‘Reservation Dogs’ Taps Ethan Hawke for Powerful Penultimate Episode
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This post contains spoilers for “Elora’s Dad,” this week’s episode of Reservation Dogs, which is now streaming on Hulu.
Ethan Hawke. That’s it. That’s the review.
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No, no, no. Allow me to start over.
Ethan Hawke and Devery Jacobs. That’s it. That’s the review.
I started with Hawke not as a slight on Jacobs, who both starred in and wrote “Elora’s Dad.” It’s just that we have close to three full seasons of seeing her play this role, and we’ve seen her write a previous episode and direct another. She is a foundational piece of this world, and it’s not surprising at all that she would knock this dual showcase out of the park.
But then, it shouldn’t be surprising how fantastic Hawke was on his very first, and probably only, visit to Reservation Dogs. He has grown into one of our very best actors, on the big screen and the small(*). In particular, some of his finest work over the past decade has come when he’s been asked to play fathers of questionable dedication and ability, in films like Boyhood, Before Midnight, and Juliet, Naked. So the role of Rick, the father Elora has never known, should have fit him like a glove, and it does.
(*) Pardon me while I again beat my head against my desk at the memory of Hawke somehow failing to get an Emmy nomination for his thunderous, hilarious, tragic work as John Brown in The Good Lord Bird.
“Elora’s Dad” is a beautiful, understated dance between Jacobs and Hawke, in a story that seems simple but proves to be anything but. Elora, having been told that she can’t qualify for financial aid if the college doesn’t have information about her father’s income, reluctantly tracks down Rick. He is a house painter, living modestly nearby, seemingly friendly and on a first-name basis with everyone in his town. After he spots someone tailing him, he goes to confront his pursuer, and is utterly gobsmacked to recognize Elora as the spitting image of Cookie — and, thus, the daughter he hasn’t seen since her first birthday party.
Hawke plays this moment of recognition so perfectly, in a way that sets up everything that follows. Elora has assumed that her father wanted no part of her, but that isn’t exactly true. As he explains over the course of their day together, he and Cookie got together very young, were surprised by the pregnancy, and then broke up and reunited multiple times. Rick is the one who gave Elora Danan her name (he liked Willow because Ron Howard was from Oklahoma), and he mistakenly believed the birthday party invite was a sign that Cookie wanted to make a real go of it.
Jacobs’ script is so, so smart about digging into this secret history of Elora’s childhood without assigning too much or too little blame anywhere. Cookie didn’t want Rick around — and, after she died, grandma Mabel really didn’t want him around — but he also admits that he wasn’t ready for parenthood, and that, like the daughter he never really got to know, he had a bad habit of running away whenever things got hard. Elora doesn’t trust Rick at all at first — doesn’t even want to get to know him — and the way he disarms her is by being completely candid about his many flaws, and the many ways he failed her. Later, Elora asks if he was relieved that Mabel didn’t want him in his daughter’s life. Rick tries to protest for a second, then admits that he was, because he got to stay a shitass for a while longer. (Left unsaid: Rick never tried to take another run at Mabel, nor attempted to meet Elora when she was old enough to decide for herself if she wanted to know him.)
The push and pull between these characters, and these two great actors, is marvelous, and allows us to see their relationship grow first in increments, then in leaps. In the beginning, Elora wants nothing from Rick other than to help her complete the financial aid application. But when she isn’t looking, he stares at her, trying to fill in many years of blanks, and she finds herself doing the same to him moments later. She’s on the verge of driving out of his life forever when he remembers that he has a photo from the birthday party, and is able to convince her to come to his house with a promise that it’ll only be for a few minutes. (It’s a masterclass in parental manipulation.)
Once they arrive at his home, Elora is transfixed by the evidence of the family he made for himself, with three kids, including a daughter who’s almost a teenager herself(*). She looks at their photos not with resentment over not having gotten the same treatment from Rick, but with fascination, as she seems to be imagining what her life might have been like if he had been around for more of it. And by the time Rick’s kids get off the school bus, she has decided that the advantages of having a bigger family — really, any family other than an aunt she rarely sees — outweighs whatever resentment she still feels toward the guy. She’s old enough that she doesn’t need Rick to be a father in the classical sense. And it’s not bad to have someone in her life who knew Cookie so well, who has other shared history — they both had Bobson (the Bill Burr character from Season One’s “California Dreamin'”) as their basketball coach — and to have half-siblings she doesn’t have to raise herself.
(*) Probably best not to think too much about ages. When this season filmed, Jacobs was about to turn 30 while playing someone in her late teens. Hawke is 52, but Rick talks about how young he was when Elora was born.
And, of course, Rick gets something out of the deal, too. He can never replace all those years he wasted by staying away, but he gets to know her now. When they share an awkward hug after pizza night with the kids, he offers a whispered thank you, in a tone that makes clear just how badly he needed this, and how much he regrets most of the choices he’s made about her since she was born.
It’s a great moment, at the end of another great episode, near the tail end of a great final season of a great series. Can you believe it’s all over next week?
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