Why Reservation Dogs is the funniest and most groundbreaking new TV show
The dark comedy from Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi on a ragtag group of indigenous teens in rural Oklahoma is a watershed for Native American representation on screen
The second episode of Reservation Dogs, FX’s mirthful dark comedy about a ragtag group of indigenous teens in rural Oklahoma, takes place almost entirely at a clinic run by the Indian Health Service. According to the general operating logic of the scant film and television portrayals of Native Americans to date – and there are few – the scenes inside should be dire, either chock full of thinly sketched stereotypes or a portrait of misery.
Reservation Dogs, created by the Seminole and Muskogee film-maker Sterlin Harjo and Hollywood jack-of-all-trades Taika Waititi, does neither. Instead, the “NDN Clinic” episode, directed by Navajo film-maker Sydney Freeland, wrings humor out of mundane dysfunction and too-human send-ups of Hollywood’s most consistent Native American tropes (the medicine man, the stoic warrior).
