankrupt. 

Soon they plot to buy back the truck and return it to the man stealthily, shortening their escape money to California. But it's already too late, as the truck has been taken apart by Kenny Boy's people.

The delight of this Hulu series is in its comedic bent and its rarity. Almost never do we see the lives of the indigenous native Americans portrayed as closely, most of the characters being minorities. The flute music as Bear goes into a trance to meet with the horseman was an enchanting thrill as well. And it's our hope that its subtle association with Reservoir Dogs' hopefully live up to its legacy in the coming episodes.