Dark Winds 1.02

The Male Rain Approaches

The episode opens with a flashback to three years before the heist. There was an explosion at an oil drilling site. Joe Leaphorn's teenage son worked there and was killed in the explosion. Joe Jr. was dating Anna Atcitty. Guy, Anna's father, was warned that something might happen. It is unclear but unlikely that he passed that information on to Joe Jr.

Leaphorn tricks Chee into revealing that he is an undercover FBI agent. Leaphorn asks Chee to get him some information about the two murder victims and to get a water sample analyzed. 

Leaphorn visits Sally Growing Thunder. He tries to talk her into moving to Gallup. He thinks she will be safer there. She doesn't want to leave the reservation. Later in the episode, she moves in with Joe and Emma.

A White Mormon family buys a painting of a cactus at the trading post that was supposed to be held for another customer. Someone comes after them. Their car is later found abandoned by Sergeant Manuelito. It is later revealed that inside the painting was cash, and lots of it; possibly it is the money from the heist. The priest is working with the men who recovered the money from the Mormon family.

Thoughts

There are a number of flashback scenes, to Leaphorn's past, in addition to the flashback at the very beginning of the episode. They detail some of his history with his son and with Guy Atcitty. They are shot slightly differently. That's part of what clued me into the fact that they were flashbacks. They help to explain some things but they don't fully work.

I liked previous episode. It showed a lot of promise. I wasn't expecting huge revelations in this episode. I understood that it would be a bridge to something bigger but on the whole I found that it lacked the subtle touch that was present in the previous episode.

This episode was directed by the same person as the last one but it doesn't feel it. Maybe it is the writing but it's also how a number of the scenes are played that felt wrong to me.

Was Leaphorn's son or Guy Atcitty somehow involved with the men who stole the money? Was the explosion that killed Joe Jr somehow related to the arrival of the helicopter?

I'm not as excited to watch the next episode as I was after the first one but I think I will stick with it, at least until the end of the season. There's only four episodes left in the season. Maybe it will get better.