Ha’iinlni – As the fifth episode of Dark Winds begins, Devoted Dan (Rainn Wilson) films a commercial for his car lot. When the shoot finishes, Dan says goodbye to his family, flirts with another woman, and goes back inside. He takes the woman to his van for sex moments later. An older man who looks like a mechanic calls Tso and Frank so they can come and take incriminating pictures. Hoski (Jeremiah Bitsui) tells Dan he wants to save his soul. They want the black truck and they want Dan to launder money for them. Hoski gets in the truck with Frank Nakai (Eugene Brave Rock) before they drive away and leave Dan cursing himself. After the intro, Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) brings Emma (Deanna Allison) coffee as she talks to Whitover about getting Frank to Flagstaff.

Whitover (Noah Emmerich) suggests Joe can talk to his wife for him. Joe admits he still wouldn’t do it even if she was talking to him. He asks if Whitover has a warrant. Whitover doesn’t think he needs one since Frank shot at an agent yesterday. Right now, he is a Navajo citizen sitting in Joe’s custody. Whitover tells him to be happy for once since he finally caught the bad guy. When Bernadette (Jessica Matten) comes out of her trailer, Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon) is there hoping to smooth things over with her. He explains he is heading out of town and wanted to say goodbye. Bern tells him goodbye before turning around to leave. Jim suggests she makes it hard for people and this is why no one has ever been in her trailer. She curses him and says at least she knows who she is and where she belongs. After he says there is nothing here for him, Bernadette reminds him that she is here.

Before she goes back inside, she tells him that she belongs to the Todich’ii’nii clan. Joe talks to his wife about Frank and whether he can walk. She makes it clear that he shouldn’t be interrogated because he is on medication, but he can walk. Jim and Whitover search the lake for evidence and discuss Raymond’s murder. Jim is tasked with following the bodies back to Flagstaff to see if the holes in the bodies match the bullet casing they found nearby. Whitover congratulates him since he put in his transfer to DC with a 5k bonus and his own office. He’ll leave on Tuesday. Once Joe finishes moving Frank to the jail, he asks Bern to collect everything they have on Big Rock. He says they’ll only have a few hours with Frank before the Feds show up. Bern asks why he didn’t tell her that Jim was part of the FBI. Frank says he could’ve told her that.

Joe says it was a chance to have someone from the inside for once. He asks when he was supposed to tell her everything. Bern admits he doesn’t, but he teamed her up with someone she couldn’t trust and that was her life. After Joe apologizes and says he wanted to protect her, Bernadette reminds him that she is a cop who doesn’t need his protection. She argues that she needs his respect before walking away. Joe decides to question Frank who won’t say where his partner is hiding. Joe suggests it must hurt worse knowing his partner left him out there to die, but Frank says he knows he can’t die. Joe shows him pictures of Hoski’s grandfather and the girl he knew. He explains that his partner killed his grandfather and that little girl so that was so much for saving the Navajo. Frank says he wouldn’t know the first thing about saving the Dine since he couldn’t save his own son.

Joe goes after him while saying his son’s death was an accident, but Frank claims he is asking the wrong questions. Leaphorn lets him go and leaves the cell. Jim stops his car when he spots the mechanic broke down in the middle of the road. He puts water in the reservoir to cool it down while the man says he should’ve traded her in for a new car. His brother had an old Pinto that he traded for a new Buick. He said they have a promotion for Navajos. Jim keeps him talking until he gets a card for Devoted Dan’s Used Cars. Joe visits Guy (Ryan Begay) who thanks him for bringing Anna back even though he says it isn’t necessary. He tells Guy that he needs to talk to him about Joe Jr. Guy reminds him that he shot him the last time they talked about that so Joe quickly apologizes.

Joe reveals he has a man up in holding right now claiming that the rig explosion wasn’t an accident. He wants to know why Guy didn’t go to work that day. Joe needs him to tell him what happened to his son just like he needs to know what happened to his daughter. Guy says there was a rumor going around the rig that people were getting sick with rashes and bloody noses. He didn’t think anything of it as people were coming down with the flu. A couple of weeks later, some guy said they found uranium down in the well shaft. They were told to stay clear, but he didn’t hear anything about an explosion. Guy swears that he didn’t know Joe Jr would be in any danger. He thinks the geologist’s name was Lebeck. Guy apologizes for all the things he said over the years and admits he didn’t understand the pain he was going through.

He’ll never forgive himself now that he knows what it is like. Joe tells him he is a good man. While filling out paperwork at the office, Bernadette hears Frank talking to himself. She hears someone saying they’ve all been lying to her. She goes face-down on the desk as someone walks into the police station and walks out with Frank. Jim visits Dan to ask him how a blanket weaver can afford to drive off his lot in a brand-new car. Dan says a man comes here with money and a list of names. He takes their old junkers and they drive a new car off the lot along with whatever cash was left in the wash. When Jim says that is illegal, Dan says extortion is illegal too and he has a reputation to protect. He is weak when it comes to the flesh, gambling, and drinking.

Dan complains about these guys squeezing him and the fact that it took them so long to get here. Once Jim says he doesn’t understand, Dan recommends talking to the other agent since he told him everything already. He tells Jim about the two Indians who are scamming him and how one has a scar on his face. The other had big, thick glasses. Dan searches his desk for the card belonging to the agent he talked to previously. Jim is surprised when he finds that the card belongs to Leland Whitover. He asks Dan if he can use his phone in private. While calling to learn more about Dan’s case and the murder case, he notices the cactus paintings in Dan’s office. The man on the phone tells him that the Atcitty file isn’t here. Jim opens the back of one of the paintings. Joe looks at the gravestones for Benjamin J Vines and Dillon Charley.

