Longmire

My latest Netflix binge is a show called Longmire. It first aired on A&E (a basic cable channel in the US) and I really liked it back then, despite being anything but a Western fan, which was the genre the show seemed to fit into, though it’s also a crime drama. Walt Longmire (based on books by Craig Johnson) is a Sherriff in the fictional Absaroka County, Wyoming. His wife died the year before the show starts, seemingly of cancer, but we find out that no, she was murdered. We meet his best friend, Henry Standing Bear, from the nearby Cheyenne reservation, and his daughter, a lawyer, and his deputies, and we learn about the kinds of crimes that a Sherriff in Wyoming might have to deal with, and the politics, and so much more.

            After two or three seasons on A&E the show was cancelled, for having too old of an audience supposedly. I don’t know if I realized at the time that Longmire had been picked up by someone else, but since I didn’t have Netflix back then it was over for me, and I mourned the loss.

            Maybe I’m an old soul, as I have often been told, but a lot of the shows that have been designated as being for older people have been favorites of mine since childhood – like Murder, She Wrote and Matlock and Law & Order. The assumption that we all only watch shows that reflect our current age and situation in life is silly, and something that, if true, should be challenged.

            The sixth and final season of Longmire aired on Netflix back in 2017, so there’s really no hope of them going back and doing more seasons now, damn it, especially because the show’s final episode wrapped things up in a way that kind of cuts off the blood supply for possible future seasons. But all of those knots could be untied – like when you knit a sweater and realize it’s too short, so you pull out the last row or two and add on – and it could be done seamlessly. Almost. But for now, I only have these six seasons to watch and re-watch to try to figure out why it burrowed so deeply into my psyche in such a short amount of time.

On second viewing I’m noticing more details, more places where they foreshadowed the future plot twists, and how they used music to create tension, and how they developed certain themes on a slow burn. I thought it might be too soon to watch it all again and that I would get bored, but that just hasn’t happened. I feel like I’m getting to know these people better, and seeing how much more detail was there in the first place, helping me to understand how their minds work and where they are strong and where they are weak and what they know about themselves and what they don’t.

The relationships between the characters are so deeply explored, often through just the tone of voice or a look between two people. And I love that every strong character in the show has weaknesses and grey areas and confusions over what is right and wrong. And even the best of friends disagree about what’s right in any given situation.

I love Lou Diamond Phillips in his role as Henry Standing Bear. He’s able to capture the easy charm of a bartender, and the deep loyalty of a best friend, and the spirituality and anger of a Cheyenne warrior, all without seeming to pivot from one part of himself to another. And Vic, the female Sherriff’s deputy from Philadelphia who goes from flirty to sarcastic to frightened to defiant to deeply loyal with the same seamlessness.  

And then there’s Walt, the strong, silent Sheriff, who can be childlike and confused and then strong and formidable, and whose moral compass is in constant motion, not always leading him in the right directions but showing us that he is always searching for what is right. His bravery and endurance feel almost unbelievable, the way he pushes himself to the brink to help other people, but we get to see all of the damage it causes and all of the pain he’s trying to hide and all of the disappointment and the fear, so that his strength seems deeply human after all.

Nothing is simple on Longmire, but instead of the last minute plot twists of a show like Law & Order, each surprising development in the plot has been laid into the fabric of the show and feels believable and even inevitable, though still shocking.

I love that I’m addicted to a show set in the cowboys and Indians world of Wyoming, a world I wasn’t really curious about before this. I can’t find myself in these places or these people and yet their stories resonate deeply with me, maybe because, bottom line, I trust their values. I trust them to care about me. I believe that Walt and Henry and Vic would care what happened to me, and find ways to protect me if I needed protection. Despite all of the violence and tension in their world, I feel safe with them.

            I wish I could write like this. I wish I could write the next season of the show and make the actors come back to shoot it. But maybe most of all, I want to be strong the way these people are strong, while always still acknowledging my fears and weaknesses and confusions. I want to be clear about my values and goals, while still being open to learning something new about the world and about myself. And I want to be able to stick to what is true for me, even while respecting what is true for someone else, unless they’re delusional, in which case, fuck them.

            I think Walt would agree.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my Young Adult novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

            Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?