Jim Chee rides to the rescue while Bernadette “Bern” Manuelito takes a big risk to crack a case.
Warning: This is an overview of Episode 7 for Season 3 for Dark Winds, so there will be scads of spoilers here. We strongly recommend that you not read this if you have not yet watched the episode on AMC or AMC+.
Leaphorn and Chee retrace their steps after uncovering a vital clue. Special Agent Washington pressures Emma for information. Manuelito moves quickly to execute a search warrant. What are we to make of this? Here are our six takeaways from “T'áá Áłts'íísígo (Just a Small Piece),” the second-to-last Season 3 episode of Dark Winds.
Takeaway No. 1
Yes, we freely admit it: We loved seeing Chee riding to the rescue like an old-time movie cowboy hero after getting Joe’s call for help. And speaking of heroics: Joe demonstrated his own sort of stoic bravery by telling Chee — ordering him, actually — to go after his attacker, and never mind his wounded leg. (Fortunately, George Bowlegs had patched up Joe before running off to catch a train to Reno.) Too bad Chee was not able to exterminate the hooded villain during their shootout before the bad guy could drive off. But at least the good guys have finally ascertained that, hey, they’re not dealing with the Ye’iitsoh bogeyman after all. Or at Joe put it: “It’s not a monster, Jim. It’s just a man.”
Takeaway No. 2
Carrying on the long tradition of resilient TV and movie heroes, Joe made a remarkably quick recovery after being shot with a dart laced with horse tranquilizer — the chief reason for all his hallucinating in the previous episode — and having the aforementioned leg injury. He just dragged himself out of his hospital bed, pulled on his pants, and by God got back on the case to resume making Sherlockian deductions. Why didn’t his attacker kill him the same way he killed Halsey in that SOB’s jail cell? Could it be there have been two killers with sporadically overlapping agendas? Bingo! Budge may have offed Halsey, but the hooded guy who drugged Joe and presumably intended to murder George had to be… Dr. Reynolds, the researcher in charge of the dig site near where Ernesto was found dead.
Takeaway No. 3
Seriously: You didn’t really think we’d seen the last of that guy, did you? And not just because he’s played by Christopher Heyerdahl, the same actor we saw as the preternaturally menacing Swede in Hell on Wheels. No, we thought there was something off about this dude right from the start, especially when he was so quick to dismiss as “fake” the arrowhead Joe had brought him for inspection, and even quicker to toss it into a trash can. Turns out it really was a fake — faked by Dr. Reynolds himself.
The researcher was long gone by the time Joe returned to the dig site with Chee in tow. But while questioning Teddi, his innocent and unaware assistant, they deduced that Dr. Reynolds, fearful of losing his grants because he couldn’t prove the ancient Folsom tribe once roamed the area, manufactured the arrowhead as “proof.” Unfortunately, Ernesto and George stumbled across the arrowhead late one night while rummaging around the dig site. Even more unfortunately, Dr. Reynolds killed Ernesto with a clawhammer to keep him quiet, without realizing the boy had hidden the arrowhead in his mouth. Which is where Joe (and Gordo) found it in the first place. Now the researcher is desperately attempting to tie up any loose ends that might implicate him. And he apparently knows one of the loose ends is about to catch a train to Reno. Uh-oh.
Takeaway No. 4
Joe may have recovered physically — well, at least enough to continue his Sherlocking —— but the poor guy’s broken heart appears to be increasingly more painful. Sure, Emma refused to back away from giving Joe an alibi for BJ Vines’ murder while she was questioned by FBI Agent Washington. But she admitted to the fed that she and her husband had grown apart, perhaps permanently. And after their conversation, despite Joe’s entreaties, she took off to live with her sister in another town for a while. Or maybe forever.
Jenna Elfman as FBI special agent Sylvia Washington
Takeaway No. 5
Meanwhile, off in Hachita, New Mexico, Bern figured that her new sweetie, Border Patrol agent Ivan Muños, was working with Chief Ed Henry, their commander, to assist, or at the very least ignore, rancher Tom Spencer’s drug-smuggling. But even though Ivan was accepting payoffs, his hands were merely soiled, not irretrievably dirty. More important, he had developed genuinely warm feelings for Bern. (Did you spot that each of them was drinking an RC Cola over lunch? In previous seasons, we saw that was also Chee’s soft drink of choice.) And he really, really wanted to extricate himself from the criminal operation. On the other hand, Border Patrol agent Eleanda Garza was up to her neck in the muck. Trouble is, Bern trusted Garza enough to request that she accompany her for a two-person raid on Spencer’s ranch. Bad move: As the episode ended, Bern was held at gunpoint by Garza and taken captive by… well, it had to be Budge, right? Hope everything turns out right for Bern in next week’s Season 3 finale.
Takeaway No. 6
For the most part, the writers of this series have been scrupulously careful to avoid anachronisms in their scripts. But we couldn’t help noticing something was amiss when Chief Henry berated Ivan for aligning with Bern: “You’re not fool enough to be drinking her Kool-Aid, are you, Ivan?” It was obviously a reference to the notorious mass suicide by Rev. Jim Jones’ cultists in the Guyanese jungle. (Fun fact: They actually drank Fla-Vor-Aid, not Kool-Aid, laced with cyanide.) But that event occurred in 1978, more than a half-decade after the time in which Dark Winds is set. Not that we’re going to make a big deal out of that, you understand. No, not us. But we can’t speak for the sharp-eyed viewers who post on social media.
