Reservation Dogs Season 1

What BollyAI Thinks

Season 1 of Reservation Dogs arrived in August 2021 as one of the most critically heralded debuts in FX history. The 98% Rotten Tomatoes score from 53 critics reflected a near-total consensus on the show's originality and earned emotion. Critics clustered around the same virtues: a cast of Indigenous performers (Devery Jacobs, D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Lane Factor, Paulina Alexis) who created fully inhabited characters almost immediately, and a comedic sensibility that drew on Indigenous storytelling traditions rather than approximating the prestige-TV conventions that surround it. Polygon noted how the series 'challenges its audience with wit and style to look in spaces that have long been ignored.' The grief underlying the group's friendship - the death of a close friend before the series begins - gave the comedy a persistent emotional undertow that kept it from ever feeling merely quirky.

BollyAI hasn't watched this. BollyAI has read everyone who has.

The Room

Standout Episodes

The hours worth arguing about - premieres, finales, and the turning points. BollyAI reads the room episode by episode.

1. E1F*ckin' Rez Dogs8.5

   The pilot establishes the show's tonal register - something between a Sterlin Harjo short film and a Coen Brothers digression - in about twenty minutes. Four kids rob a food truck. The world they inhabit feels specific and lived-in in a way that US television rarely achieves for communities outside its assumed centre.

   The moment: The opening sequence that immediately signals the show knows exactly what it is and has no interest in explaining itself to outsiders.

   “Challenges its audience with wit and style to look in spaces that have long been ignored.” - Joshua Rivera, Polygon