Mimi Leder on ‘Reservation Dogs’: ‘I Watched It in a Constant State of Tears and Laughter’

As part of Variety‘s 100 Greatest Television Shows of All Time issue, we asked 12 of our favorite creators of television to discuss the series that inspire and move them. Check out all the essays, and read our full list of the best TV shows ever made.

“Reservation Dogs” reminds me of… absolutely nothing I’ve ever seen before. The series, created by Native American Sterlin Harjo and Native Kiwi Taika Waititi, is a brilliantly written, directed and acted coming-of-all ages story, a heartbreaking, and heart-soaring, spiritual comedy-drama.

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It is also a masterpiece.

Although “Res Dogs” starts out as a madcap caper with its core quartet of young teens stealing a delivery truck of Flaming Flamers hot chips, it grows in power and impact onto a whole other plane. This is not a series about recreational robbery, teenage rite of passage, or a tourist ride through reservation life. Rather, the twenty-eight episodes spanning an all-too-brief three seasons are a collective accumulation of rites of passage as it follows its multi-layered, multi-generational, extended community, through a series of multiple realities. (Yes, I’m looking at you, William Knifeman.)

This series entertains, is funny as hell — and a second later, soul-wrenching. But it’s also, for most members of the audience, an education, one we never had in school — and definitely not  on a flat screen in our living rooms. It’s a collective journey of survival, self-discovery, and generational trauma. It’s Elora (Devery Jacobs) needing a parental signature and finding a white father (Ethan Hawke) she never knew. It’s Cheese (Lane Factor) doing a ride-along with Reservation cop “Officer Big” (Zahn McClarnon) and singing along to that classic rock staple “Come and Get Your Love” by Redbone, a Native American band. Who knew? It’s Uncle Brownie (Gary Farmer) stopping a tornado with an ax and some tobacco. The sacrifice is his clothes. (My sacrifice is not having the space to name the rest of this wonderful cast… but watch the show and you’ll never forget them!)

“Reservation Dogs” is ultimately a meditation on community. Community lost and found. Generations fusing on planes past, present, and timeless. I watched it in a constant state of tears and laughter. This, for me, is what great cinema is all about.

So in closing, the show is a powerful testament to what Dorothy said at the end of “The Wizard of Oz”: “There’s no place like home, shitass.”

Mimi Leder is a multiple Emmy-winning director and producer whose credits include the films “On the Basis of Sex” and “Deep Impact” and series “The Morning Show,” “The Leftovers,” “Shameless,” and “ER.”

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