BJ Vines approaches and admits it is an unusual place for a graveyard. He agrees to talk to Joe about the oil rig he purchased recently. As they go inside, Joe says he is trying to figure out who’d want to buy a burnt-out oil rig that has been drained. BJ admits there is uranium in there. He didn’t know much about the explosion besides a few people being killed and the activists getting their panties in a bunch. When Joe asks about those activists, he learns they’re calling themselves the Buffalo Society and they’ve been recruiting Navajos to buy the surface land surrounding BJ’s mine. While Joe asks if one of them went by the name Edwin Yazzie, Bernadette wakes up at her desk and finds the cell next to her empty. She looks in the mirror and begins panicking because some of her hair has turned gray. She notifies Joe who rushes home to tell Emma to take Sally (Elva Guerra) to Guy and Helen’s place.

Emma tells Sally to go back to bed and get some rest since she doesn’t think Frank is coming for her. Joe argues he will come because he is the father of her child. Emma reveals he isn’t the father. Instead, the father is the father. Joe tries to leave, but Emma stops him and says she needs him here for a change. She argues that he hasn’t been here for three years. Three years ago, he sat there and didn’t say a word, but Joe says she didn’t let him get a word in. She pushed him even though she knew he would do the exact opposite. Emma asks if he means it is her fault, but Joe claims he didn’t say that. She yells that the boy didn’t want to disappoint his father and would’ve listened to him, yet Joe didn’t say anything.

After she asks why he didn’t tell Joe to go to college, Joe confesses that he didn’t want him to go. He begins crying as he admits he just wanted their son to stay. He tells her he has to go before leaving the home with a rifle. Bernadette goes to get protection from Margaret Cigaret (Betty Ann Tsosie) since she is going to have to arrest Ada. They talk about Anna who did not carry her medicine. Bern confirms she does not have a lock of her hair. She is told to keep her thoughts strong. Jim meets with Phil Springer (Stafford Douglas) to talk to him about the Atcitty and Tso cases. Phil gives him the file and admits Whitover told him to get rid of it. He doesn’t know why and doesn’t care. Before Phil leaves, he tells Jim good luck in DC.

Jim looks through the file and discovers a picture and fingerprints for James Tso. Joe goes back to Tso’s property and looks inside the shack. He walks up to the spot where Frank was shot to look around. Bern goes to Ada’s house, knocks on the door, and claims she has a warrant. She burst in the door and scours through the house before finding a sacrificed animal. Then, she discovers several jars for hair with name tags on them. One has her name on it and another has Emma’s name. Ada (Amelia Rico) begins attacking her as the jar with her hair in it falls to the ground. Bern tries to escape through the front door, but it slams shut. She begins hearing things from her past, including Jim saying he has to leave and learning her parents have died. She fights with Ada and gets on top of her. Once her necklace is ripped off, she grabs it and runs into another room.

A bookshelf is knocked on top of air as a fire starts nearby. Bernadette tries to pull Ada to safety, but she can’t. Her arm is burned. She runs outside and puts her arm in water to extinguish the fire. Bern runs to her car to call for immediate assistance. Wanda begins waking up. Joe finds a pool of water and big footprints. He follows them while Jim enters Navajo Nation. Bern makes it back to the station where she learns that Joe grabbed a bunch of ammo and left. Lester (Jonathan Adams) calls her to say Wanda is awake and she might have something to say about the priest. Whitover arrives at the station with the warrant only to learn that Ada broke Frank out of the jail. She gives him a shotgun because she knows where Frank is headed. Frank makes it back to Hoski and asks him about killing his grandfather. Hoski hopes he doesn’t believe the jobs, but Frank doesn’t know who to believe.

Hoski instructs him to believe in the cause. Jim makes it to the police station. Whitover asks Bern how McGinnis knew about this. She explains that his wife is in on it and they are using black magic to keep it quiet. Joe manages to sneak over to Frank’s camp.

 

Dark Winds Review

The 5th episode of Dark Winds felt a bit like a cleaning up episode as Joe and Jim get closer to nabbing their suspects. Joe, Jim, and Bernadette worked on their own to discover new things about the case. There is a good chance that their evidence will bring them to the same place and a showdown with Hoski and Frank. It is sometimes surprising how much is actually going on in an episode of Dark Winds and how complex the case is.

It’ll be interesting to see if the writers can effectively link everything together or if there will be things left over for the next season. Sometimes, the camera work is a bit too much. When Whitover met with Bernadette at the police station, the camera was going in circles and really just jumped all over the place. It was like this in one of the earlier episodes too. I hope this isn’t used too much since it can get annoying and nauseating.

Overall, this was a good setup episode for the finale. It would be a good idea for Dark Winds to maintain the six-episode count for the next season too. This is the perfect time needed to tell the story without becoming tediously slow and drug out. With only one episode left, we’ll know the truth soon enough, but I think it is clear that Whitover is hiding something.

Dark Winds is becoming good entertainment that doesn’t require a lot of effort from the viewer, but still has a complex puzzle waiting to be solved. The episode scores a 7 out of 10. Recaps of Dark Winds can be found on Reel Mockery here. Learn how to support us by following this link.