Let’s
just say up front that I love Longmire.
And yes, I think the most recent episode was the season’s strongest to date. A
lot of action and suspense, which is great, but what I always find most
appealing in the series is the interplay of characterization and setting.
Longmire
is the brain child of Craig Johnson, my newest favorite mystery writer (I have
a long, long list), who I discovered after watching the first tv episode three
seasons ago (has it really been that long?)and immediately felt compelled to go
out and read every book he’d written.
(Johnson’s
personal history in creating the novels is fascinating, but too much to go into
here, as are the differences between the tv show and the books. For example, little
of the novels’ plot lines are featured on tv; and the Branch
Connally supporting role played brilliantly by Bailey Chase is much less prominent in the novels.)
Anyway,
Longmire’s become my favorite tv show.
As
anyone paying attention knows, Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire (played by Aussie Robert Taylor), the laconic introspective protagonist with the dry
wit, is a throwback to the iconic lone hero of classical Westerns but also a master
of contemporary law enforcement.
The
entire recurring cast is wonderful, but to me the show turns on Walt’s
friendship with Henry Standing Bear (played perfectly by Lou Diamond Phillips), which goes back to
their early school days together. Henry, a Cheyenne brave,
is Walt's best friend and confidant, an expert tracker, and the proprietor of
the Red Pony Cafe, a local tavern and restaurant.
Yes,
it is to some extent a Lone Ranger and Tonto sidekick kind of relationship, but
one which pays great respect to the Cheyenne and their traditions. Henry is a
fully-developed human being whose strength of character, intelligence, and
warrior prowess equals Longmire’s. One of the show’s great strengths is its
ability not to take itself too seriously; Walt and Henry’s relationship always
reminds me of Spenser and Hawk in the late great Robert Parker series.
(An
aside: I hate that phrase, the late,
which is applying to more and more of my favorite authors. Thank God Craig
Johnson is still in his early 50s and presumably will be around to add many more
Longmire novels to the 11 he already has penned.)
Of
course, what Longmire most closely
resembles is the late great Tony Hillerman's Navajo mystery series featuring
tribal policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. I could go on and on about those 18
books, in which Hillerman’s appreciation of the natural wonders of the American Southwest and its indigenous people is a
major element.
Longmire
features a similarly vivid sense of place, set in the fictional Absaroka County
(pronounced ab-suh-ro-ka) in northern
Wyoming. (The tv series actually is shot in Las Vegas, Santa Fe, Eagle Nest,
and Red River, New Mexico, but it looks like the rugged landscape, wide open
spaces, and big skies of Wyoming to me.)
Hillerman’s heroes are Navajo tribal policemen, one of whom (Leaphorn) is a rational thoroughly modern American while the other (Chee) is an intuitive investigator and sometime shaman. Like Hillerman’s characters, Walt and Henry occasionally delve into the spirit world, including sweat baths and peyote visions.
But in Longmire, the Cheyenne tribal policeman get an entirely different treatment than Hillerman’s Navajos, being both corrupt and just plain obnoxious. Malachi Strand, the former chief of the tribal police, who Walt arrested prior to the start of the series, is a nasty and corrupt villain. And his replacement, Chief Mathias (played somewhat quirkily by Zahn McClarnon), is not much better.
(The Cheyenne nation, however, is carefully peopled with all kinds of upstanding and sometimes not so upstanding citizens; the point here is that stereotypes are avoided and even mocked occasionally.)
When
I first saw the Longmire tv show, I wondered why the amazing Graham Greene, who has played a host of Indians in tv and movies including Hillerman’s, was not cast as Henry
Standing Bear. But I must say that Lou Diamond Phillips has completely won me
over. I am happy that Greene is in the show, though, and he does a great job with the Malachi
Strand role.
(Note to the annoyingly politically
correct: many tribal people prefer the term Indian
to Native American since it is no
less inaccurate but less stuffy. Henry Standing Bear prefers to think of
himself by his tribal identity rather than some white man’s appellation.)
