Wonderfully Funny and Charmingly Casual, FX on Hulu’s Reservation Dogs Is a Great Summer Series

After having watched so many teen-fronted series breathlessly escalate into exceptional amounts of violence, sex, and drug use, Reservation Dogs is a welcome respite. The lived-in, slightly surrealist FX comedy series (airing on Hulu) is a low-fi exploration of an Indigenous community in Oklahoma, whose leads shuffle around the “rez” among other misfits and sundries, and stumble into a variety of adventures that range from stealing a chip van to dealing with a snarky and overworked healthcare system.

FX has found its niche in telling close-up, intimate stories extremely well, and Reservation Dogs is no exception. It focuses on four friends—Bear (D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai), Elora (Devery Jacobs), Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis), and Cheese (Lane Factor)—who accidentally form an unofficial “gang” dubbed the “reservation bandits,” because of their penchant for light crime. Their hope is to get enough money to get to California, an ideal that’s always just out reach. Mainly they just want to get out of their town, whose general, suffocating existence they blame for killing their friend Daniel the previous year. It’s an incident that is neither explained nor dwelled upon, but one nevertheless deeply felt by each of them.

FX has touted Reservation Dogs, created by Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi, as revolutionary. In many ways it is; it features an all-Indigenous writers room, for one. But the show makes its boldest statement by not feeling like it’s making a statement at all. It’s an easy-going show, foul and funny, specific and accessible. It’s not about the kids being noble heroes or crime-loving villains; they’re just people. But they are also Indigenous people, which does mean something, and is all-too-rare to see on television—especially portrayed in such a wonderfully casual way.

The series also acknowledges and lampoons native stereotypes, including Bear being given a disappointing spirit guide every time he gets knocked out (which is a fair and somewhat concerning amount). The warrior who appears to him is largely a goof, one who proudly says he was at the Battle of Little Bighorn, but didn’t get to see much because his horse tripped on a gopher hole and squashed him.

Reservation Dogs has a lot of sly humor like this; it’s rarely laugh-out-loud funny, but it crackles with mirth. In an exchange between the town’s dopey sheriff (played by Zahn McClarnon, who finally gets to exercise his comedic chops) and Bear—who is buying a Coke from a vending machine—McClarnon’s character asserts, “That’s the white man’s bullet, yo. Sugar, invented to defeat us because they knew we had a sweet tooth. We’re still fighting that chemical warfare, and you’re funding it.” Bear asks him what he’s getting, and he replies, “Energy drink. It’s natural, made of energy.”