'Reservation Dogs' review: An overlooked TV gem ends, as strong as ever

WHAT IT'S ABOUT By the end of the second season, the four "reservation dogs" — Elora (Devery Jacobs), Bear (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis) and Cheese (Lane Factor) — had finally made it to California, to honor the final wishes of their friend, and Willie Jack's cousin, Daniel (Dalton Cramer), who died by suicide before the events of the series. Cheese economically sums up their "Cali" adventures this way: "Our car was stolen, we met White Jesus, and saw the ocean."

 By the beginning of this third and final season, they're all heading back to Oklahoma, under the almost watchful care of Bear's cousin, “Teenie” (Tamara Podemski). Bear briefly gets separated from the group, but receives some more "ancient" wisdom from "Spirit" (Dallas Goldtooth), the horse-riding yahoo who died in the Battle of Little Big Horn. For once Bear listens. Soon enough, he meets a "Mad Max"-like character named (what else) Maximus (Graham Greene), who shares some wisdom of his own. 

MY SAY Over the first couple of seasons, FX on Hulu's "Reservation Dogs" was a coming-of-age series but also a coming-to-grips one: Coming to grips with the loss of culture and heritage, of language and history, and perhaps most grievously, the loss of ancestors, or at least their ghosts. All that loss has been a hard burden to place on four teenagers but, plucky and resourceful, they've done all right. You hope and suspect they'll do all right by the end of this final season too.

In fact, "Dogs" could've ended on an up-note by the end of the second when the four embraced in a group hug on the beach that sought to expiate the one brutal loss that will always haunt them (Daniel). But that would've been a made-for-TV fade-out, or cop-out. Besides, "Dogs" has deeper, more resonant messages for these four, not to mention viewers. 

For example, in a vivid scene that unfolds under the vast spread of the Milky Way, Greene's Maximus looks skyward to explain that "we are just echoes of things that came before." Like all the shaman-esque characters in "Reservation Dogs," Maximus knows about a lot of stuff (aliens, for example) but mostly about the interconnectedness and impermanence of human affairs. Bear later meets up with a genuine shape-shifter named Deer Lady (Kaniehtiio Horn) who knows about that too, but also about vengeance. By the fourth episode, Willie Jack wants to learn the old ways from medicine man Old Man Fixico (Richard Ray Whitman) who is happy to oblige before he heads off (as he puckishly says) to "the happy hunting grounds."

The arc is about healing but also restoration. In the world of "Reservation Dogs," the adjacent spirit world is as real as the bricks that make up those squat reservation bungalows. Ghosts yearn to be reunited with the living and — while the living don't quite know it yet — they yearn to be united with them too. Moreover, those ghosts are caretakers of the living. Like Maximus, they know stuff. Mostly they want (and need) to be heard.

In our aggressively secular TV world, this all might sound strange, but it's perfectly normal in the world of "Reservation Dogs." TV's first and only fully American Indian TV series has been on a mission to restore dignity to indigenous lives and culture, but also to that vanished spirit world. Those ancestors are watching too, and probably laughing. "Reservation Dogs" rarely takes itself too seriously, just seriously enough.

BOTTOM LINE An overlooked TV gem wraps, and for the most part, beautifully.