REZ BALL is a recent sports drama that went straight to Netflix. I wouldn’t normally even know about something like that, but it’s co-written by Sterlin Harjo, creator of one of my favorite TV shows ever, Reservation Dogs (2021-2023). This is a little more along the lines of his indie dramas (I’ve previously reviewed his movies FOUR SHEETS TO THE WIND and MEKKO).
The director is Sydney Freeland, who set it in her home state of New Mexico (Harjo’s are usually in Oklahoma). Like Harjo, she established herself with a drama at the Sundance Film Festival (DRUNKTOWN’S FINEST in 2014). Since then she’s directed lots of TV, including two episodes of Reservation Dogs and four of Echo.
It’s a high-school-basketball-team-comeback story, and narratively doesn’t deviate much from what you expect. So there’s a bunch of tragedy at the beginning involving the troubled life of “The Braided Assassin” Nataanii Jackson (Kusem Goodwind), star player of the Chuska Warriors. He’s got a really compelling, stoic presence and I really thought he was gonna be the main character, but when the team is forced to go on without him you realize oh, this is about his smiley buddy Jimmy Holiday (Kauchani Bratt) having to come into his own. (read the rest of this shit…)
I take any chance I can to tell people about the show Reservation Dogs. If you get Hulu it’s on there – just 3 seasons, a total of 28 half hour episodes, not heavy on continuity, not a huge time commitment. In a way it’s comparable to my other favorite recent show, Atlanta, in that it’s just this incredible cast where every character is really hilarious to me in a different way, and also because the writers and directors are narratively playful and free. They’re willing to leave their teenage protagonists to do an episode all about the elders, then later one all about the elders when they were teenagers, then an episode where one of today’s teenagers meets a weirdo recluse who we start to realize was one of the kids in that flashback episode who has become estranged from the others. Things like that. But also it’s a very potent show about friendship and dealing with loss, so it’s the funniest show that I always find myself trying not to cry at.
I can’t keep up with as many TV shows as some people do these days, but I have a few, and right now the one I love the most is Reservation Dogs. It’s on FX (and streaming on Hulu) and so far there are only 2 seasons totaling 18 half hour episodes, so it wouldn’t be that hard to catch up on. It centers on a group of teenagers who live on a reservation in Oklahoma, though sometimes it veers off to be more about their elders. It reminds me of my other favorite show, Atlanta, in that it has this A+ ensemble of core characters surrounding straight woman Elora (Devery Jacobs) who are each so hilarious in their own way that whenever it focuses on one of them I start to think that’s my favorite character. They have their funny shit they obsess over and their ways of saying things but maybe the funniest stuff is just their expressions seeing and listening to all the ridiculous things they encounter. (And the truth is my favorite is Willie Jack, played by Paulina Alexis.)
