The women have their throats slit one by one. They’re screaming and crying and calling out names as it happens. They’re all tied up next to each other, so each one knows exactly what is happening to the woman next to her, and that it’s about to happen to her next.
But one woman is spared the denouement of this waking nightmare. Abish Pratt is kept alive at the behest of Red Feather (Derek Hinkey), the leader of the brutal band of warriors who massacred the women’s half-asleep Paiute captors, then killed their prisoners quickly rather than assaulting them first, as was their abductors’ apparent plan. Red Feather takes to Abish for reasons unknown; perhaps her bravery in the face of certain death earns his admiration, or maybe he just thinks she’s cute. Either way, Abish, like her partially scalped husband Jacob, survives, which is about all anyone out here seems to manage.
I’m leading with this incident to make a simple point: American Primeval is extremely violent, and the violence is often at least as unpleasant as it is exciting. Indeed, with it vibe of cold and muddy squalor, its legion of hardscrabble characters representing a plethora of factions warring over the same hard ground, and its horror-movie level of cruelty and blood, Mark L. Smith and Peter Berg’s Western reminds me more of Game of Thrones than Yellowstone. (Call it YellowThrones, perhaps?) Don’t get me wrong, this is a compliment in my book.
This episode fleshes out the world these characters inhabit, as well as the lives some of them have led. The key figure here is Isaac, the tracker who rescued Sara Holloway and her son Devin from certain death at the hands of the Mormon militia the Nauvoo Legion and their indigenous allies. He wants to bring them back to Fort Bridger, where he believes they’ll be safe, or at least safer than they would be trying to make it across hotly contested territory to the ass end of nowhere to meet a man that even Devin is less than convinced wants to see them in the first place.
Coming along for the ride is Two Moons, the native girl who violently escaped her abusive father and stowed away in the Holloways’ wagon. Though mute because her tongue has been cut out (I’m sure we’ll learn more about this later), she proves to be an invaluable companion, helping Sara and Devin survive when Isaac isn’t around and tagging along even after Isaac tells her to leave. He doesn’t seem to have the heart to force her to leave, which is telling.
What he does have is the combat prowess of Wolverine or Aragorn or the Hound, you know, someone of that nature. When the group stumbles across some fur trappers and Sara unwisely reveals herself, they’re nearly captured and handed over for the price on her head. Instead, Isaac kills the entire party single-handedly in a maelstrom of guns and knives and axes.
He doesn’t escape unscathed, but that winds up working out alright for our foursome. They’re taken in by the same Shoshone tribe that, apparently, tutored Isaac in their language, customs, and fighting style — right alongside Red Feather, whose mother, Winter Bird (Irene Bedard), is the Chief, and raised both men when they were young. But Red Feather since broken away from the rest of his people to wage a war all his own, at the head of his own renegade sub-tribe, Wolf Clan.
When the army, led by the seemingly on-the-up-and-up Captain Dellinger (Lucas Neff), pay the Chief’s village a visit, the tribe hides the visitors. But Dellinger isn’t really out to give any indigenous people a hard time at the moment. He knows that Mormons, not Native Americans, were responsible for the settler massacre last episode. Dellinger’s main interest is getting to the bottom of it all before the Nauvoo Legion can cover it up.
That should be easy enough for the Legion to pull off. Jacob Pratt, one of the few survivors of the slaughter, has no idea his co-religionists were responsible to begin with. Now he’s working with the Legion to find his wife, placing them both in the hands of their would-be executioners if they’re reunited. I don’t think either Jacob or Abish will live very long if the Mormon militia tracks her down before the Army does — not while Brigham Young (Kim Coates), their priest-king, is out there issuing orders to sever any loose ends.
Director Peter Berg has a knack for depicting the inherent sternness of all this. The determined faces of actors Betty Gilpin and Taylor Kitsch and Saura Lightfoot Leon as Sara and Isaac and Abish. The leaders of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, gathered around a campfire, silhouetted agains the big sky. Our four heroes captured with a low angle that makes them look like the Fellowship of the Ring. Rolling vistas and billowing mists. Forests and scrubland. Hard people in a hard land. It’s solid stuff.
What it isn’t is unique, special, or even particularly provocative beyond the in-your-face violence. If that sounds harsh, I don’t mean it to be — it’s just the way it is. American Primeval is a bloody modern Western, and that’s about the extent of it. If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you’ll like. But unlike Brigham Young, this show isn’t making any converts just yet.
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.
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