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There are always mystical forces at play in Lt. Joe Leaphorn’s world.
But it wasn’t apparent after Dark Winds Season 2 Episode 1 if any magic was involved in his current case.
A mysterious cult is at the center of this season’s case, based on “People of Darkness,” the fourth volume of Tony Hillerman’s Navajo Tribal Police series.
Things started with a bang, with Lt. Joe Leapcorn and his faithful sergeant Bernie Manuelito pinned under semiautomatic fire by a suspect they had been chasing.
But a quick cutaway later, and we’ll be gaining context for the rest of the season leading up to that fateful moment.
Poor Joe began with a rare day off: riding his horse, letting loose the sheep, and tinkering on his motorcycle. Of course, that couldn’t last.
That was because the person he loves most in the world, his saintly wife Emma, soon found herself in danger.
Good Samaritan that she is, nurse Emma transported a stoner, who somehow had lost some fingers to a sheep, from her clinic to a nearby hospital.
So she was in the wrong place at the wrong time when a car exploded in the hospital parking lot, with the blast buffeting and knocking out Emma.
Joe was back to work as soon as Sally relayed the message from the hospital about Emma.
That’s where we got introduced to one of two new characters: “Gordo” Sena, the longtime sheriff of Valencia County, played by A Martinez.
Gordo should prove a good foil for Joe, finding the most innocuous explanation for the undetermined. He went for a failed part, causing the explosion up until Joe confirmed there had been a car bomb involved. Gordo’s world-weariness shone through.
Gordo certainly brought up a salient point: Why would anybody want to kill off a man who is terminal with cancer?
Joe only vaguely knew the dead man, Emerson Charley, and that his brother had been attached to The People of Darkness cult. Yeah, being tangentially connected to a shadowy group is usually an excellent place to start any investigation.
Back at headquarters, it becomes clear that Joe has restocked his staff with the inexperienced and the old and, thankfully, Bernie, who appears to be the only one he trusts to handle any investigation solo.
That raised the question: So where the hell is Jim Chee?
It turned out that Bernie was still pissed at him for not telling her he was an undercover FBI agent back before he buried his former supervisor’s body in a mine explosion.
So Jim didn’t return to the Navajo Tribal Police. Instead, he’s attempting to make a living as a private investigator. Not much of a living, it seemed.
Jim was right to be suspicious when he got a phone call out of the blue from a wealthy white lady wanting to retain his services.
Rosemary Vines, that wealthy white lady, is the other great new addition to the cast this season.
Played by Jeri Ryan, Rosemary thinks nothing of smoking around her oxygen tank or of hiring Jim because she has an Indian-related problem. What latent racism?
Rosemary had the arrogance of the rich. From the get-go, she tried to put Jim in his place. She figured that if she flashed $500 at Jim, promising much more, he wouldn’t bother to ask many relevant questions.
Jim soon pinned her down, getting Rosemary to admit she knew who stole the box and that her husband and Emerson Charlie were connected to the People of Darkness.
Jim did what Joe had threatened to do earlier: question Tomas Charley, Emerson’s son. He, too, was in a confessing mood, even drawing Jim a map of where he left the box. He also said Vines’ husband BJ was the mastermind behind the cult, not any of the natives.
But by the time Joe finally showed up, Tomas had disappeared. On the way to the site, Joe invited Jim to return.
The unknown, in this case, is the white man who was first shown blowing away the private eye he had hired.
Later on, he’s seen observing Jim questioning Tomas. Finally, he got to the site where Tomas left the box first. Was it he who set the contents on fire?
And why was JJ’s belt buckle in the fire? Is this some of the bad juju that Emma is constantly worrying about?
It was just like old times, as Joe and Jim were soon under fire from the Neo-Nazi psycho, with Jim getting shot yet again. With cell phones not yet invented, did they walk all the way back?
What was Bernie doing during all this action? She had the most important role: providing comic relief.
First, she pursued a young miscreant riding a stolen horse. She had to bring him back on horseback after her car got stuck in the sand.
Then Emma’s stoner took her to where he’d seen a UFO and had been attacked by an alien sheep. She laughed at him when she uncovered a chunk of Air Force equipment. But Bernie found the three-horned sheep and stored it in the cell next to the miscreant.
Well, at least the craziness kept her from crossing paths with Jim.
How did you like this new case?
How long before Jim is back on the force?
Is Emma right to be concerned about the bad energy around their family?
Comment below.
Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.