Abidoo’niiddee (What We Had Been Told) – The episode begins with the Medicine Woman telling the story of the Hero Twins and how they brought the Ye’iitsoh to town. While she tells the story, Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) is shown going after George Bowlegs (Bodhi Okuma Linton) in the desert. He eventually catches up with him but before he can get him back to his truck, Joe collapses.
Joe wakes in the desert alone and his gun is missing the following morning. He soon finds a trail and follows it to another man passed out in a black robe. Not long after this, he sees George and another young boy. As they go through a door that appears out of nowhere, the Medicine Lady continues with the story of the Hero Twins and how they visited their grandmother for advice. She tells them to travel to the sky and visit their father the Sun. He can apparently give them weapons to defeat the Ye’iitsoh. Joe stays and eats dinner with the Bowlegs family. During dinner, Joe hears a banging on the window. It is George and he tells him that he has to wake up because someone is coming.
Seconds later Joe wakes but he is back at the police station. This time he sees the man in the black robe that he saw in the desert. This is when he realizes that he must get back and help George. The priest tells him that if he wants to get out of there, he is going to have to solve his murder.
The Medicine Lady tells how the Twins visited the Sun and got Lightning and a Sunbeam as weapons. All the while the Medicine Lady talks, George tries waking Joe. Joe becomes coherent enough to tell George to take his service weapon and head for the truck. George obeys and leaves Joe on the ground, which causes him to wake up in the interrogation room.
Emma Leaphorn (Deanna Allison) enters the interrogation room and scolds Joe for never building her a fence. He tries to get her to unlock him but she refuses. Instead, she chooses to focus on how their life is a mess. After Joe promises to make things right, she nearly gives him the key but chooses to swallow it. He ends up freeing himself and wakes in a cell where Will (Enzo Okuma Linton) is sweeping. While Joe tries to convince Will to help him, the Medicine Lady talks about the Twins going to confront the monster. The priest from the desert lures Will to leave with him but Joe can’t stop it.
Joe reawakens in the desert just as the Medicine Lady says the monster attacked Twins Heroes when they arrived. Before long, Joe is attacked by what appears to be a boogeyman. He manages to get a rock and escape the monster’s attack just as the Twin Heroes escaped the other monsters attack. After walking just a bit Joe drops to his knees and sees a trail of blood. He follows it. When it ends, he sees the priest. He chases the priest down and locks him behind bars in his kitchen. The priest tells him that solving his murder is the only way out.
Not long after the priest is locked up, Agent Sylvia Washington (Jenna Elfman) shows up. Joe tells her that the priest has been abusing kids at his church. All Agent Sylvia cares about is dancing with Joe. While dancing, Sylvia tells Joe that she is disappointed with him because he should be trying to solve the priest’s murder. Sylvia and Joe continue to debate justice and what should be done with the priest. She is of the mind that Joe needs to solve his murder. This eventually leads to a discussion about BJ Vines (John Diehl). He asks her what she is going to do with him about the case. She pantomimes a gun with her thumb and finger and points it at him.
The gun depiction causes Joe to wake once again in the desert, where this time he hears George shooting at the monster. Joe tries going after them but can’t gain the strength because of his leg. George eventually makes his way back to Joe only to tell him that the gun is now empty. Joe reloads it for him while the Medicine Woman tells how the Twins attacked the monster and fell short.
Joe wakes in George’s room. George tells him that someone is never going to hurt them again and then shows him his dad’s gun. Joe tries talking him out of it by telling him how killing someone changes a person. It is during this conversation that Joe begins to suspect that he killed the priest. All of a sudden, he goes back to the church and holds the priest at gunpoint. The priest basically laughs in his face and Joe realizes that he is no longer holding a gun. A fight breaks out. While Joe and the priest fight the Medicine Lady tells how the twins overcame the monster just as Joe overcomes the priest.
After a few minutes, the priest wakes and tells Joe this isn’t what happened. Joe is convinced that it was but the priest reminds him that Joe was only 12 and he was presumed dead.
Joe reawakens in the desert to find his father finishing a grave. His father tells him that he listened to him after he told him about Will but lacked the jurisdiction to do anything. He begged the right authorities to do anything but they refused. During their conversation, Joe realizes that his father had to do the hard thing to protect Will and the other, similar to what he did with Vines.
Joe wakes back in the desert to find George standing over. He tells George to give him the gun. He does and Joe fires at the monster and tells George to go to the truck. Joe goes after the monster but has a hard time because of his leg. Joe eventually sees the monster again and takes another shot. This one misses too but the third, a few seconds later, gets him. After Joe shoots the man he sees a bloody handprint and realizes that the man is no monster but just a man that has done a bad thing. Joe then calls the attack into Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon) and tells him that he was stabbed.
Chee only gets part of the message because of the static over the radio. Joe passes back out in the desert at the Medicine Lady finishes the tales of the Hero Twins and this is where the episode ends.
Dark Winds Review
Oh god, what a horrible episode. Maybe it was just me but I wasn’t into all the symbolizing and foreshadowing. A whole fever dream episode is always risky and they rarely pay off. I certainly felt that this one didn’t. I did like that Joe finally realized there was no such thing as monsters. I also like how the entire episode was centered on him and his journey but that was all that I liked about it. All the passing out, waking up, and realizing. It was all just a bit much for me at times. I’d have to give the episode a 5 out of 10.
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