Highlights and review of Reservation Dogs season 3, episode 8: “Send It”

In season 3 episode 8 of the FX original series Reservation Dogs, the gang of the young Rez Dogs tries to rescue Maximus from the psychiatric ward so he can visit with his very ill cousin Fixico, because he’s horribly sick. Looks like the Rez Dogs have been busted for…something.

They’re at the police station, each one getting interrogated by Officer Big. Everybody’s staying strong until Willie Jack cracks.

She narrates what happened starting from the buffet line at Elder Breakfast, where she’s been shadowing Fixico as his plus one (so she gets free breakfast originally meant for seniors) and his apprentice as future community medicine woman.

Reservation Dogs season 3, episode 8 recap: The elder heist

The other elders mention Fixico’s wild ways when he was young and also tell him not to forget about his cousin Chibon (aka Maximums from one of the earlier episodes). Fixico expresses regret that he never really patched it up with his cousin.

Later, as everyone’s cleaning up, Fixico collapses as he’s exiting the dining room of the seniors’ home. He’s just had a cardiac arrest.

Rounding up the core Rez Dogs and peripheral friends from the other posse the NDN Mafia, like White Steve, Bone Thug Dog, and Jackie, they inveigle Kenny Boy, our favorite local junkyard owner, who’s very white, to lend them the wheels for their plan. And it’s pretty much a bonkers, audacious plan.

Motivated by Willie Jack’s apprenticeship to Fixico, she’s managed to make peace between the Rez Dogs and the NDN Mafia and have them collaborate on a complex elder heist. Well, it’ll turn out to not be really that complex but that’s beside the point.

What future medicine woman Willie Jack wants is to help Old Man Fixico patch things up with his “old friend” from the ancient days of the 1970s, by busting him out of a psychiatric home.

Reservation Dogs season 3, episode 8 recap: Unusual suspects

Thing is, the mental ward is in faraway Tulsa. With their charm, grit, and know-how they’ll bust in and break him out.

Afterwards they’ll bring him to the hospital where he and Old Man Fixico can make good and sign their long-delayed peace pact. Good deed done.

Seems like a far-fetched plan with a low percentage chance of success. Obstacles are already in their way, including, first of all, Kenny Boy.

Seeing this as his chance to gain cred with the reservation community he’s long wanted to be part of, Kenny Boy wastes no time leveraging this moment of vulnerability from the two youth gangs. He wants the kids to address him as “Uncle” and in exchange, he offers to drive everyone on one of his jalopy-quality school buses.

It’s the best he can do, since his salvage operation isn’t exactly legal. But beggars like the young’uns can’t be choosers.

Reservation Dogs season 3, episode 8 recap: Uncle Kenny Boy

Still, the bus loading scene playing to the new Rolling Stones single “Angry” is a nice touch to get us oiled up for the upcoming crime. Kenny Boy (sorry, Uncle Ken) even puts on war paint from the black grease under the dashboard and yawps.

The Tulsa heist itself plays out pretty comedically, and all their fancy planning doesn’t play out in their head like if this were The Usual Suspects. When Bear finally figures out that Chibon is Maximus, he also connects the old grudges of this issue in his head.

But all their well-meaning plans and preps have been for naught. Maximus doesn’t even need to be rescued.

He can check out anytime. Turns out he forgets to take his meds often and what happens is how Bear saw him living with eggplants for space people and visions of aliens, in that episode where he got rescued from the desert.

Reservation Dogs season 3, episode 8 recap: Maximus has left the building

When the young ones explain to him that Fixico is in a pretty bad state, he hesitates but eventually relents, seeing it as the universe telling him it’s time to finally confront his past. The Rez Dogs and the NDN Mafia needn’t be disappointed.

Maximus plays along when they ask him to pretend like he’s being rescued. Or at least put up a façade that he was being held against his will at the mental institution, thus keeping up the excitement of the heist.

The rift between Chibon started in “Maximus” and was later fleshed out in the 1970s episode “House Made of Bongs.” With this episode, through a structure of parallel themes about upcoming and fading medicine men, Willie Jack eventually admits that she was primarily motivated to do this for her new mentor, because she knew how it felt to want to spend and wish for more time with a loved one.

Reservation Dogs season 3, episode 8 recap: Better living through young medicine

Even if it’s just for a moment, Willie Jack craves more time with her own deceased cousin, Daniel. Turns out their getaway bus exploding on the rez’s streets (and everyone then getting hauled to the precinct) was a small price to pay for the victory.

Willie Jack got to practice some real soul medicine on her own volition, while the Rez Dogs and the NDN Mafia collaborated on something “meaningful”, as Elora declared at the start of the mission. Perhaps the young can indeed teach the old some new tricks through their own brand of wisdom.

The results looks pretty positive.

You can watch seasons 1 to 3 of Reservation Dogs on HULU.