Longmire – Henry goes a-tracking

Walt investigates the murder of a gas station owner, and the distraught young woman last seen with him. Walt asks Henry to help track her back where she came from, and Henry and the Ferg have an amusing bonding moment when Ferg impresses Henry with his knowledge of rocks. Then they discover some rabbit hutches, but inside one of the hutches there’s a baby, not a rabbit. It’s a toss-up whether that rabbit or the baby is cuter. Henry continues on his own, tracking the young woman to a mining company.  The company is mostly a red herring, and because of that it’s not quite Henry’s moment to shine as much as I had hoped from the description, but he does get a brief moment of awesome when he’s not only his usually sarcastic, quippy self, but also acquits himself in hand-to-hand quite well. There’s also the brief flashback that suggests Henry followed Walt to Denver, so he may know the truth of what happened (which would put him up on me since I still have no idea what that’s about).

It turns out the young woman Evelyn has been missing for two years and fallen into a creepy cult where the women get the names of the months. Kudos to the writer who thought of that, because that is messed up.  Also messed up is the cult leader getting his followers to drug themselves and die on railroad tracks. Is tying women to railroad tracks ridiculous parody, or is it rare enough to circle back around to being original? I couldn’t really decide, but there’s no question it works as peril, older than dirt ploy or not.

Small moments that stood out this week:

• Ruby’s grief at trying to cope with being the last voice the victim heard, was well done as was Walt’s attempts to help her.
• Cady was back briefly, taking care of the baby for a little while. She seemed very sweet with it.
• Vic was hit by a car!  And she still remembered the license plate, because she is just that good.
• Walt was quite the cowboy when he goes to question the mining company supervisor in a neighboring county without a courtesy heads-up to the local sheriff. I’m not sure if he was just rude about it, because you know he would be irritated if someone did it to him, or if he suspected the other sheriff would get in his way. Walt already knew that other sheriff was getting campaign contributions from the company. Also, I think the supervisor’s comment about small town corruption was a bit pointed. Between this and Vic’s husband’s hostility, that’s a wealthy entity who might very much prefer Walt gone.
• The cult leader Leland wasn’t quite charismatic enough for me.  “October” was scarier.
• There were some interesting director’s flourishes in the episode, particularly when Walt was questioning the nurse, and heightened the ominous feel of the episode where a more standard style wouldn’t have.

Henry gets the best line of the episode, schooling the security guards in their attempts to be racist pigs and call him ‘kemosabe': “I would be Tonto. You would be kemosabe.”  The level of scorn in Lou Diamond Phillips’ voice was just perfect.

Overall, I thought this a strong episode that utilized the characters well in a mostly standalone episode, but one that holds some promising kernels for trouble on the horizon.  Agree? Disagree? The comment box is yours.

Note: The show re-airs the pilot episode next week and comes back with the penultimate episode of the season, on August 5.

Clacked by Liz Tamura
on Jul 23, 2012 @ 09:17 EST5EDT