As is always the case with “Reservation Dogs,” Season 3’s sixth episode, “Frankfurter Sandwich,” is full of surprises.
The 30-minute installment begins with the uncles — Big (Zahn McClarnon), Brownie (Gary Farmer) and Bucky (Wes Studi) — on a rescue mission for Cheese (Lane Factor). By the end, all three grown men are sobbing, mourning their past mistakes and the friend they lost as the perfectly fine Cheese watches in confusion.
It’s an episode that emotionally keeps viewers on their toes. In other words, for director Blackhorse Lowe, it’s classic “Reservation Dogs.”
“It’s very much in character with what ‘Rez Dogs’ is, which is very much about community, home and letting go of your guilt and finding peace and forgiveness within yourself — but also just love for community itself,” Lowe said of the episode.
In the episode, the uncles take Cheese for a camping trip in an attempt to shake him out of his antisocial rut. Yet when Cheese passes Big, Brownie and Bucky the talking stick, he’s not the one who leaves the encounter sobbing. Haunted by the memories of the friend they once emotionally abandoned, these three elders give into their grief as they process the young man before them.
Lowe explained that there was an “emotional rhythm” he wanted McClarnon, Farmer and Studi to hit during their breakdown.
“I referenced a lot of native ceremonies where certain points see these emotional moments where either the patient or the people going through the ceremony have to open up emotionally,” Lowe explained. “There’s a very certain cadence in terms of the way they talk, in terms of the way they cry, in terms how that emotion flows out. That was what I wanted to go for.”
The director noted that not all of the actors are from the same tribe as him, but they are all still native and share “those specific upbringings.”
“As soon as I gave them that note, they were able to understand like, ‘Oh, OK, it’s not a very straightforward thing of they’re being standoffish and all sudden they have a breakdown there.’ It was a very much a roller coaster wave of emotion.”
As reverential as the scene is, it’s also comedic. While these three elders pour their hearts out about the friend they lost and their fears about Cheese’s future, the young man in question stands on the sidelines, dumbstruck that a simple stick caused all of this emotional outpouring.
“I wanted to be real where you can laugh and cry and be horrified all within the same moment,” Lowe explained. “It became very somber, very respectful.”
Episode 306 is far from the first time Lowe has handled a story about Cheese and the uncles. Over the course of “Reservations Dogs,” this unlikely pairing has emerged as his specialty. “I’m able to explore their manhood through all these different episodes in these different narratives,” Lowe said.
That includes exploring the lives of the uncles in Season 3’s previous episode, “House Made of Bongs.” Set in the 1970s, “House Made of Bongs” follows the uncles and the series’ elders in their rez dogs era. The episode zooms in on a younger version of Maximus (Isaac Arellanes), a friend of the uncle who grows to become an eccentric recluse in his old age (played by Graham Greene). Pairing how dismissive the uncles used to be to Maximus with how terrified they are for Cheese and his future creates a rich and complex emotional world in two short episodes.
“Lane is very much young Maximus and that time where he’s pushing away his friends and trying to do things on his own,” Lowe said. “So the uncles worry about him and want to bring him back before he ends up like Maximus in the ’70s episode.”
Though he didn’t initially realize the episodes were quite so connected, Lowe enjoyed directing two episodes that were “like the beginning and the end” for this specific story.
“It’s just nice to see that you may grow and mature, but you’re still human and you still have foibles,” Lowe said.
As much as Lowe has enjoyed his time with Cheese and the uncles, he trusts series cocreator Sterlin Harjo’s instinct to bring “Reservation Dogs” to an end with Season 3.
“It’s a natural conclusion to the story and these characters,” Lowe said. “I feel like if you had to continue to [Seasons] 4 and 5, it would continue to be watered down and it would end up being a caricature of itself. It’ll end up being some sort of ‘Three’s Company’ where it’s like, ‘That’s our Willie Jack.’ And every time she spoke, everyone in the audience would start clapping or something along those lines.
“I also know Sterlin, he has so many other stories to tell,” Lowe said. “I’ve learned through the process of being an artist and a filmmaker not to be too precious or to get too tied to any one certain project, even though I love them.”
New episodes of FX’s “Reservation Dogs” premiere on Hulu Wednesdays.
