Throughout the fourth season of Dark Winds, the AMC Seventies crime drama's hero, Navajo tribal cop Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon), insists to everyone that he's changed. He's spending more time in the sweat lodge. He's gardening. He's talking about retirement — with a concrete plan, rather than vague talk of one day taking things easy. As he tells his estranged wife Emma (Deanna Allison), "I'm trying to be a different man."
On the one hand, you can't blame Joe for trying. He spent most of Season Three buckling under the guilt of having murdered the man responsible for the death of his and Emma's son. He suffered panic attacks, and paid a visit to the spirit world — or, if you prefer the show's less mystical aspects, had a very useful hallucination — where he confronted a dark memory from his childhood. An FBI agent came to the reservation to look into the murder, since the victim was a wealthy white businessman. And though Emma covered for Joe with the feds, she also left him and moved to California. For both himself and his marriage, he has to be a different man than the one he's been.
On the other hand, the man he's been has been one of the most compelling characters in recent TV drama, and Zahn McClarnon has given one of television's best performances over that time. How exactly does Dark Winds work with a kinder, gentler, more self-aware Joe Leaphorn?
Or does our knowledge of both how television works and what makes Joe tick mean that he's kidding himself and all will be relatively business as usual before long?